DoorDash

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Venturecapital, Ma, Investing, Acquisitions, Startups, Vc, Investment, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2020

⏱️ 178 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Live from the scene of its blockbuster IPO, we recount the crazy, roller coaster journey of this "Palo Alto delivery company". From Sand Hill darling during their Series A and B fundraises to all but left-for-dead during the great unicorn massacre of 2015/16, DoorDash has clawed their way back from the brink and emerged as America's dominant meal delivery service, and its only unit-economic positive standalone logistics player. Is this the dawn of the next great Amazon-like story, or is the company simply benefiting from temporary tailwinds due to the pandemic? As always, we dive DEEP to find out.

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Sponsors:
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Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury

Playbook Themes from this episode are available on our website at https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/doordash

Carve Outs:

David:

Hades on the Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/hades-switch/

Ben:

Watchmen on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/watchmen
Succession on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/succession
Palm Springs: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9484998/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, first of all, is there like some rule that the graphics that you put in your S1
0:05.6	have to be just like painfully low resolution? Welcome to Season 7 episode 7 of acquired the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and
0:26.7	playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert and I'm the co-founder of Pioneer Square Labs, a startup studio and venture capital firm in Seattle.
0:35.0	And I'm David Rosenthal, and I am an angel investor and advisor to startups based in San Francisco.
0:41.0	And we are your hosts.
0:44.2	The year was 2013.
0:46.4	Everyone had just finished cracking their jokes about how every startup is just another photo sharing
0:51.7	app. But the wave of yet another food delivery app is just getting started.
0:52.6	But the wave of yet another food delivery app
0:54.9	was just getting started.
0:56.6	Tony Shoe and his co-founders
0:58.2	were launching Palo Alto delivery.com,
1:01.1	which we all know today as DoorDash.
1:03.7	On this episode, we'll dive into how these Stanford students became one of the very few winners
1:08.6	in the cutthroat food delivery category, how they raised two and a half billion dollars from VCs, the Soft Bank Vision Fund,
1:16.4	and even sovereign wealth funds around the world.
1:19.3	How they went up against incumbents like Grubhub and Seameless, and the even more well-funded startup on a war path for world domination,
1:27.1	Uber. This is the story of insanely fast growth, a company currently tripling year over year, and that's the December 2019 number
1:36.3	before the global pandemic created the ultimate tailwind at their back to IPO at the
1:42.2	greatest possible time in the business's history.
1:45.0	Yeah, they kind of nailed the timing on this one, didn't they?
1:48.0	They did, David.
	...

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