Why we invested in Allset?
It was the fastest deal in our history. From meeting the founder to our Investment Committee approval it was less than 3 weeks. That’s how quickly we can process the deals if everything is clear. The round was 8,25Million dollars and we joined a group of great investor: EBRD, A16Z, Greycroft and SMRK.
If you want to learn what needs to be in place for VC to act that quickly, below is our summary of what we love in Allset:
Product
Allset removes the friction of everyday dining by offering an app to order food at restaurants, allowing for either the pick-up or dine-in option. It gives clear value to both ends — the clients do not have to waste time standing in a queue, ordering, and waiting for the meal to be prepared, while restaurants can double their table turnover and bring more customers. Being busy professionals ourselves we see huge value in eating out in a nice restaurant with a total time of less than 30 minutes!
Team
It’s always good to see second-time entrepreneurs, especially when they’ve been working together for many years. It’s even better if the previous business was relevant to the current one.
It’s ideal though if you talk to the CEO and quickly realize he’s an outstanding operator, fitting perfectly to the type of the firm he is building. Stas has a superb understanding of how to acquire new restaurants and build two-side liquidity.
Anna, the other founder, who is the CPO, shows a great mix of a passion for product and understanding business needs.
One of the great founders' attributes is the ability to hire A players and having spent just one day in Allset office we were sure the whole team is outstanding and everybody is passionate about making the lives of busy office workers a bit more efficient.
Market
Crowded, but certainly not yet saturated. Not many industries worldwide offer a trillion-dollar+ opportunity, but Allset seems to operate in such. The team focused on the US from day 1, however not without some tweaks in go to market. Despite a lot of competitors, Allset has proven to be able to compete and get a strong position in some of the most competitive parts of the United States.
Traction
The company was hitting our growth expectations… actually growing twice as fast as we expect on the core business. What is critical for us when it comes to marketplaces is to see a chance for strong network effects, for Allset not only have we seen proof, but a replicable playbook and process resulting in unlocking network effects location after location. Team has also proven the ability to grow efficiently with a hyperlocal focus which is often very difficult and/or expensive.
Board
In such a competitive market strategic positioning is very important. While we got confident in teams’ ability to execute via deep dives in critical areas, board composition gave us confidence in proper strategic decisions. The mix of European entrepreneurs and investors who understand the transition from Europe to the US with founders and ex CEOs of top US foodtech companies (Opentable, Seated) seems to be perfect for this company.
Fit
We always ask ourselves the question “why us”. For Allset the answer was really simple. Our sector experience from running and investing in foodtech businesses and our expertise from growing Booksy in the USA, where B2B2C was a crucial growth driver, seemed a perfect fit.
We warmly welcome Allset to Inovo family and look forward to making life and lunches more efficient together!
Michał Rokosz was lead partner on the deal. Special thanks to Paweł Stajgis for whom it was first end to end deal since joining our fund!
Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–2m in startups from Poland and the region.
