Nothing brings people together quite like good food, and DoorDash delivers food right to your door, in a dash!

Not to sound like their unpaid marketing, but for most of human existence, being only a few clicks away from having anything you crave delivered straight to your doorstep - was a dream too good to have. It majorly eases the food-delivery process for both consumers and business owners and changes the game. But how did they get started?

Four young people discussed easing the process of food delivery. They may not have known it at the time, but only a few years later, their project would become the most popular food delivery platform. DoorDash not only helps their consumers meet their needs but also aids businesses as well, all while empowering local economies in the process.

All of this, however, started with nothing more than a single idea. If you’re interested in knowing more about how the idea turned into reality, continue reading about DoorDash.

The People Behind DoorDash

At five years old, a boy by the name of Xu Xun moved from Nanjing, China to Champaign, Illinois along with his family. He would later change that name to Tony Xu as everyone knows him today.

From a very young age, Tony Xu’s parents had instilled in him a habit of hard work and ambition. His mother was a doctor in China, however, upon moving to the United States, she had to acquire a US medical degree to continue the same line of work. She took on multiple different jobs while studying to attain her degree, one of which happened to be at a Chinese restaurant.

Tony’s father was a professor in China, and after moving to America, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Tony graduated with High Honors at UC Berkeley, getting a degree in industrial engineering and operations research. In 2011, the young man enrolled at Stanford University to get his Master of Business Administration degree.

This just so happened to be the same time Evan Moore, who had previously obtained a BFA in Audio Engineering from NYU in 2007, also enrolled in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. This is where the two of them met, not only each other but the other two co-founders as well.

Andy Fang was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended The Harker School. Stanley Tang grew up in Hong Kong where he attended King George V School. In 2010, they both started working on getting their bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science from the University of Stanford.

Something’s Brewing!

As young university students, no one had the opportunity for extensive job experience. However, they were all dedicated and hard-working and still kept as busy as they could have been.

Andy and Stanley had both interned at Facebook as software developers.

In 2007, Tony worked as a business analyst for McKinsey & Company. After nearly two years with the company, he left and spent some time working as a corporate strategy consultant for eBay and PayPal. He interned at Square, Inc. as a product editor for 3 months in 2012, which was his last job before becoming CEO of DoorDash.

Evan was on the founding team of Vevo before his involvement in DoorDash. Even though he left the company after only a year and five months, his experience helped build the project from the ground up. Evan was the one to make DoorDash’s first delivery. He is now a partner at Kolsha ventures, one of DoorDash’s investor firms.

Cooking up a Storm

In 2012, the four Stanford students - Tony Xu, Evan Moore, Stanley Tang, and Andy Fang came together intending to develop software to help local business owners. They quickly discovered a need in the food-delivery sector and would then go on to establish DoorDash Inc. in 2013, in San Francisco.

In 2012, Tony Xu and Evan Moore were interviewing business owners to help offer technological solutions to any services they may struggle with. A trend soon became obvious of restaurants struggling to provide quick food delivery to their customers. So they brought on classmates Andy and Stanley and got to work.

Initially, they were merely setting out to test the waters and gauge consumer interest, launching the Palo Alto Delivery website which included contact numbers and menus of local restaurants. The first orders were even delivered by the four students. This time, doing delivery work themselves acquainted them with the details of the business they were building.

The four founders applied to startup accelerator Y Combinator 6 months after launching PaloAltoDelivery.com. They had not yet developed an app, and only had around 200 orders under their belt. Partly because of this, their pitch was met with a certain amount of skepticism from investors, however, they managed to get accepted to the YC program and raise a seed round that would help them further grow. The company was incorporated as DoorDash in June 2013.

In 2016, a new competition to DoorDash came onto the scene. And this was coming from very serious competitors. Both Amazon and Uber started doing food delivery. This made it riskier to invest in DoorDash, right at a time when the company was raising a Series C funding. However, by now the four young men had shown themselves to be extremely dedicated and determined, and unlike these new competitors, they had been fully invested in this venture for years. Thus they garnered the support of investors such as YC Continuity and managed to successfully raise funds.

By 2019, DoorDash was the most successful food delivery service in the US, based on consumer spendings. In 2020, the company was the fastest-growing and largest food delivery service in the United States, owning a 56% market share.

Getting IPO-Serious

In the summer of 2013, Tony, Evan, Andy, and Stanley got accepted to the 3-month long program at Y Combinator and received $120,000 in seed money for a 7% stake. YC and its managing partner, Paul Buchheit, remained involved in DoorDash’s evolution throughout the years, even after the program ended. DoorDash raised money for its Series A and C through the YC Continuity Fund.

DoorDash has since gone on to raise over $2.5B in funding over 12 rounds.

On December 9, 2020, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. Their stock opened with $102.00 and they raised $3.37 billion. Their IPO elevated the three remaining founders - Xu, Fang, and Tang - to billionaires.

Throughout the years, DoorDash has acquired five organizations, like Rickshaw in 2017, lvl5 in 2019, Caviar in 2019, Scotty Labs in 2019, and Chowbotics in 2021.

DoorDash, Today

DoorDash’s headquarters are located in San Francisco, California as they have been from the very beginning. Now the company hasn’t only expanded past the SF area, but past the entirety of the U.S., while also operating in Australia and Canada.

In 2018, project DASH launched. It was meant as a way to empower community organizations to increase access in their communities.

While the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, DoorDash announced its efforts to help its employees and customers stay safe by providing drivers with free gloves and bottles of sanitizer. The company also changed the default drop-off option to contactless delivery.

Following the Covid lockdown, DASH was expanded to meet the need for the last-mile provision of food and supplies to different vulnerable groups.

It’s clear to see that DoorDash never strayed from its original idea and mission. It is achieving everything and more than what it set out to do. Businesses are given growth opportunities, customers are served in great times, and new jobs for deliverers, or “Dashers”, are being opened. In fact, as of 2020, DoorDash employed 3,886 people.

Whatever DoorDash sets off to do next it’s sure to be an exciting venture, and the devoted team behind the organization will be sure to make it a splendid success!