Tony Xu

Co-Founder and CEO, DoorDash · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@t_xu ↗LinkedIn ↗doordash.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Tony Xu co-founded DoorDash in 2013, growing the local commerce and delivery startup from a Stanford project and Y Combinator batch through its major December 2020 IPO. As CEO, he led the company to become the dominant on-demand food delivery platform in the United States while expanding into broader retail logistics.

13statements → 5claims → 1claims resolved → 3.77/5average certainty → 1.92/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 75said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 6 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Tony argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

DoorDash executives still perform deliveries and take customer support calls

“It's why in the earliest days, even to this day, all of the leaders at the company try to do all of the jobs in the early days. And actually, even to this day, that means doing deliveries. That means taking customer service calls. That means making menus for m…”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 9:50 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

How they sound: speaking style how? →

240 words/min while actually speaking · 1.8 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Tony Xu: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 26 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 5,602 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Tony Xu is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 2/10

pushed back at the host 1/10

setup questions received 70%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 16:42“When you hire someone, and it's a stretch VP, and then it dawns on you that it might be a stretch too far. How long do you give them to prove out whether it is a stretch too far? O…” ▶ 7:30“How do you think about ensuring they have that same work ethic and ambition when brought up in very different circumstances?” ▶ 25:47“Was there ever a moment when you were like, ah, culture's not where it ought to be, or where I'd like it to be? What was that moment, and what did you do to turn it around?”

What they said13 What others said75 Episodes1

Everything Tony Xu said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Disclosure

DoorDash tested job candidates by having them acquire 100 customers for $20

“We would ask candidates to acquire a hundred new customers in eight hours with 20 dollars. And that was the entire interview.”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 21:42 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Insight

Tony Xu: Onboard new executives with embarrassingly small initial scopes

“But I think when the person is in the door, in order to set them up for success, you probably want to start small because of the information asymmetry of how your organization works versus how they may think your organization works is very, very large. It's al…”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 24:40 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Assertion Supported

DoorDash executives still perform deliveries and take customer support calls

Insight

Tony Xu says the best recruiters only succeed 70% of the time

“If you're the Michael Jordan of recruiting, you're probably going to be right, 65 to 70% of the time, and this is coming from someone who's hired tens of thousands of people”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 21:02 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Many DoorDash leaders have zero direct reports

“In fact, when I think about even people at DoorDash, there are many leaders at the company that have zero direct reports, but have lots of followers because of their influence and because of how they show up and how they show their work.”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 9:29 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Insight

Tony Xu says scope reduction decreases complexity when solving hard problems

“The hard part is you may not be right in defining the problem at each stage or in between each mile marker, and so when you reduce the scope, you're actually reducing the complexity and the variance of outcomes, and that way, hopefully, you have a better chanc…”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 15:24 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Insight

High-potential hires need multiple role trials to find their superpower

“But especially with folks who have maybe more talent or hustle than experience, you may not know what that superpower is. They may not know what that superpower is. And so you may have to trial a couple of different assignments before you can kind of lock on t…”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 17:30 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Insight

External executives must obviously accelerate internal talent's careers to succeed

“I think the only success criteria here I've seen is you have to hire someone excellent, where it's so obvious for the person on the inside that this person on the outside can really help their careers and really grow them.”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 23:24 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Insight

Corporate culture should iterate continuously like a software product

“I mean, just like your product, you know, I think an organization would be embarrassed if their product looked the same a year later versus today. Why is that not true for your culture? You know, maybe it changes more slowly because, you know, you're talking a…”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 26:01 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Disclosure

DoorDash spent six years striving for decision-maker diversity parity

“We're almost there where the representation at the company and the representation of the decision makers are even, but we're, I mean, 2015, 20, 20, 21, so six years out of our eight years, we've been working on it. 75% of our lifetime history, and we're still …”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 28:41 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Assertion Not checkable as stated

