By early 2025 two of Flink's founders had walked away from the company they started. Christoph Cordes and Oliver Merkel left, and Julian Dames was alone at the helm of a business that had once been worth $2.1bn on paper. It was an odd ending for a company that had outlived most of its rivals.
Cordes was no first-time founder. In 2009 he co-founded fashion4home, an online furniture and home shop, and from 2016 to 2020 he sat on the management board of home24 SE. He had spent more than a decade learning how hard it is to move bulky goods to customers who want them now. Grocery delivery, with its razor-thin margins, was the same problem at higher speed.
What set Flink apart was a quiet decision to partner rather than fight.
At the end of 2020 he, Merkel, Dames, Saad Saeed and Nikolas Bullwinkel started Flink in Berlin. The idea was copied from a pattern already visible in Turkey and the United States: small dark stores, bike riders, groceries in minutes. In February 2021 Cherry Ventures, Northzone and Target Global led the first round, and within months the money was flowing. By the end of 2021 the company was valued at $2.1bn and had about 12,000 employees.
What set Flink apart was a quiet decision to partner rather than fight. Rewe, the German supermarket giant, invested, and a group around DoorDash followed. In 2021 Flink overtook Gorillas to become the largest third-party quick-delivery service in Europe. Total funding reached around $750m.
But speed has a price. In 2022 it bought the French rival Cajoo for about €100m, and Carrefour became a shareholder. That same year it left Austria. In April 2024 its French arm filed for bankruptcy. The empire had been built too wide and had to be cut back.
What is left is a smaller, more focused company. One market profile puts 2024 revenue near €600m and says Flink reached EBITDA profitability, though other reports give lower numbers and the figures conflict. A 2025 round of about $100m, led by Prosus Ventures and Btomorrow Ventures, was reported as the company searched for fresh capital.
For first-time founders the lesson is in who survives. Cordes arrived with a decade of e-commerce scars, and the company that outlasted its rivals was the one with a supermarket partner and a lean rebuild. In fast-burn markets, the winner is often the one that stops growing first.