Adamson: Delivery Marketplaces Cannot Scale Virally Without Breaking Unit Operations
Jeff Adamson · He sold SkipTheDishes for $200M—then grew Neo Financial to a $1B valuation. | Jeff Adamson, Co-Fo... · PMF Show · Mar 24, 2025 · at 25:29
Jeff Adamson, co-founder of SkipTheDishes, explains why rapid viral growth is dangerous for three-sided food delivery marketplaces.
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“If all of a sudden you get a ton of orders, like it's gonna overwhelm the delivery network, right? It's gonna, you're not gonna have enough couriers. So you're constantly needing to keep supply and demand perfectly balanced. And anytime they got off, it was so painful because if you have not enough demand, too much too many couriers, all the couriers will quit. And then you had to go out and rehire. Re-onboard more couriers. And then if you have too much demand, not enough couriers, couriers are pretty happy. They're making lots of money, but the customers are furious because their orders aren't arriving and the restaurants get upset and they'll quit.”
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More from Jeff Adamson
DoorDash Offered Canadian Restaurants 0% Commission to Undercut SkipTheDishes
“Once they started focusing on Canada, they would go and offer restaurants to have what we were doing for 25% commission. They would just do for free.”
Adamson: Canadians Pay Over Double for Banking Products Compared to Other Nations
“Right now Canadians are paying over double for the same products and services that you can get in other countries.”
Adamson: Incremental delivery business is high-margin because restaurant overhead is fixed
“When you look at the economics of a restaurant, when you look at the fixed costs, the variable costs, The margin on getting incremental business is very, very high because you're already paying the staff and their overhead.”
SkipTheDishes Maintained 20% Month-Over-Month Growth for Seven Years
“The crazy thing about skip is that when you actually look over the course of the business, like we grew on average over 20% month on month for like. Seven years.”