DoorDash originated from a store manager turning down hundreds of orders

“If there was one, it really happened inside of a local macaroon store in Palo Alto where the founding team met a store manager who had to turn down hundreds of deliveries. She literally showed us a notebook with payment information of customers and how she had…”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 3:09 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Bill Walsh's book defined DoorDash's culture of chasing excellence

“The one that has quite a lot of influence on the building of DoorDash is The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh, and just this notion of trying to chase excellence as opposed to the scoreboard. That has been, I think, the defining history of the company …”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 31:57 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Tony Xu's mother worked three jobs daily for 12 years post-immigration

“My parents' journey into this country, it kind of is that classic immigrant story where dad was getting his graduate degree, mom was putting food on the table because we had a couple hundred bucks in the bank, and so she worked three jobs a day for 12 years to…”

Tony Xu Jun 7, 2021 ▶ 4:43 20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition

The other half of the tape: Tony Xu's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 69 times in 17 episodes on 20VC. 6 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Alfred Lin 36 Alexis Ohanian 6 Harry Stebbings 4 Gokul Rajaram 4 Peter Singlehurst 3 Dominik Richter 3 Jeff Jordan 2 Andrew Dudum 2

Statements about Tony Xu, by other people (6)

Opinion

Rajaram ranks Page, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and Xu as top CEOs

“I would say the best technical CEO, Larry Page, the best growth-centric CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, The best design-centric CEO, Jack Dorsey, and the best physical world operational CEO, the most likely to be Jeff Bezos next, Tony Xu.”

Gokul Rajaram Mar 16, 2026 ▶ 1:14:03 Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Singlehurst: Founder zeal matters more in growth investing than competitive analysis

“The thing that I should have placed a much greater weight on. Was the founder of DoorDash and, you know, why he'd started the business and the level of commitment that he had to these small businesses that he was wanting to help and kind of bring online and he…”

Peter Singlehurst Jul 15, 2022 ▶ 46:24 Peter Singlehurst: The Most Powerful Investor You've Never Heard of | 20VC #907 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Jeff Jordan passed on early DoorDash investment over defensibility concerns

“The biggest miss I think was I had an opportunity to do DoorDash early and I loved Tony as a founder. I had the theory, a thesis on the food delivery market that you shouldn't, there's no defensible barrier to entry”

Jeff Jordan Jan 16, 2023 ▶ 51:24 a16z GP Jeff Jordan: The Ultimate Guide to Two-Sided Marketplaces | 20VC #966 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Supported

DoorDash Cut Over $100 Million in Restaurant Commissions During COVID-19

“He slashed commissions for a period of time that totaled over a hundred million dollars during that time.”

Alfred Lin Jan 27, 2021 ▶ 37:10 20VC: The Memo: Sequoia's Alfred Lin on Why Chasing GMV Leads To Bad Behaviours, How To Approach Competition and Capital Efficiency & The Core Importance of Understanding the Difference Between Input and Output Metrics

Assertion Supported

Tony Xu's DoorDash Seed Pitch Was the 'FedEx of Local'

“Tony's whole notion was not just food delivery, right? He wanted to build the FedEx, his initial pitch was the FedEx of local, and he wanted to deliver almost everything, but he was going to start out in food, because if you can deliver a pizza before it gets …”

Alfred Lin Jan 27, 2021 ▶ 10:19 20VC: The Memo: Sequoia's Alfred Lin on Why Chasing GMV Leads To Bad Behaviours, How To Approach Competition and Capital Efficiency & The Core Importance of Understanding the Difference Between Input and Output Metrics

Assertion Not checkable as stated

DoorDash Received Five Term Sheets During Its Series A Raise

“He had a fairly easy series A raise in my opinion, because he had five term sheets and we were competing with five term sheets and I had a jump on the competition, but it happened fairly quickly.”

Alfred Lin Jan 27, 2021 ▶ 34:13 20VC: The Memo: Sequoia's Alfred Lin on Why Chasing GMV Leads To Bad Behaviours, How To Approach Competition and Capital Efficiency & The Core Importance of Understanding the Difference Between Input and Output Metrics