The Exchanges

Q And you also met your co-founders, um, uh, partially through Stanford, was it?

A Yeah, the GSB was, was, was an interesting, you know, Time for me. I mean, I, um, it, I, I applied on the recommendation of, uh, one of my mentors at, um, at eBay at the time, who was the CEO, John Donahoe at the time. And, um, he thought that it'd be great for my personal development. So that was really, that was kind of the thesis. Um, and, and so I didn't go into Stanford, in other words, trying to think about starting a company or, or even looking for co-founders. That was very fortuitous. Um, meeting Andy Stanley and Evan, Um, Evan turned out to be a roommate, and, and, and that was just purely from a social circumstance. Andy and Stanley were roommates at the undergrad. We happened to meet. We worked on different projects together. It wasn't intended to necessarily over time become a company or anything like this, but that's really how we got started.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, the GSB was, was, was an interesting, you know, Time for me.”

Q And then what was that demo day experience like?

A Well, we felt great internally as a team where we answered our own questions that those three questions, because, you know, to us, the most important thing was that was this project worth continuing forgetting about, you know, you know, the circumstance of demo day or, or how awesome of an opportunity it was to get in front of investors. Can we prove to ourselves that this is worth continuing? The answer was yes. Demo day, however, was not successful. I don't know exactly where we stacked ranked That day, but we certainly weren't amongst the favorites. Um, and, and it was really tough. I mean, the company almost went out of business because, uh, you know, we didn't, we didn't raise a lot of money from Y Combinator, uh, with the initial grant, and so we were looking for seed financing, and we were, we were a couple weeks away from going to zero. I think at the time, people, um, just weren't sure if this would be a business. Yes, we had great, um, metrics. Yes, we had Positive evidence, you know, to each side of our marketplace in terms of thinking about whether or not they would participate. Um, but it was 10 weeks of data. And so at the end of the day, if you were an investor looking at DoorDash on demo day or anywhere near demo day, it would be a conviction bet. It'd be a conviction bet on the team on that there would be a potential market. You know, I think one of the things …

AI assessment note: “Demo day, however, was not successful. I don't know exactly where we stacked ranked”

Q So driver supply and consumer demand. What was that like, you know, sort of over the 10, 12 weeks?

A Yeah. So the number one thing we were, we were very scared about was whether or not consumers would want this product. And it's because delivery is not a new idea. It's been around since horses. It's been around forever. And, and so, Um, and obviously the US is a very highly capitalistic market. So if something doesn't exist, maybe there's a good reason why it doesn't. And so we wanted to make sure, um, from the get go, whether or not consumers would pay us for the service. So that was one big question. The other was whether or not we knew that restaurants had a need for it. We didn't know if they would pay us. Um, that was a second, you know, pillar. And then the third is whether or not, uh, there would exist drivers who would actually Want access to this? And so early on, uh, we did all the deliveries. One of the best parts of doing all the deliveries besides teaching us what are all of the steps within a delivery is what customers wanted. And our earliest customers tended to be, uh, families with young children. It tended to be the mom who, um, made a majority of the decisions when it came to, to meal prep and food. And so They told us what they wanted. They told us what was important. They told us what restaurants we, that they preferred. Um, and, but the most important thing was that they kept coming back in again without our throwing advertising at them, coupons or discou…

AI assessment note: “our earliest customers tended to be, uh, families with young children”

Q At what point did you decide to apply to YC?

A While we were in school. So we, we, we actually, the first two weeks of the summer batch of Uh, were the last couple weeks of our time at Stanford. So we had a few weeks of overlap or a couple weeks of overlap. I remember very specifically my classmates or some of our classmates, you know, planning their exotic vacations to Europe or other, um, interesting areas for, for the summer. And when they asked me what I would be doing, I said, I'd be delivering hummus for my Honda. It was a very different type of, uh, answer, but Yeah, you know, we had a lot of fun. I mean, the, the, the, the earliest days, all four of us did all the deliveries.

AI assessment note: “While we were in school. So we, we, we actually, the first two weeks”

Q You just continued to grow. You kept, you raised, you know, multiple rounds of funding. Your Series C was actually a down round. What was that like? You know, you're growing the business, raising more money. You know, you're fighting off competitors, you know. How did you manage that, and what was that experience like?

A It was very tough. I mean, because on the one hand, you see all of the internal metrics going in the right direction. You're growing organically. You're growing quite quickly organically. You see that the market is perhaps larger than you expect. These are all the positive signs on one side of the equation. On the other hand, Um, to your point, we're also investing in scale because this is a business where, um, you need enough order volume to make the math work. To get there, you have to invest before you get the demand. And so we needed to raise capital. And there were a couple, there were a few years actually in a row, three years in a row, 2016, 1718, where I continued to struggle to raise capital. And I think this was the part that was quite difficult for us, where you have a company whose product seems to be Moving in the right direction across any metric any way you want to cut the data. On the flip side, you know, I'm receiving hundreds of rejections, um, for investment. I think this was, this was certainly one of the most difficult periods, um, so far that we've had to overcome.

AI assessment note: “It was very tough. I mean, because on the one hand, you see all”

Q So fast forward a little bit. I mean, at the start of COVID delivery demand cratered and then skyrocketed and you cut commissions in half. You ran a TV campaign that advertised your competitors. What gave you Conviction about that. What, you know, what was that period like?

A COVID was a bit of a blur. COVID, 2020 was a bit of a blur. Um, we were actually in 2019 preparing, you know, to go public. Obviously, COVID, um, shelved those plans. But, but, you know, COVID was probably next to 20 13. So the, the, the COVID year, 2020, that is. Next to 20 13 was probably the year where it felt most like DoorDash NYC. You know, it was seven days a week, 10 a.m. to two a.m., all hands on deck, you know, multiple, you know, all company, you know, meetings per day. And sometimes in crises, I actually find that it's a lot easier operating a company because it's very clear what to do. Number one, job number one, keep everyone safe, right? Get tens of millions of units of PPE. Make sure that we can ship no contact delivery or contactless delivery. We ship that product in four or five days. Number two, Got to make sure that everybody gets liquid. Why? Because the average merchant has 17 days of cash on hand. So every hour of cash is very, very important. Same thing for dashers, um, who, who, um, a lot of them are furloughed or laid off, um, because of COVID, and, and so getting them instant liquidity. The third thing was making sure that we could take care of the community, actually, and so we partnered with Dozens of the largest hospital networks, um, from UCSF or Stanford here in, in California to Mount Sinai on the east coast where we wanted to make sure that all…

AI assessment note: “in crises, I actually find that it's a lot easier operating a company”