Gemma Sorigué, Camilo Defoin, Miguel Vicente, Gerard Olivé
// the model, blind
Evaluating only Deliberry’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Competition as the #1 likely cause. Documented cause: Unit economics.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
FOUNDING
Deliberry founded
FOUNDING
CRISIS
PIVOT
Strategic pivot under pressure
FUNDING
CRISIS
SHUTDOWN
CRISIS
FUNDING
Deliberry founded in Madrid by Javier Rodríguez Zapatero. Raises €14M from Target Global and SEED Capital DK. Launches 15-minute grocery delivery in Madrid. Q-commerce is the hottest category in European venture capital — Gorillas raised $1B, Getir $550M, Flink $750M all in 2021. Every major European city has 3-5 q-commerce players competing.
SHUTDOWN
Silent Shutdown: Deliberry ceases operations
SHUTDOWN
Deliberry shuts operations in December 2023 after 2 years of operation. €14M consumed. Unable to raise follow-on capital in a market where European VCs have declared q-commerce dead. Gorillas merged into Getir. Flink pared to core cities. Jokr shut. The q-commerce graveyard claims another entrant. 15-minute grocery delivery proved to be a feature, not a business.
Full Analysis
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Documented cause
Deliberry was founded in 2015 in Barcelona by Gemma Sorigué, Camilo Defoin, Miguel Vicente, and Gerard Olivé — all connected to Antai Venture Builder (the same builder behind Wallapop and Glovo). The company raised approximately €7.2 million across six rounds, including a €3.3M seed led by The Sputnik Group in March 2016, plus public grants from Institut Català de Finances and ENISA. Deliberry built partnerships with Mercadona, Caprabo, and Día, but revenue never exceeded €3.8 million annually while cumulative losses reached €8 million over seven years. The dual-commission model proved structurally unsustainable as Glovo, Amazon Fresh, and European q-commerce players drove costs beyond what Deliberry could match. The company entered insolvency proceedings in October 2022 at Barcelona Commercial Court No. 2.
Lesson
“Seven years without exceeding €3.8M annual revenue while accumulating €8M in losses is not a scaling problem — it is evidence the unit economics never worked. A marketplace charging both sides where supermarkets had no incentive to pay and consumers expected free delivery was structurally broken from year one.”