. Quicko stopped operating in March and Send was placed in voluntary administration this month, after struggling to secure additional funding.Josh Robenstone
“I’m obsessed with the operating model of businesses, and we’ve got so much better at running teams with agile [methodologies] and scrums. It’s so much better in every single way.” A customer as well as an investor, Vullinghs uses Milkrun to order everything from fresh produce for dinners during the week to snacks on Sunday afternoons. She and Milham had known each other for more than a year thanks to their shared interest in consumer start-ups. So it took only five days from Milham reaching out, saying he was raising funds for Milkrun, for the VC to issue a term sheet.
Next year, he’s thinking about going to a speedway for an e-bike race. “Those things always get diluted when you scale, but I just can’t let that happen,” Milham says. “It’s an incredibly different challenge that’s so far different to numbers or marketing performance. How do you keep everyone motivated? It’s an interesting challenge, but I really like it.“
“We pore over that data and start to understand trends – at what part of the day do we see customer delivery times increase, at what part of the day do we see mistakes happen. For Zhang, the two most important metrics he tracks are delivery times and rider utilisation rates – how many orders are being completed in an hour.
Within 10 years, Milham says, the company will be a bigger business than Coles or Woolworths. It’s a big claim to make, but it’s one he genuinely believes. Consequently, he doesn’t believe an acquisition by one of the incumbents will be in his future.