Will Shu knocked on the front door, sweaty from his cross-London bike ride but ready to hand the food order to another hungry customer. Back in 2013, Deliveroo was just a fledgling start-up and Shu, its co-founder, was “doing every job in the company”.

When the door opened, Shu recognised the customer as a colleague from when he worked at a hedge fund. “Will, are you OK?” he was asked. “He just thought I went nuts,” Shu later recalled.

Shu was still delivering occasional orders until a few weeks ago, when preparations began for Deliveroo’s initial public offering. Although the food delivery company is now valued at more than ￡5bn, making him a multimillionaire, the US-born entrepreneur insists most customers don’t know “who I am”. In the City, however, Deliveroo will long be remembered for this week’s debacle of London’s biggest-ever tech IPO.