How me&u Went From Australian Startup to International Tour de Force

“The future of me&u involves us being the market leader in what we do globally.”

— Kevin Upton, Sr. Lead in Partnership Ops of me&u

Editor’s note: On November 29, 2023, Mr Yum completed a merger with its largest competitor, me&u, both based out of Australia. The combined company will continue with the me&u name, and Mr Yum co-founder Kim Teo as CEO. These interviews were conducted with Mr Yum prior to the merger. Throughout the article their new name is used.

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For a lot of startups, trying to scale during the COVID-19 pandemic was like being a hatchling pushed out of the nest and expected to fly. Not every company made it. But an intrepid few, like Melbourne-based me&u, managed to not only spread their wings but soar to new heights.

The mobile ordering and payments company, which started off serving local hospitality businesses in Australia, now serves over 6,000 venues and has over 13 million users. The company has also grown to over 200 employees and is currently valued at nearly $250 million AUD.

What’s the secret to me&u’s success? CEO and Co-Founder Kim Teo says that a big part of it is finding the right technology partners and platforms to support the company’s growth.

A global lead in product innovation

Founded in late 2018, me&u is a web-based ordering and payments platform for restaurants and the wider hospitality industry. It started with a goal to shake up the traditional restaurant experience. Instead of asking diners to use text-based menus only to be surprised by a meal that doesn’t match expectations, me&u lets diners access a visual menu via QR code.

“We were so lucky,” Teo told Forbes in a 2022 interview. “We started in November 2018, and in July 2018, iPhone put the QR scanner in the camera. It was under the radar, but we watch technology and trends very closely, and we saw that happen and knew it would be big.” 

The next stage of me&u’s evolution happened during the pandemic. To support local hospitality businesses during the lockdown and cope with the realities of the new hands-free ordering experience, me&u added food pickup and delivery to its platform.

From there, me&u took to the global stage. It launched in the UK and the US simultaneously, debuting at famous festivals, including the Henley Regatta and Taste of London, and world-famous venues, including L.A.’s E.P. & L.P. and Strings of Life. As restaurants and entertainment venues embrace technology, me&u gives them an exciting way to connect with customers and break new ground in the hospitality industry.

Meanwhile, in Australia, me&u cemented itself as a household name. By the end of 2021, it was named 4^th in LinkedIn Australia’s 2021 Top Startups List. By 2022, 44% of Australians had used the platform, and six out of every ten diners in Australia had heard of or used me&u in the last month.

To fuel its growth plans for Australia, the UK, and the US, me&u raised multiple rounds of capital, ending with a record-breaking $89 million AUD Series A in 2021. This final round brought the total funding raised to more than $100 million AUD and was the single largest Series A in Australian history for a female-led company.

“Their QR codes have now become ubiquitous in Australia, and it’s happened pretty much overnight. They’re now helping hospitality venues all over the country bounce back from a very tough period through COVID, and with this new funding they are able to double down on their international markets, where they are already growing faster than they were in Australia,” says AirTree partner James Cameron.

AWS provides a strong foundation

With capital behind it, me&u invested heavily in technology that would enable it to continue scaling globally. These investments are pivotal to me&u’s success as they continue to lead the charge on product innovation in the hospitality industry.

Arguably, no decision was more important than choosing a powerful and secure hosting solution for their platform. Restaurants and diners alike needed to trust that me&u would always be up and running and able to handle their requests. Reliability was key.

That’s why me&u built its platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and leveraged the tools, resources, and expert guidance provided by AWS Startups to kick start its operations. AWS Startups also helped me&u attain the specialized training, accreditation, and technical support they needed.

CTO and Co-Founder Andrei Miulescu says, “We chose AWS due to its robust infrastructure, wide array of services, and scalability. Its strong reputation in the cloud services sector, coupled with its ability to support startups and growing businesses, made it an optimal choice for our solution.”

The me&u platform utilizes a combination of AWS services such as Amazon EC2 for computing, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for database management, and Amazon S3 for storage. These services enable me&u to scale efficiently, improve system uptime, and ensure a seamless user experience.

Andrei says, “The platform’s agility and flexibility provided by AWS addressed our challenges of rapid scalability and operational efficiency. Since partnering with AWS, we’ve witnessed a considerable increase in our platform’s reliability and performance.”

“Since partnering with AWS, we’ve witnessed a considerable increase in our platform’s reliability and performance.” 

— Andrei Miulescu, Co-Founder and CTO of me&u

By far, the biggest benefit of working with AWS is its unparalleled reliability. The hospitality industry changes quickly—and no change was more sudden or severe than COVID. AWS unlocked me&u’s ability to adapt to changing business requirements swiftly and serve its users efficiently.

Plus, with no fussing over backend infrastructure, me&u’s team is free to focus all efforts on the core business, and Andrei says this directly contributed to me&u’s accelerated growth.

“Partnering with AWS has streamlined our operations and enabled us to focus on delivering superior value to our customers. The extensive suite of services and robust infrastructure has proven indispensable to our growth journey,” Andrei says.

“[AWS’s] extensive suite of services and robust infrastructure has proven indispensable to our growth journey.” 

— Andrei Miulescu, Co-Founder and CTO of me&u

HubSpot helps me&u navigate rapid growth

To support its rapid expansion, me&u was also an early adopter of HubSpot’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. According to Teo, none of me&u’s competitors have a CRM product in place, and this proved to be a major differentiator when it came to the company’s agility, scalability, and global reach.

Today, me&u is using the full suite—Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and Service Hub as well. The fact that so many teams get something different out of HubSpot is a testament to how valuable the platform has been for me&u as it navigates new and exciting changes.

