Advice Line with Tony Xu of Doordash
Tony Xu, founder of DoorDash, joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, Tony updates Guy on his latest ventures: expanding into grocery and retail delivery - and taking on international markets.
First, we hear from Ron in Portland, who’s wondering about the right time to expand his product line - from kitchen knives to cutting boards. Then Kathryn in Raleigh, North Carolina asks if it’s time to raise outside money to expand her line of date sweetened dark Chocolate bars. Finally, Yori in Stanford, Connecticut - wants to know the best way to educate customers about the benefits of buying grass raised beef.
Thanks to the founders of Steelport Knife Company, Spring and Mulberry and Route 22 Meats for being a part of our show.
If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to hibt@id.wondery.com or call 1-800-433-1298.
And be sure to listen to Doordash’s founding story, as told by Tony on the show in 2018.
This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. Our audio engineer was Cena Loffredo.
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20VC: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on The Art of Great Leadership Today, Why The Best Give All of the Credit and Take All of the Blame & How DoorDash Have Won The Best Talent Against the Toughest Competition
Tony Xu is the CEO and Co-founder of DoorDash, the company empowering merchants to grow their businesses by offering on-demand delivery, data-driven insights, and better in-store efficiency. Prior to their IPO in December 2020, Tony raised over $2.5Bn for DoorDash from some of the best including Sequoia, Coatue, Softbank, Kleiner Perkins and DST, to name a few. Before co-founding the business in 2013, Tony worked in Product at Square, led special projects for the CEO and CFO at eBay, and began his career at McKinsey and Company.
In Today's Episode with Tony Xu You Will Learn:
1.) How did Tony make his way into the world of startups and what was that founding a-ha moment for Tony with the founding of DoorDash? What were Tony's biggest takeaways from seeing his parents work ethic at such a young age? How did it impact his operating mentality?
2.) Leadership Style: What does great leadership mean to Tony today? In what ways has Tony's leadership style changed over the DoorDash journey? How does Tony assess his own persistence and grit? Through what framework does Tony decide what to delegate vs what to control?
3.) Decision-Making & Risk: How does Tony evaluate his decision-making process today? What does Tony mean when he says, "you have to reduce the scope"? How does Tony think about understanding the interplay of different variants in a decision? Through what framework does Tony assess risk today? How has Tony's approach to risk and decision-making changed over time?
4.) Talent Acquisition: What have been Tony's biggest lessons in acquiring the best talent? What has worked well in the past? In what ways have they not acquired talent they should have acquired? What type of talent worked in the early days? How has that changed? Through what framework does Tony decide between a stretch VP and a stretch too far?
5.) Culture & Diversity: How does Tony think through the breakpoints in the scaling of culture? At what points did Tony feel the DoorDash culture was not what he wanted it to be? How did he react to change it? Through what process has Tony measured the success of DoorDash's diversity efforts? Which initiatives have worked? Are there any that have not?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Tony Xu
Tony's Favourite Book: Score Takes Care Of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Tony Xu - A Human and Math Problem - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 28]
My guest today is Tony Xu, co-founder, and CEO of DoorDash. Tony started DoorDash 7.5 years ago, and today it is one of the largest food delivery and logistics platforms globally, with operations in the US, Canada, Australia. In our conversation, we discuss the initial problem that DoorDash set out to solve, DoorDash’s counterintuitive approach to building their product, and the surprising benefits of capital constraints in DoorDash’s early days. DoorDash’s business model is an equal parts logistics nightmare and a human coordination problem, or as Tony puts it, a human and math problem. After talking to Tony, I feel his personality makes him a great candidate to solve those problems.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
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Show Notes
[00:03:07] - [First question] - The catalytic moment that inspired Tony to build DoorDash
[00:06:33] - Network density and its role in scalability
[00:09:15] - Solving a math and sales problem simultaneously
[00:11:33] - Becoming aware of multiple problem sets for restaurant owners
[00:14:34] - Designing a team to quantify friction and turn it into useable data
[00:16:49] - How to approach difficult problems and compartmentalize them in a practical way
[00:18:38] - Accounting for high-level variance in long-term goals
[00:21:54] - Factoring in time horizons for variance and planning for the future
[00:23:08] - Slowing down an action process to minimize a high-consequence decision
[00:26:48] - Generating demand after completing their software infrastructure
[00:28:15] - Strategic choices between network health and unit economics
[00:30:32] - Why DoorDash struggled to raise financing in their seed-stage
[00:32:23] - Solving a small fraction of a larger logistics problem
[00:35:00] - Differences between local commerce and distribution centers
[00:36:44] - Creating the DashPass subscription service and how premium experiences influence user behavior
[00:38:34] - Advantages and potential diminishing returns in servant leadership
[00:40:41] - His broader philosophy on leadership and how it’s changed over the years
[00:44:55] - Creating an incentive-aligned culture of ownership at scale
[00:47:02] - The most surprising lessons learned about company building
[00:50:38] - Unexpected positive outcomes that may emerge in other areas due to DoorDash’s growth in the coming years
[00:53:44] - Will DoorDash’s presence change behavioral patterns in where people choose to live or start their business?
[00:55:36] - What has him most excited for the future
[00:56:55] - Kindest thing anyone has ever done for him
How I Built Resilience: Live with Tony Xu and Marcia Kilgore
When Tony Xu started DoorDash in 2013, he wanted to help local restaurants stay afloat by introducing them to online delivery. Today, his quest remains the same, now that DoorDash has become an essential business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Marcia Kilgore's footwear brand, FitFlop, is experiencing a downturn in sales as retail stores stay closed. However, Beauty Pie – her direct-to-consumer cosmetics brand – is thriving as the beauty industry goes digital. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating these turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne
Tony Xu, the CEO and co-founder of DoorDash, and Christopher Payne, the COO, talk with Recode's Kara Swisher about how the delivery company's busy 2018 and why it's starting to think about delivering more than food. In this episode: (01:41) Where DoorDash is now and the delivery business; (05:25) Is Amazon a competitor?; (08:07) Xu and Payne's backgrounds; (11:32) Why DoorDash succeeded where Webvan failed; (15:10) Working with big restaurants and why they don't do it themselves; (21:03) How DoorDash makes money; (25:53) The gig economy and the future of work; (30:48) Where the business could go beyond food delivery; (34:09) Why Xu started DoorDash; (36:08) The current startup environment and the image of tech; (39:31) What does it take to be an entrepreneur now?; (43:05) Raising money from SoftBank's Vision Fund; (44:55) The future of DoorDash and the future of retail stores; (50:51) Trends in shopping and the delivery business
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DoorDash: Tony Xu
In 2013, Tony Xu was brainstorming ideas for a business school project when he identified a problem he wanted to solve: food delivery. For most restaurants, it was too costly and inefficient, leaving most of the market to pizza and Chinese. Tony and his partners believed they could use technology to connect customers to drivers, who would deliver meals in every imaginable cuisine. That idea grew into DoorDash, a company that's now delivered over 100 million orders from over 200,000 restaurants across the country. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," we hear from the winner of our 2018 HIBT Summit Pitch Competition: Ashlin Cook. She combined her love for dogs with an entrepreneurial itch to create Winnie Lou: a Colorado business that sells healthy dog treats in independent pet stores and from a food truck.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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