In-house, before 30Plays. First commercial hire after the seed round: I built Quiqup's first sales teams and owned commercialisation as it moved from consumer app to delivery infrastructure for other brands.
Quiqup is a London-founded logistics technology and last-mile delivery company. When I joined in 2015 as Sales Director, it was a consumer-facing on-demand delivery app for London restaurants and retailers.
I was the first commercial hire after the seed round, joining as the business started to commercialise. The job was to build and hire the first sales team, sign restaurant and retailer partnerships, and create the company's first repeatable commercial engine. I was there for about eighteen months.
The London delivery market was crowded with large, well-funded platforms, which made a better route for Quiqup to be the delivery infrastructure behind other brands rather than another consumer marketplace.
I split the first team into three. A lead generation team prospected restaurants and retailers and booked meetings. A field sales team ran the meetings and closed. An account management team onboarded customers, managed the relationships and grew them. Each stage had its own owner rather than the same people doing everything.
I implemented Salesforce and a working forecasting discipline, so the pipeline could be seen and planned.
The business moved from a consumer app to a B2B logistics service. Instead of sending customers to Quiqup's own app, Quiqup let brands offer on-demand delivery through their own channels, keeping their customer relationship while Quiqup ran the fulfilment behind the scenes.
Revenue grew from approximately $2m to over $10m during my eighteen months, with me owning commercialisation. These are my own best figures for the period, not published accounts, so they are stated as approximate.
I signed and scaled Tesco, Burger King, Gap and Whole Foods. The three-function structure, Salesforce and the forecasting rhythm became the company's first repeatable commercial engine.
What it shows: when the market moves under a startup, the commercial structure has to move with it. Separating lead generation, closing and account management made the pivot sellable.