When Mr Yum and me&u merged in November 2023, the smart money said it would fail. Two Australian hospitality tech rivals, four years of competition, an all-stock deal with roughly 50/50 split. The playbook said: integration costs kill momentum, customers churn, teams fracture.
Year one looked exactly like the doubters predicted. Heavy losses. Integration expenses everywhere: duplicated systems, customer migration, team alignment. On paper, it was ugly. Kim Teo, now CEO of the combined entity (operating as me&u), was running a Melbourne and Sydney operation processing over $2 billion in annual dining transactions across 6,000+ food brands in ANZ, US, and UK.
The company is now profitable. Target was 2024, they shipped it.
Teo's take: the real risk in mergers is not the balance sheet in year one. It is focus. Can you keep shipping product while integrating platforms? Can you hold culture while restructuring teams? Can you retain customers during the messy middle?
The merger ended direct rivalry in ANZ hospitality SaaS, combining ordering, payments, CRM, loyalty, and upselling tools. Mr Yum co-founder Adrian Osman initiated talks. me&u founder Stevan Premutico moved to non-executive director. me&u chairman Damian Smith chairs the board.
What they prioritised: customer stability during peak seasons (no major changes when venues are slammed), unified product roadmap, and profitability without another funding round. Both companies had raised tens to hundreds of millions prior. Exact revenue remains private.
For sales organisations watching this: post-merger integration is expensive and slow. The first year costs more than the deck promised. Customers get nervous. Teams need clarity on comp, territory, and who owns what. The question is whether leadership can hold the centre while everything else is changing.
Teo's advice to her day-one self (and anyone running through a merger): the hard, unsexy work of integration is what sets you up for the next phase. Profitability does not come from the merger itself. It comes from whether you can execute through the chaos.
No word on current sales team size, recent AE or SDR hires, or CRO/VP Sales roles. The focus has been product and engineering integration, not go-to-market expansion. Worth noting: that is unusual for a company targeting global scale across three markets.