Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary summed up the perils of being an internet pioneer recently when he described the budget airline’s move into online hotel bookings. “We don’t want to be the innovator or the explorer. They f****** starve or get shot by the Indians. We want to be the settlers.”
Just Eat, the pioneer in online takeaway ordering, has so far managed to avoid either fate, instead getting nicely plump by signing up curry houses and chippies in droves to its commission-based system.
Since floating in 2014, its shares are up handsomely, giving it a valuation of close to £4bn and making it worth about 33 times this year’s projected earnings and about 47 times last year’s — rich by any standards, surpassing even the