Jeremy Prasetyo’s Post

$53 Billion Valuation: The Meteoric Rise of DoorDash Imagine, 10 years ago, DoorDash was merely a spark - a small startup pitching for funding at Y Combinator. Blink, and now it's 2023 and that spark has ignited a wildfire. DoorDash is a publicly traded juggernaut, valued at an astonishing $53 billion. This success story isn't a stroke of luck. It's a testament to the power of the right people, brought together by a shared vision. Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, nor by one person. It's about forming connections, nurturing relationships and crafting a team that shares your passion. That is the secret sauce to transforming a 'what if' into a 'look at this'. Aim high. Surround yourself with people who lift you up, not hold you down. If you join forces with the right people, the impossible becomes the achievable. PS. check out 🔔 for a winning pitch deck the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel https://lnkd.in/ejp-Bhnu

A few weeks ago, Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, spoke at Pear VC, and his story has been on my mind ever since. Some lessons from Tony's journey: 1️⃣ Deep customer insight wins. Tony's mom worked at a restaurant, so he saw firsthand the challenges of small businesses. Before launching their MVP, Tony and his co-founders met with over 100 restaurants in Palo Alto and discovered that most restaurants received delivery inquiries, but less than 5% could fulfill them. With over 1M restaurants in the U.S., they saw a clear opportunity to expand the market. DoorDash has transformed that insight into a business now valued at $73B. 2️⃣ Early hustle helps. In DoorDash’s early days in 2013, Tony and his co-founders personally delivered orders and printed flyers using Stanford’s printers to save on costs. Fun fact: the company’s first name was "Palo Alto Delivery." 3️⃣ Some of the biggest outcomes aren't obvious. Much like Airbnb, DoorDash was initially underestimated — it wasn't ranked in the top half of its YC batch. Thankfully, Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson saw what others didn’t and led the seed round in 2013. But the road wasn’t smooth: from 2016-2018, DoorDash struggled to raise funding, and cash nearly ran out. Mar recalls a phone call with Tony in 2017 and thinking "I don't envy his job." It wasn’t until SoftBank’s Series C investment in 2018 that survival felt secure. 4️⃣ Choose optimism—and have a plan. Despite years of skepticism, Tony and his team focused relentlessly on over-delivering for customers, leveraging insights from their hands-on market research. 5️⃣ Retention is key. DoorDash's persistence wasn’t just about grit—it was backed by data. Drivers and customers kept returning, and the team successfully cracked markets their competitors couldn’t. Thank you, Tony Xu, for sharing your story with the next generation of founders. DoorDash's story is a masterclass in turning scrappy beginnings into enduring impact. If you’re hungry for more founder lessons like these, subscribe to Pear VC’s newsletter for updates on our speaker series. Yes, we deliver 😊

You're a lunatic founder and you desperately want to hit your 2024 plan. Unfortunately, nothing's working, everything's a mess, and you're off by miles. Typically the issue isn't one of talent or execution, but one of organization. That early startup plans are often simply the sum total of a founder's direct, sometimes-incongruent marching orders to each of their siloed VPs, rather than a blueprint for how to organize, problem solve, execute, and ultimately succeed, together. The solution - at least at DoorDash - was the idea of ops-led 'pods'; single cross-functional units, with a single DRI, and a single business objective. These structures ensured there was clarity on who was accountable for a plan's success, who had final decision making authority on resource allocation, how each function was expected to contribute to hitting goal, and how the team was expected to collaborate, to maximize its odds of success. So, here we go with part 3 of a very-likely 3-part series on the DoorDash Operating System: "Pods". Link in comments!

🔥 From $7 billion to $650 million in just 3 years? Talk about a fire sale! 🔥 Grubhub's rollercoaster ride continues as Wonder scoops it up for a fraction of its 2021 price tag. This deal screams of the volatile nature of the food delivery market and the challenges of scaling in a crowded space. As a business strategist, I can't help but see the red flags: ⏺️ Rapid value depreciation 📉 ⏺️ Struggle to maintain market share 🥊 ⏺️ Potential misalignment of vision and execution 🎯 Wonder's ambitious expansion plans might benefit from GrubHub's established network, but they're inheriting a business that's lost significant ground to competitors. For founders, this serves as a stark reminder that I have been saying for years: ⏺️ Sustainable growth trumps rapid expansion ⏺️ Cash flow is king 👑 ⏺️ Adaptability in a changing market is crucial P.S. What lessons do you think startups can learn from GrubHub's journey? 🤔 ♻️ Repost if you enjoy commenting. #BusinessStrategy #StartupGrowth #CashFlowManagement #MarketTrends #GrubHub #FoodDeliveryIndustry

How DoorDash Grew From a College Project to $70B+ DoorDash started in 2013 with four Stanford students. The company initially launched as Palo Alto Delivery. They wanted to help small restaurants handle deliveries. Their MVP was a simple landing page with a phone number and a few PDF menus. They got good tractions within the first month of launching in Palo Alto. After they applied to Y Combinator got the funding and mentorship. The company soon expanded beyond Palo Alto. They rebranded as DoorDash and focused on food delivery. In 2020, DoorDash went public with a $72 billion valuation. Today, the company is valued at over $70 billion. It generates more than $10 billion in annual revenue. DoorDash now offers grocery and retail delivery alongside food. 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆-𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀: → Start with a simple MVP that solves a real problem. → Focus on building strong local traction and validate your idea with real users before scaling up. → Be ready to pivot—rebranding helped DoorDash grow even more. What’s one takeaway you can apply to your own journey? ------- ♻️ If this resonates, share to inspire your network. 📍 Follow me → (Gracie) Tin Van for more. If you enjoyed this content, you might like my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gWVehGtr I have 30+ free startup resources for you.