“Finding the right technology partner was the key. We knew we needed a change and our move to HubSpot has gone hand-in-hand with the growth and maturity of the business. HubSpot’s CRM platform gives us a much-needed single source of truth and insight into customer journeys, which is critical when you’re navigating rapid growth,” she says.

 “Finding the right technology partner was the key. Our move to HubSpot has gone hand-in-hand with the growth and maturity of our business.” 

— Kim Teo, Co-Founder and CEO of me&u

Growth on a global scale is only possible with a great product and a solid understanding of who’s using it. me&u has the product. HubSpot provides critical insight by enabling more visibility of customer interactions, especially the length and history of relationships.

Kevin Upton, Sr. Lead in Partnership Ops at me&u, says, “Startups should consider adopting a solution like HubSpot as early as possible. Having information that you can make decisions on helps you future proof… and it’s really difficult to go back retroactively or report on a historical relationship that lives in someone’s head.”

“Startups should consider adopting a solution like HubSpot as early as possible. Having information that you can make decisions on helps you future proof.” 

— Kevin Upton, Sr. Lead in Partnership Ops of me&u

Breaking down internal silos

me&u also established KPI dashboards within HubSpot that give each business unit a unified view of the business and its customers. Now, each department has a single source of truth to operate from and strong measurable targets to track against because, as Teo says, “You can’t improve what you can’t measure.”

“HubSpot helped us connect the dots between all the teams and the customer journey,” says Upton. “It allows us to track every single conversation and interaction that’s ever happened with a customer, including how we engaged them in the first place.”

“HubSpot helps us connect the dots between all the teams and the customer journey.” 

— Kevin Upton, Sr. Lead in Partnership Ops of me&u

With a single source of truth, me&u’s leadership team can keep an eye on global expansion efforts and steer product development and marketing with more accuracy. They can report by region, team, function, customer cohort, and everything in between, which gives the executive team and individual business units a lot more visibility on what’s happening.

“HubSpot has facilitated a lot of growth in the business by helping us make decisions and enabling our team to focus on their jobs. There’s a big return on investment there in terms of time that you get back by being able to focus on your day-to-day, but also the ability to make decisions based on the outputs from those inputs,” says Upton.

“HubSpot has facilitated a lot of growth in the business by helping us make decisions and enabling our team to focus on their jobs.” 

— Kevin Upton, Sr. Lead in Partnership Ops of me&u

Improved customer support

One of me&u’s major growth goals was to scale successfully without sacrificing customer satisfaction. This was especially important in the wake of the pandemic—restaurateurs and hospitality business owners had already struggled with lockdown orders for the better part of two years. me&u wanted to be a solution for them, not another source of stress.

Gaining a single view of customers solves this issue, providing Venue Partnerships and Customer Support teams with everything they need to have informed discussions instead of circling around the same information. Teo’s philosophy is “Delivering great customer support requires putting all the customer information at our team’s fingertips.”

“Delivering great customer support requires putting all the customer information at our team’s fingertips.” 

— Kim Teo, Co-Founder and CEO of me&u

Lorenzo Parronchi, a member of the Venue Partnerships team, says that the first thing he was trained to do was use HubSpot and now he can’t imagine operating without that peace of mind. 

“My whole job is talking to restaurateurs to understand what issues they’re having and how we can help. HubSpot neatly logs hundreds upon hundreds of communications and helps me stay on top of my work so I always feel like I’m able to provide value. Hubspot means that I love my job,” says Parronchi.

“HubSpot neatly logs hundreds upon hundreds of communications and helps me stay on top of my work so I always feel like I’m able to provide value. HubSpot means that I love my job.” 

— Lorenzo Parronchi, Venue Partnerships at me&u

Value during hiring and onboarding

While me&u primarily leverages HubSpot for its sales and marketing capabilities, Upton also says that there’s been one big unlooked-for benefit: new team member enablement. With rapid growth comes a lot of new faces and getting everyone up to speed quickly is a challenge. In me&u’s case, they went from 10 employees to over 200 in just a few years.

Upton says, “It’s nice when a tool exceeds expectations and HubSpot is helping us solve problems beyond the original scope. We use it while onboarding new staff to give them context into the relationships they’re inheriting.”

HubSpot’s tight integration with other systems, intuitive UI, and efficient onboarding workflows have halved the time required for new salespeople to become fully productive. Parronchi says that he was up and running in no time because “HubSpot was so easy to pick up and use.”

And Teo says, “When you’re doubling the size of your team, as we’ve done in the last six months, every second person in the business is new. So you’ve got to have the right systems in place to help them be productive from day one.” 

“When you’re doubling the size of your team, as we’ve done in the last six months, every second person in the business is new. So you’ve got to have the right systems in place to help them be productive from day one.” 

— Kim Teo, Co-Founder and CEO of me&u

Accelerate your growth

Today, me&u is on an accelerated growth track, boasting over 13 million users—and that number continues to expand. Upton claims that “The future of me&u involves us being the market leader in what we do globally.” 

me&u’s success is due to smart business decisions, a willingness to adapt to and overcome obstacles in the industry, and the ability to leverage technology to support rapid scaling.

By building the platform on a reliable AWS foundation and using HubSpot to gain unparalleled visibility into the health of each customer account, me&u has a winning formula that will continue to serve it well as it expands into even more countries in the years to come.

Teo says, “[HubSpot has] given us the confidence to enter new markets and tackle new opportunities, knowing our business systems won’t hold us back but instead easily scale to meet every challenge.”

 “[HubSpot has] given us the confidence to enter new markets and tackle new opportunities, knowing our business systems won’t hold us back but instead easily scale to meet every challenge.”

— Kim Teo, Co-Founder and CEO of me&u