Gousto founder Timo Boldt: How Al Gore helped my meal-kit maker open doors
Every week, Morning Wire’s Charlie Conchie sits down with the biggest names in tech, fintech and financial services. This week, it’s Gousto founder Timo Boldt
Timo Boldt is a man of several talents, but not one who necessarily likes talking about them.
Just before a plate of raw tuna lands on our table in Soho, the founder of meal-kit maker Gousto tries to take me on a whistle stop tour of his early years: born in a Berlin still split in two by the wall, a stint in the US during high school, back to Berlin, “didn’t feel challenged” at university, into investment banking in London.
What he fails to add, however, are the quirks I’m looking for: the offer of a college American football scholarship in the US as a running back, a deadlifting record at school in the US, and the founding of a first-of-its-kind university fund that pooled his classmates’ cash and made a mint on the Chinese stock market.
“We took these penny stock positions and our portfolio went up like… insane”, he tells City A.M. after a gentle nudge.
“We were probably extremely obnoxious, we were drinking champagne during lunch break because everyone started thinking we were these insane entrepreneurs, printing money, whereas the reality is we got lucky.”
Despite raising over $300m over the past 12 years from an investor base as broad as Joe Wickes and Softbank, Boldt is not an entrepreneur who screams champagne at lunch. He’s softly spoken with a still notable Berlin lilt and talks more comfortably about AI in his Warrington warehouse than his own personal successes.
Lunchtime champagne has given way to sparkling water, sashimi and hake on a bed of beans. Is he on a summer diet?
“I think it’s age. Age and kids,” he laughs.
“You go from Berlin, post-wall coming down, everyone working in corporate, to California where it’s all about risk-taking and bigger, faster, more dynamic.”
Gousto founder Timo Boldt
Hand-packing recipes
Boldt founded Gousto aged 26 in 2012 after quitting a short financial career that took him from banking at Rothschild into a VP position at hedge fund Petrus Advisers.
The City, he says, gave him a “toolbox” for his later entrepreneurial efforts. But it was never entirely satisfying. He credits his time in the US with California-based godparents as the catalyst for a life outside big business.
“You go from Berlin, post-wall coming down, everyone working in corporate, to California where it’s all about risk-taking and bigger, faster, more dynamic,” he says.
“I was two years in banking and then my godparents kept on saying ‘no kids, no mortgage – why are you not starting a food business?”
It’s always been food, he says. While Gousto now boasts a national customer base and ships everything from “special bangers ‘n’ mash” to “Sri Lankan-style coconut dal”, Boldt was first hand-packing the recipes and delivering them on foot from a one-bedroom flat with his girlfriend (now wife) in Oxford.
After expanding into a bigger space, a break came from an unlikely place a year later. He speculatively sent off 100 handwritten christmas cards to people he admired asking for mentorship.
“I think the premise of the letter was, ‘I’m really hard working. I love food. I hate food waste. Gousto is at the intersection of health, sustainability and convenience for the next 10 years. It will be a seismic shift in the market’,” he says.
“I kind of felt like, what’s the worst case? I’m wasting two hours writing and I’m wasting £100 and no one remembers.”
Tony Blair and Angela Merkel were among the 98 that didn’t respond. The two that did, however, were the chairman of Rothschild, who became a Gousto investor, and former US vice-president and environmentalist, Al Gore.
“What happened was: a) I got some investment and b) Al Gore introduced me to loads of entrepreneurs,” he adds.
A few meetings with the right people, and doors began to open to the home delivery firm.
Wrong order
Gousto exploded through the 2010s and attracted cash from the scores of big name venture capitalists clamouring to pump cash into high-growth tech firms. The company fetched a £1.2bn valuation in 2022 after homebound shoppers poured in through the pandemic.
Since then, life has been more difficult. Investment globally has cratered on the back of rising interest rates and tech investors have pushed their portfolio companies away from growth-at-all-costs toward profitability.
Against that backdrop, shoppers have felt the squeeze of a cost-of-living crisis and supply chains have been roiled. Just one year after fetching a valuation of £1.2bn and Gousto was forced to slash headcount and dramatically cut its valuation to raise money at £250m.
“As a founder, I feel personally responsible. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I told everyone in person, I was pretty emotional,” Boldt says.
“It’s the last thing you ever want to do to people. I think I was overwhelmed by the positivity. People being laid off saying, “Oh, it’s not your fault mate, it’s a tough economy. If you ever have a job again. Can I rejoin?”
And has he ever hired any of them again?
“Yeah we have a few. A few came back.”
Not everyone was so enamoured by Boldt’s stewardship through the period. While he took part in the cut price funding round in 2023, scores of his investors were reportedly shut out of the deal and lambasted the founder for what they saw as a dubious approach to governance.
“Something has gone wrong in the last year, and people don’t see the company taking action to resolve this,” one investor told Sky News at the time.
The governance brouhaha was something of a rare bit of negative press for a company and founder that have, for the most part, stayed on the right side of the public.
“I actually feel like the media is loving Gousto, it’s been pretty fantastic. And I genuinely don’t feel like it’s that negative,” he says.
“I think there was a very particular circumstance where I wouldn’t agree with the facts and… you know, but let’s not get into detail.”
“You step on somebody’s toes on the tube and they apologise. I think it’s the only place in the world where that happens.”
Gousto founder Timo Boldt
On the up
Gousto has since then got back on the front foot. In its 2023 results today, shared exclusively with Morning Wire, the firm swung to underlying profitability of £26m after an £8m loss the previous year. He’s managed to keep a lid on costs and margins have widened to 8.3 per cent.
Revenues, which Boldt says have been “remarkably resilient” through the economic squeeze of the past 18 months, ticked up one per cent to £308m through 2023.
That performance has helped make Boldt’s one of the more positive voices among start-up founders in the City. After nearly twenty years, he insists it’s still a great place to both run a business and live.
“You step on somebody’s toes on the tube and they apologise,” he laughs. “I think it’s the only place in the world where that happens.”
As a German by birth and now naturalised Brit, he has views on the political tumult triggered by Brexit. Talent from the continent has stopped flowing in and doing business with the bloc has become a tricker challenge.
“There’s definitely been damage to this country and the brand,” he says. “We’re a food business. Sadly, we’re trying to be as local as possible, but the reality is the sun shines X days a year. And so a lot of food is imported. And you depend on [that].”
While Gousto’s eyeing international expansion eventually, (he won’t divulge when and where) he says he has no intention to up sticks and head for sunnier shores himself. A once-rumoured IPO is also nowhere near the current plans, he adds.
Boldt has built a base here, and his investors are, for the most part, happy and Gousto’s growing.
Why aren’t some happy?
“Joe Wickes and I had a Peleton challenge for a couple of years and he’s never beaten me. I’m very proud of that. After, he sends me messages cursing,” he laughs.
Well, he can’t resist talking up his talents sometimes.