My guest for Ep182 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Rolf Weber, the CEO of Marley Spoon Australia.

Rolf joined Marley Spoon as their Australian CEO in March 2015

Prior to this he co-founded, BrandsExclusive in 2009, before they were eventually fully acquired in 2014. He then went on to launch and invest in a number of businesses including being a Founding shareholder and Director in Mad Paws.

In this episode we covered a broad range of topics including:

• Lessons from launching, growing and exiting BrandsExclusive
• The ups and downs of the Marley Spoon journey including their IPO with a market cap of over $260 million, to some of the challenges during Covid
• Building a culture of resilience
• & much more!

Timestamps:

• 1:47 – Rolf’s Background
• 3:56 – Moving from Germany to Australia
• 6:23 – His time at Ikea
• 9:35 – Launching Brands Exclusive
• 11:32 – Importance of co-founder dynamics
• 15:53 – Advice on making the leap to startups later on in your career
• 20:01 – Fundraising in 2008
• 23:00 – Building a business with the intention to sell from the beginning
• 28:49 – Clauses founders should be aware of during an acquisition process
• 31:45 – How he approached next career steps post acquisition
• 37:59 – Staying balanced during ups and downs of entrepreneurship
• 43:13 – The decision to join Marley Spoon
• 46:59 – Operational challenges during Covid
• 52:58 – Differences between building Brands Exclusive and Marley Spoon
• 59:58 – Preparing for and going through an IPO, operating in public

Our partners

A big thank you to Justus Hammer for his help with this interview.

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over seven thousand fast-growing companies including Atlassian, Flo Health and Quora that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount

Links mentioned

Rolf’s links

• Rolf’s LinkedIn
• Marley Spoon

People mentioned

• Daniel Jarosch
• Justus Hammer
• Sam Kothari
• Bjorn Behrendt
• Alexis Soulopoulos
• Jeff Bezos
• Fabian Siegel

Companies mentioned

• IKEA
• brandsExclusive
• Marley Spoon
• PwC
• eBay
• Playbook Ventures
• Everlab
• APN Media
• Mad Paws
• Telstra
• Amazon
• Blue Apron

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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