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💥 Glovo, Delivery Hero, and the €329M Wake-Up Call ⚠️ Big news just hit the delivery world — and it’s seismic. The European Commission has slapped Barcelona-based Glovo and Germany’s Delivery Hero with a combined €329 million fine for allegedly operating a cartel in the online food and grocery delivery space. Glovo: €106M (that’s ~10% of their global revenue!) Delivery Hero: €223M Reason? Alleged collusion. Market manipulation. Cartel behavior. 🚨 This isn’t a slap on the wrist. It’s a potential death sentence. 🧨 My Blunt Take? This could be the beginning of the end for both companies. Glovo hit with €106M? Delivery Hero nailed for €223M? In a market already razor-thin on margins and burned out on VC fuel, how do they survive this? But let’s go deeper than the headlines. 😡 Is This Another "EU Startup Killer" Move? That’s the hot take flying around. “The EU is anti-innovation!” “They’re stifling startups with regulations!” Sure, these fines are colossal. And yes — the EU’s approach to tech can feel bureaucratic and blunt. But… 🧭 Accountability Still Matters Let’s not lose the plot: Cartels harm competition. They harm consumers. If these companies really colluded, the fines aren’t just justified — they’re necessary. Startups don’t get a pass because they’re “innovating” or “scaling fast.” Rules still exist for a reason. 🔄 The Deeper Rot: A Toxic VC-Fueled Cycle For me, this isn’t just about the EU or bad startups. It’s about the unsustainable model we’ve all watched unfold for a decade: 💸 Blitzscale with cheap money → 🏃 Burn billions to crush rivals → 🥇 Try to win monopoly → 📉 Profits? Later. Maybe. When that "maybe" never arrived, desperation did. And desperation leads to corners cut. To rules bent. To collusion, maybe. This isn’t new. WeWork. Gorillas. Uber Eats’ ongoing struggles. We’ve seen this movie before. 💥 The Macro Punch No One Talks About Why the desperation? Because consumers are squeezed. Hard. VCs want growth. Users want cheap delivery. Startups can’t deliver both forever — not without breaking something: 📉 Unit economics 🧾 Labor laws 📜 Antitrust rules This isn’t just a startup issue. It’s a macro failure. A broken economy. Stagnating wages. Rising costs. And policymakers looking the other way. ⚖️ The Bottom Line The EU just smashed two delivery giants with historic fines. But let’s not pretend this solves the real issue. This isn’t just about bad actors. It’s about a bad system. Until we reckon with a decade of cheap money chasing fantasy economics in a broken consumer market — this kind of story will keep repeating. 📢 What’s your take? Are these fines a just punishment or a warning sign of deeper dysfunction? Should the EU step back, or double down? Where does the real accountability lie — with founders, investors, regulators... or all of them? 👇 Let’s talk in the comments.