👉 Background: Mr Yum and me&u are hospitality tech startups that have pretty similar products:

• Both provide restaurants with round QR-code discs that sit on a table of your restaurant
• Both allow their customers to order via an online menu
• Both facilitate payment via the platform and pay restaurants (less their transaction fee).

When COVID hit and menus became peak-bacteria, the QR platforms took off.

👉 What happened: Mr Yum raised $89 million in 2021 while Me&U has raised about $40 million. They both went through aggressive hiring, global growth ambitions... until the markets slowed down.

👉 What else: After two rounds of lay offs, it seems like arch-rivals Mr Yum and me&u could become one. And while these discussions are still preliminary, it could become the perfect way for these two 'start ups' to turn into 'scale ups'.

What's the key learning?

💡Scaling up is a crucial phase in a startup's lifecycle. It means growing your business in a way that's sustainable and efficient.

💡In startup phase, a company is focused on ensuring their company is fit for the market and can generate revenue. But in scale up stage, it's more about expanding efficiently, growing the customer base and working towards profitability.

💡 When two companies with similar offerings merge, they can potentially leverage their combined resources, customer base, and technology to drive growth... and ultimately drive dominance in the market.