Rafael Ilishayev, co-founder & co-CEO
As co-founder and co-CEO of Gopuff, Rafael Ilishayev sets the vision for the instant commerce company with a focus on logistics, product and technology development. Rafael and co-founder Yakir Gola founded Gopuff in 2013 to make immediate delivery of everyday items a reality. The pair bootstrapped their early business and made the first several thousand deliveries themselves.
Since 2013, Rafael and Yakir have grown the platform’s product assortment to more than 4,000 items in each location, developed and introduced new verticals, including Gopuff Kitchens and its own private label line of snacks and home essentials, launched an advertising platform for partners, and more. Under Rafael and Yakir’s leadership, Gopuff has scaled its operations to serve more than 1,000 cities, leveraging its network of 600 locations to deliver an unmatched assortment of thousands of everyday essentials to customers in the US and Europe.
Rafael was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the Retail & Ecommerce category in 2017, in 2019 received the Drexel University Founders Award and in both 2020 and 2021, Gopuff was named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50. Rafael is closely involved with his alma mater, Drexel University, through the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship and Chabad Serving Drexel University.