Insight
Xu: Takeaway generates 3x to 5x higher incremental margins for restaurants
“Rough math, you know, for every dollar of food that if you and I bought inside of a restaurant, you know, from the cost structure, you're gonna have 30% of that in the food and the packaging. You're gonna have 30% of it in the rent. You're gonna have 30% of it…”
Insight
Tony Xu: Ghost kitchens fail without large brand customer acquisition power
“It just turns out it's extraordinarily difficult, however, unless you're a large brand, or, you know you know, a house of brands, someone like DoorDash, to be able to attract enough customers to make that math work.”
Assertion Contradicted
Xu: DoorDash's Dot robot uniquely navigates roads, sidewalks, and bike lanes
“And the sidewalk and the bike lane. And so it's the only vehicle in the world that does that.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Xu: Google's food ordering failed because it couldn't manage post-checkout logistics
“I remember services, you know, Google food ordering launched in, I forget, 2015 or 16, and they allowed you to order delivery, for example from various Google services, you know, Google Maps, Google Search, et cetera, and while on the one hand it was low frict…”
Insight
Xu: Chat interfaces fail in commerce unless they solve the end-to-end job
“It's not obvious to me that it's just a chat interface, that there are, you know, all of these different components that have to be solved. And so I think You know, the way I think about it is, okay, regardless of whatever we ship whether it's on our own you k…”
Assertion Contradicted
Xu: DoorDash is only platform saving drivers $1.40-$1.90 on gas
“And we're the only platform today to take care of Dashers when there is, you know, these increasing gas prices and making sure that, you know, we have their back and that we're actually trying to help them save a dollar 40 to a dollar 90 per gallon for Dashers…”
Assertion Supported
Xu: DoorDash cut COVID commissions 50%, costing over $100M
“Or in COVID, we were the only company to cut commissions by 50%. When we were not yet profitable as a company, that was an expense over a hundred million dollars.”
Assertion Supported
Xu: US food spend flipped from 80% groceries to 60% dining out
“It used to be that in the, you know, these are rough numbers, but in the 19 fifties when the government was measuring this, we would spend in this country, in America, maybe 75 to 80 cents on the dollar on groceries versus restaurants. In present day, you know…”
Assertion Contradicted
Xu: DoorDash's alert system warned NYPD of a Manhattan shooting first
“Within minutes of a Dasher seeing the shooter walk in to the building, you know, we have an alert system that doesn't just alert all Dasher's and consumers and merchants within that vicinity, but also all local law enforcement. And actually we were the first t…”
Assertion Partly supported
Xu: DoorDash struggled to raise capital relative to peers from 2016 to 2018
“In fact, you know, between 2016, 1718, we barely were able to raise a dollar, you know, relative to our peers.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Xu: DoorDash spent 40% of cash on refunds in 2013
“This was a Stanford football game in 2013, and I had trouble raising the seed round. We made the decision to refund everyone that cost us over 40% of the bank account.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tony Xu: DoorDash tanked 80% then doubled in one week during early COVID
“COVID, you know, the first week actually the business, you know, tanked 80%. It tanked massively because everything was shut down. And then, you know, the next week, you know, Everything all of the dining rooms were closed, but the kitchens were open. And so, …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Xu: Eating out in China is as affordable as cooking at home
“Eating out in China is about as affordable as cooking, you know, at home.”
Assertion Partly supported
Xu: Dozens of Chinese cities match or exceed Manhattan's population density
“In China there are many dozens of cities over a million in population, and the population density is even perhaps higher than that of Manhattan.”
Assertion Supported
Xu: US restaurant count grew nearly every year for 60 years
“If you looked in, in, in America, in the last 60 years, I think there's only a couple years where the number of restaurants in the current year Didn't exceed that in the previous year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tony Xu: Restaurant permitting has gotten largely worse on average across the US
“I think in general, kind of similar to building things, they've gotten largely worse on average, right?”
Insight
Xu: Fast-food chains' core IP is process innovation and workforce management
“That's on the, you know, big brand, you know, QSR side where a lot of the innovation, if you will, is in the process innovation, and then also how do you run large groups of people
And have very high and consistent standards of service.
Extremely difficult, an…”
Opinion
Xu: High bar for AR smart glasses to aid delivery navigation
“That the human is pretty good with their eyes, you know, at some of this stuff. So the bar is pretty high, you know, in order to do some of the things you're talking about.”
Insight
Tony Xu: Reservation deposits make sense for high-opportunity-cost restaurants
“I think it makes a ton of sense. The implementation of the idea is what, is what's difficult, right? And you know, restaurants that have very limited seating and very long seatings, you know, the opportunity cost for a cancellation is very high, you know, vers…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Xu: Retail in Europe is far more concentrated than in the US
“Yeah, in the U.K., in Germany, in France, in a lot of European countries actually, this is more the norm than the exception, whereas in the U.S. You have, you know, maybe hundreds of different big brands that, that, that, that are strong in certain regions, bu…”
Assertion Supported
Xu: Restaurants have an average of 17 days cash on hand
“We then, on top of that, spent, you know, millions of dollars buying national TV campaigns to tell people to order, whether it's on us or our competitors because restaurants have on average, 17 days of cash on hand.”
Assertion Supported
Xu: China has over 7M restaurants versus 1M in the US
“China has a lot of restaurants, you know, six, over seven million restaurants, you know, versus what we have here in the U.S. At about a million restaurants in, in comparison, for example.”
Assertion Partly supported
Xu: Big QSRs account for nearly 50% of US restaurant spend
“Some of these large brands, you know the big QSRs that you've heard of which, you know, represents almost 50 cents on the dollar of restaurant spend in, in, in, in a place like the US.”
Assertion Supported
Xu: DoorDash has over 100M annual and tens of millions of monthly customers
“Our product with now, you know, over a hundred million plus annual customers, tens of millions of, ah, monthly customers, they shop at various frequencies”
Tony Xu