In this episode, Michiel Muller — founder and CEO of Picnic — takes us through his entrepreneurial learnings and shares his vision for the future of Picnic and the online supermarket industry. He elaborates on the importance of risk-taking as a startup founder and sheds light on the challenges that come when you want to democratise food delivery. You will learn more about Michiel’s view on what an efficient talent recruitment system means, the importance of scalability, and how to go about choosing your VC investors with long-term commitments.

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Michiel Muller – Founder & CEO @Picnic

Michiel Muller is a serial entrepreneur, who has (co)-founded several companies, including the online supermarket Picnic, the unmanned petrol service station chain Tango and the road assistance company Route Mobiel. He is also a board member of the FD Mediagroup (Dutch Financial Times); member of the investment committee of regional development agency Innovation Quarter; and chairman of the largest university endowment fund in the Netherlands, the Erasmus Trustfund.

Key highlights
1:07 – Michiel – “If you want to disrupt a big market with your business, there is no way of taking less risks.”

13:35 – Michiel – “Recruiting talent has not so much to do with having the budget to do with paying people. I’d say the best people are coming to Picnic because they want to change the world.”

30:59 – Michiel – “Of course we ‘do feeling’ [when taking decisions], but we’d also like to do a bit of sensing and understand if the data provides proof that this is a good idea.”

32:18 – Michiel – “Data is the culture, totally.”

34:50 – Michiel – “At Picnic we were extremely lucky that we found a market where people were just waiting for change to happen.”

53:55 – Michiel – “As an investor, you’d want the founders to spend money wisely but rapidly in the early stage to ensure rapid growth.”

57:06 – Michiel – “What drives me most is having a problem, a crazy idea, and then ask ourselves whether we can make this happen, despite any hurdles.”

Watch the full episode & highlights on YouTube

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