Stanley Tang shares three lessons from the founding story of DoorDash Stanley Tang, Tony Xu, and Andy Fang founded DoorDash while they were students at Stanford. In today’s clip, Stanley tells the founding story of DoorDash and the three startup lessons he learned from this time. #1 Test your hypothesis During his junior year at Stanford, Stanley wanted to build technology for small business owners so he sat down with the owner of a macaroon store in Palo Alto to learn about her problems. The owner took out a large booklet with pages of delivery orders that she had to turn down because she couldn’t fulfill them. This seemed like an interesting problem to the DoorDash founders so they spent the next few weeks talking to another 150-200 small businesses who also didn’t have a good solution for delivery. This led the founders to wonder: “Delivery is such an obvious thing. Why hasn’t anyone solved this before? We must be missing something. Maybe people have tried this in the past but failed because there wasn’t consumer demand. So we thought, okay, how can we test this hypothesis?” They decided to create a simple experiment and spent an afternoon putting together a quick landing page with some PDF menus of local restaurants in Palo Alto with their personal cell phone number at the bottom. They called the company Palo Alto Delivery and weren’t expecting much: “We weren’t really expecting anything. We just launched it, and all we wanted to see was would we get phone calls from this? If we got enough phone calls then maybe this delivery idea was something worth pursuing.” Later that day, the founders received a call from their first customer. They picked up the Thai food order and delivered it themselves. The next day they got two phone calls. Then five the day after that. Then seven. Then ten. “Soon we started gaining traction on campus with Palo Alto Delivery, which was pretty crazy because it was just a landing page, you had to look up PDF menus to place your order, and then you had to call in… That’s kind of when we knew we were onto something.” #2 Launch fast As Stanley explains: “I think another key point to remember is that we launched this in about an hour. We didn’t have any drivers. We didn’t have any algorithms. We didn’t spend six months building a fancy dispatch system… At the beginning, it’s all about testing your idea, trying to get this thing off the ground, and figuring out whether this was something people even wanted.” Read the full newsletter at startuparchive.org Video source: Y Combinator (2014)

Want to compete with the big dogs? 🐕 Tony Xu, DoorDash founder, drops some 💎: 1. Don't fight on their turf You'll lose. Period. 2. Find your niche • Something they're not incentivized to do • Lower margin areas they avoid • Innovator's dilemma in action 3. Identify your advantage DoorDash's edge? Delivering outside city centers Why? That's where most people actually live 🏘️ 4. Make a calculated bet • Know your market • Understand structural differences • Predict where the market's heading 5. Move fast. Like, really fast ⚡ • As a startup, focus is your superpower • You've got one product. Period. • No complex "capital allocation" decisions 6. Embrace your startup simplicity Forget what business schools teach about CEO jobs Your mission? Build. That. One. Product. Remember: Being correct on your bet is crucial. DoorDash's suburban focus? It paid off big time. But here's the kicker: They didn't know for sure. They just moved fast and stayed focused. What's your startup's unique angle? How are you outmaneuvering the incumbents? — #VenchaVideosforFounders | Video #29 Find us at Vencha 💛 And check out my Book "The Go To Market Handbook for SaaS Leaders" 🌟

1. Test your hypothesis. 2. Launch fast. 3. Do things that don't scale. Just do these 3 things if you want to launch a startup. They sound simple. But they are hard to do. Most startups I have seen fail at Step #3. Watch the video to find out what are the things the DoorDash founders did which did not scale and why they ended up learning a ton. #startup #startuplaunch #startupgrind

Lessons for success here? 1️⃣ Make the right bet. You have to believe you've found an area where you can be advantaged. Understand the market and back yourself. 2️⃣ There probably isn't any low-hanging fruit any more. You can't compete with the incumbent on their territory (i.e. don't build 'me-too' businesses). It's the innovator's dilemma. You might have to go for lower margin to get scale. 3️⃣ Know where the market is, know it well, and know why it might be difficult for a competitor to serve it. Know the solution to that. 4️⃣ Focus (the verb). You only have one product to focus on. You're so advantaged over larger companies. Capital allocation should be super-easy. 5️⃣ Be super-fast. Whether it's outpacing the competition, whether it's land-grab, grab the territory. You can't claim you're 'the only' if you're not 'the only'. I am not commenting on DoorDash as a specific business here. I don't know them well enough. What do you think to the principles? #AngelThink #angelinvesting #angelinvestors #startups #entrepreneurs