Our mission at Plural is to have GDP-level impact on the European economy and support the emergence of the world’s next €100bn companies. A big part of that stack is having partners who have already been part of that kind of scaling journey and overhauled massive industries. They can share their hard earned lessons with our founders and challenge their perception and understanding of what great looks like at different stages of company building.

When we embarked on the journey of building Plural four years ago, the first person who came to mind for me when thinking about how we could build out the strongest partnership possible to deliver that mission was Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, the operator Travis and Ryan brought on board in the early days of Uber to scale the organization in Europe and eventually grow to become one of its core operational leaders over his 13-year tenure.

Initially hired as Uber’s GM in France in 2012, he became one of the core forces, going to central roles leading Uber’s mobility business outside of the U.S. and eventually Uber Eats globally in one of the most critical phases in the company history (covid). His involvement helped take the company from a $330m valuation then, to its $200bn+ market cap today. There are very few people in the world with that kind of scar tissue, and even fewer in Europe: when we look at the continent’s €100bn tech companies, only Spotify was founded in the last 20 years.

I’m proud to welcome Pierre today as an equal Partner and owner in Plural.

Pierre’s track record

I’ve known Pierre since he joined Uber in 2012, shortly after I invested in the company as an angel, and saw first hand how he was able to rapidly integrate Uber’s unique intensity while becoming one of the most inspiring and respected leaders in the organisation. He ended up scaling the company’s ride sharing business across EMEA to $9bn GMV, leading him to oversee Uber's international markets.

In 2020 as the mobility business had established its leadership globally, Uber Eats was seriously challenged by investors in its ability to ever reach profitability and establish market share akin to Uber’s core business. When Dara had to determine who could take on the challenge of leading the business unit through this turmoil he turned to Pierre. A few weeks later Covid hit. Most of Uber’s core mobility business disappeared overnight due to fewer people using ride sharing during lockdowns, the success of Uber eats became then existential for the company. Under Pierre’s leadership Uber’s delivery business grew 5x to $90bn GMV, getting close to parity to Uber’s core business today, while reaching profitability and delivering over $3.5bn in annual EBITDA.

The value of “the how” in company building

Scaling not only one but two very different business lines to tens of billion dollars of GMV takes rare talent, grit and resilience and understandably Pierre grew into one of Uber’s reference operators. He did this by establishing a structured culture where no learning was ever wasted, sharing lessons in what did and didn’t work with other GMs, in ways that were applicable across the business.

A big reason that he became such a trusted voice in the company was his ability to make rational, data-informed decisions. While many like to say they are data-driven, Pierre has a unique ability to deconstruct operational problems and business objectives, and turn those into clear, actionable KPIs and dashboards. This also applies to how he spots and nurtures talent, showing an ability to rationally assess people’s capabilities, and then get the best out of people by coaching them with data and empathy.

These kinds of skills, the operational “how” of scaling a huge business, are in high demand in Europe. Many of our founders come to us frequently saying, “I think I need to scale up my operational capabilities. I'm looking for the right COO, where should I look, what questions should I be asking?”

When I first invested in Helsing in 2020 and was discussing with Torsten, Gundbert and Niklas the ideal person to add to the cap table who could bring the operational perspective of what it takes to build a 100bn+ company, I linked them with Pierre. “He will challenge you, make you think differently about your organisational design, your recruiting processes, your interviewing mechanism, how you build culture, and at the end of the day, drive world-class execution.”

The next era of European ambition

Europe is going through a unique transformation of its entrepreneurial aspirations and ambitions, driven in large part by the existential conflict waged in Ukraine and the realisation that our self determination relies on our ability to re-invent and reclaim the industries our sovereignty depends on.

The honest truth is that these aspirations and ambitions will only matter to the extent that execution follows at par with the best-in-class standards expected in Silicon Valley and China. I couldn’t be prouder that from today onwards all Plural founders will be able to spar and get challenged by one of the best builders of our generation, pushing them to execute at the level of their ambition.