In this article, we interview Davide Vitiello, VP of Consumer Product here at Delivery Hero. Despite joining during a global pandemic, Davide has found his footing and brings a fresh perspective with him to the Product community here at Delivery Hero.
Hey Davide, tell us a little bit about yourself? When did you join DH?
Sure! I’m Italian and I’ve been living abroad for the past ten years. I spent my entire career (21 years, time flies when you enjoy what you do!) split between working in engineering and product-related roles. My passion is that I love to build great products and great teams, and here at DH, I am able to do it on a massive scale.
I joined DH on the 2nd of March. Shortly after that, on the 11th of March, Corona was declared a pandemic. That being said, my first weeks were spent trying to find my feet and come up with a game plan. I couldn’t meet people personally or go to the office. I was being onboarded remotely, while at the same time trying to make an impact.
This made things a bit more difficult, but thankfully, the team was extremely supportive. Everyone around me (virtually!) has been really helpful, giving me all the information I need. I am very thankful to my team, Johannes, and the countless others who turned a potentially disastrous combination of factors into a good experience. They proved that, no matter what, if people help each other and show one another support, we can overcome anything.
Which brands are you working on, and in which countries do they operate?
Currently, my work focuses mainly on the Foodpanda brand, which is active in the Asia Pacific, Bulgaria, and Romania, our Foodora brand which operates in the Nordic countries, and Damejidlo, which operates in the Czech Republic, and NetPincér in Hungary.
These brands operate overall in 19 countries, delivering an average of 2 million orders every day. This represents almost half of all the orders Delivery Hero processes in one day (over 4 million across all brands and platforms)
Why did you make the move into leading Product and Design? What excites you about it?
The move was almost unplanned. As I said, everything started when I began coding, which I can still remember as the phase I was closest to “creating” something.
After that, opportunities moved me into what was then called a “pre-sales engineer” position. This is a professional figure that helps companies in pricing the development time. Usually, they visit customers (in my case broadcasters and Telecom providers) to try and understand how a solution could be integrated into their system, and how much time that would require.
I did this for two video streaming companies until I realized that it would have been better to package everything as a product, not sell custom features, but rather have a roadmap, a set of features released over time as needed by the markets in which our customers operated.
This was more than ten years ago. Now it seems quite obvious, but back then, agile and product were still not such widespread concepts. Spotify was fairly fresh, only three years old, and would take another three years before releasing their “famous” model.
So, this all happened by chance 🙂
You mentioned to me, some of the people close to you had concerns about Delivery Hero. What were your reasons for joining us despite this?
During my interview process at Delivery Hero, I met with a lot of great people who gave me a true idea of what Delivery Hero is, and what values it stands for. I had the opportunity to interview with Johannes Bruder, Christian Hardenberg, PJ Vandepitte, Jeri Doris, and Niklas Östberg, and many more inspirational leaders who gave me a solid impression of how things work at Delivery Hero.
If you gain a good impression of some of the more senior stakeholders at a company, you can trust it is a good indicator for the company as a whole, and forget about external opinions.
And, did it meet your expectations?
Totally! I found all the opportunities that were promised to me and also all the freedom that was mentioned during my interview process. After six months, I can say that I am lucky to be here, and I am sure the next few years will be an exceptional ride.
Delivery Hero will be playing more and more of a global role in the food delivery industry, along with other industries, and we will always be ahead of the game because of our partnership with and attention to the local markets.
How do you perceive the current Product and Design community at DH?
Product and Design, as tech and other disciplines do, grew exponentially in the last few years.
While this is great because it allows us to do many more things in parallel, as well as learn faster, it also creates some problems with the connecting tissues. Currently, the feeling is that there are several teams, still not perfectly aligned, and with some differences in the way they operate.
One of the cool challenges ahead will be to create ONE team while we keep serving our customers with the best products we can offer.
Since you are joining with a fresh pair of eyes, what do you see as our biggest challenges?
The competition will become more and more fierce. I can easily imagine that more consolidation will be happening in our industry, and I am sure that we will play a role in this in the next few years.
The only way we can win is to continue to provide value by being attentive to customers’ needs and how they shift, always staying one step ahead. There is a lot of space, not only in the consumer area but also on the partner’s side.
We can become a trusted provider for the hundreds of thousands of partners on our platform, offering them all the solutions they need to build while helping them grow their businesses.
What is your vision for our product and design community? How do you picture it in 1-2 years?
In 1-2 years, I hope that all the differences I see today in the community will be ironed out. Not in the sense that we are all the same, but rather, that we feel and live as one team.
There is also a lot happening as a global community right now. Some of my colleagues are working to bring product people from all over the world together to share learnings, best practices, and have fun. Of course, now all of these workshops and summits are happening virtually. I really hope that soon we might be able to fly to these events and meet people in person again. Nothing makes a better team than some quality time spent together!
Why is it a great moment to join Delivery Hero?
Everything I have mentioned makes Delivery Hero a great company to join at the moment. Here at Delivery Hero, anyone can learn 7 times faster than they would learn by working for any other company. Once for each of the platforms we have around the globe.
Now is the best time to join because we want to head more and more into a global leadership position. Joining now gives you the opportunity to be able to pioneer and shape the path of our future. We will have a lot to be proud of when we look back 5 years from now!
Thank you, Davide! It’s truly an amazing time to join and we’re really excited to see what the future holds! If you’re interested in joining the Consumer team, have a look at some of the following open positions here!
