By Tony Xu, DoorDash Co-Founder and CEO
On June 21 DoorDash turned two years old, and just last week we celebrated this milestone with a party at our local park in Palo Alto.
What a difference a year makes. One year ago, DoorDash served one major market across four cities. Today, we are live in 15 major metropolitan areas, covering more than 200 cities in the US. And by the end of the year, we expect to serve more than 20 major geographies.
To help fulfill our motto of “delightful delivery,” over the past year we’ve improved our products on iOS and on the web while expanding to Android, we redesigned our logo, and we signed our first national partnership with Taco Bell. On top of that, we’ve built dozens of products on the backend to automate and scale our complex logistics system and maintain quality as we grow across the country. Last but not least, as a company we also raised our Series B and welcomed John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins to our Board.
We wouldn’t have been able to come this far without our great customers, loyal merchants, and fantastic dashers. Every day, we are proud to serve you and are thankful for your dedication and partnership with DoorDash in helping empower our local economies by making last mile delivery possible.
We also would not have been able to grow and accomplish so much without the incredible team here at DoorDash. When I look back over the past two years, what I am most proud of is this collection of people we work with and the growth that each teammate has shown. At DoorDash, we are solving a problem that requires both technological invention and operational execution. These challenges truly represent a marriage between a math problem and a human problem. So while some Silicon Valley companies are known to be recognized as “design” companies, or “engineering” companies, or “sales” companies, at DoorDash, we’ve built a phenomenal “full stack” team. Our engineers are schooled in math and data science and have trained at places like Google, Facebook, Stanford and Cal. Our business leads have started their own businesses, sold companies, led political campaigns and won Division I collegiate championships. And our local teams consist of former founders, recipients of the Purple Heart, and US Olympians.
Because of how small we are, we put our teams in extraordinarily high stakes situations. As a data scientist or someone passionate about machine learning, you might be asked to work on inventing an algorithm that operations research department scholars have only theorized but never solved in practice. As a business generalist, your first week might require you to launch a new market, determine how pricing ought to work across tens of thousands of merchants, or help to build a new business line. Many times, it’s our “teams of one” that have performed each of these roles.
At DoorDash, things move quickly, and we sometimes forget to take the time to reflect. Building a world class technology company to enable last mile delivery for local merchants is a humbling experience. The mission of building an on-demand marketplace, with its remarkable set of opportunities and complexities, always makes working here feel like Day 1. Join us on the mission!