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
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2021
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What an episode we have in store for you today. I'm going to dive straight into it because I'm too |
| 0:03.3 | excited for this one, so I'm thrilled to welcome Tony Shue to the hot seat today. |
| 0:06.7 | Now, Tony is the CEO and co-founder of DoorDash, the company empowering merchants to grow their |
| 0:11.8 | businesses by offering on-demand delivery, data-driven insights and better in-store efficiency. |
| 0:16.8 | And prior to their IPO in December 2020, Tony raised funding for DoorDash from some of the best, |
| 0:21.6 | including Sequoia, Co2, SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins, DST and CRV, to name a few. |
| 0:27.4 | Before co-founding the business in 2013, Tony worked in Product at Square. |
| 0:31.5 | He also led special projects for the CEO and CFO at eBay and began his career at McKinsey and |
| 0:37.0 | company. CEO and CFO at eBay and began his career at McKinsey and Company. |
| 0:41.7 | I'd also want to say a huge thank you though to Pesman at Pair, Thomas at Cotoo, Alfred at Sequoia, Sari at CRV. |
| 0:43.3 | This schedule was a complete team effort, so I really do so appreciate all your help there. |
| 0:47.3 | But before we move into the show today, Mercury is building full-stack banking for startups, |
| 0:52.0 | applying under 10 minutes from anywhere for FDIC-insured bank accounts, physical and |
| 0:57.0 | virtual debit cards, domestic and international wires, in integrations with gusto, |
| 1:01.9 | stripe, quickbooks, plaid, and basically every other tool your startup uses. |
| 1:06.1 | They also offer unusual features like APISS, custom team management, and their newly launched Mercury Treasury, |
| 1:12.4 | a cash management product for high-growth startups. And they'll even help you build your startup with |
| 1:17.3 | Mercury Rays, a program to connect you to Silicon Valley's top investors. Head to Mercury.com |
| 1:22.9 | forward slash sign up to apply. And speaking of full stat banking there banking there with Mercury, I have to say I just love |
| 1:28.1 | using the AngelList fund admin platform to manage my investments. The team and platform with |
| 1:33.1 | AngelList takes care of all my back office needs so that I can really focus on working with |
| 1:37.4 | great founders. Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups using |
... |
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