DoorDash – Company Profile

DoorDash is primarily an online food delivery platform that commenced operations in 2013. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Apart from serving customers in its home country, DoorDash has also expanded operations to countries such as Canada, Japan, Germany and Australia. Other than food, the company also allows users to place orders from grocery stores, pet stores, and other shops.

The idea is to get anything people need delivered at their doorstep in the easiest manner and in the shortest time possible. The company’s business model has also allowed people to find new ways to earn a living. In recent times, DoorDash has also been instrumental in providing last-mile logistics support to local businesses.

History

The idea for DoorDash came to founders when they were trying to use technology to sort out problems being faced by small business owners. One major problem noticed was that small business owners often faced problems with delivering goods to customers. Managing the shop and taking care of deliveries at the same time was significantly challenging. This was when the founders decided to find a solution that can help small business owners with their deliveries.

DoorDash initially started as a pilot project, delivering food across Stanford campus. With good response, the platform was launched on a commercial scale. As of now, DoorDash is the biggest food delivery platform in United States. It has around 57% market share in food delivery sales. The company has more than 450k merchants on its platform and serves around 20 million customers.

Funding

DoorDash has received investments worth $2.5 billion via 12 rounds of funding. The company had launched its IPO in 2020, which added $3.4 billion. Some of the key investors in DoorDash include Y Combinator, SV Angel, Khosla Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, GIC, Sequoia Capital, and SoftBank Group.

Acquisitions

DoorDash has made six acquisitions till date. The first was of Rickshaw in 2017. Rickshaw was a local delivery platform. In 2019, the company made three acquisitions. It included a tech company named lvl5, a food delivery platform named Caviar and a tele-operations company named Scotty Labs. In February 2021, DoorDash acquired Chowbotics, an industrial automation company. Most recent acquisition was that of Wolt in November 2021. Wolt is a food delivery company.

Competitors

DoorDash competes with other delivery platforms such as UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates, Deliveroo, and Instacart.

About the founders

DoorDash was founded by Tony Xu, Evan Moore, Andy Fang and Stanley Tang. All four had studied at Stanford University. Tony Xu currently serves as the CEO of DoorDash. Earlier, he had worked with companies such as McKinsey, eBay, PayPal, Square, and Matrix Partners. Co-founder Andy Fang currently serves as the CTO of DoorDash. He had earlier worked at Facebook.

Co-founder Stanley Tang currently works as Chief Product Officer at DoorDash. He had earlier worked at Facebook. Co-founder Evan Moore had worked with DoorDash as COO till June 2014. He is currently a partner at Khosla Ventures.