Oscar Pierre, cofounder and CEO of Spanish delivery company Glovo, is launching a new VC fund, and he’s hiring for an investor to join the team. It's called Yellow Fund and will invest in startups from idea stage to Series A, according to a new website, which has had all information removed from it since Sifted published this article.
Pierre spoke about the plan at an event in Barcelona last night and said it would be a €50m fund, of which he would personally invest €10-15m, Sifted understands.
The fund’s website said that Pierre will be donating at least 51% of his wealth to “the Yellow Foundation”, which will finance the fund as part of its broader mission to “give back to society and the planet through empowering tech entrepreneurship”.
The site added that the rest of the capital will come from "other successful founders who have successfully built scalable companies".
It said that the fund will be sector agnostic, focusing on startups in Spain and other southern European companies, but will invest opportunistically in other regions, particularly those where Glovo has a footprint and there’s a “general lack of VC capital”.
Investment experience
This isn’t Pierre’s first foray into investing — the founder has been an active angel investor for some years, backing the likes of meat replacement brand Heura, retail property investment platform Beanstock and insurance provider Cleverea.
Last year Pierre told Sifted that he hadn’t “mastered these early-stage investment dynamics yet”, but that he does try to spend one hour every week talking to early-stage founders.
To bolster the new fund’s investor know-how, the site said that Pierre is looking to hire someone with upwards of five years' experience in “investment banking, management consulting, private equity or venture capital”, with a preference for experience at top VCs outside of Spain.
The site said that fund will also consider candidates who’ve raised VC capital as a startup founder, as long as they’ve had some investing experience.
When asked by Sifted how much time he will be spending on the new fund, Pierre responded saying "this is my personal project, I will be more focused than ever on achieving our mission at Glovo." He added that he believes in the power of entrepreneurship to solve society's problems, and that it's an area that he believes he can make an impact in by supporting budding founders.
Jumping ship?
The announcement comes at a difficult time for Glovo. After being acquired by German multinational Delivery Hero at the start of the year, Glovo was raided by the European Union for possible breaches of antitrust laws. The investigation is still ongoing and is looking into whether the company operated in a “cartel” with other delivery companies.
Today Spain’s labour minister also announced that Glovo has been fined €79m for breaching a labour law that requires food delivery platforms to employ their riders, rather than treat them as freelancers. The labour ministry said in a statement that Glovo has refused to give employment contracts to 10,600 riders in Barcelona and Valencia.
In response, Glovo told Sifted that the "inspections occurred prior to the introduction of Spain’s Riders’ Law" and that Glovo intends to "challenge the proposals" and is "fully committed to complying with Spanish labour regulations and the new Riders’ Law."
Tim Smith is Sifted’s Iberia correspondent. He tweets from @timmpsmith
**Update to the article at 13:10 CET on 21/09/2022: Sifted updated this article to reflect the fact that all information about Yellow Fund has now been removed from its website.
*** Update to the article at 12:47 CET 23/09/2022: Sifted updated the article to include Oscar Pierre's and Glovo's responses to the story
