- A group of four individuals with backgrounds in technology and business came together to work on software for small business owners.
- They conducted over a hundred interviews with small business owners and discovered a problem with restaurants in Palo Alto not being able to afford delivery services, despite the demand from consumers.
- They also found that there were delivery drivers with spare time who wanted to earn extra cash.
- They built an initial product called PaloAltoDelivery.com, where customers could place online orders that would be sent to the restaurant and dispatched to drivers efficiently.
- Starting off as delivery drivers themselves, they eventually hired more staff as the business grew.
- In their first month of launch, they gained over 150 paying customers and generated over $10,000 in sales.

In 2013, DoorDash applied to Y Combinator's Summer 2013 batch, and they were accepted. This is their application video.

I'm also a Stanford CS major and I did Platform Engineering at Facebook.

I was on the founding team of Vivo, the music video service.

came together about 6 months ago to work on software for small business owners.

But we didn't have a need at first, so we just went out and talked to all the small business owners we could find.

After over a hundred interviews, we came across a really interesting problem with small business restaurants in an area like this, Palo Alto.

Yeah, so it turns out restaurants in Palo Alto don't deliver even though they really want to, but they can't afford it.

But their consumers are craving for it, but the places that the consumers love just can't deliver.

And we also found out about these delivery drivers who had a ton of spare time, and they all want to earn extra cash during that downtime.

So that's when we built an initial product, PaloAltoDelivery.com, and how it worked is the customer goes to the website and places an online order that gets automatically sent to the restaurant.

And then we as the dispatchers, with some pretty neat routing and badging algorithms were able to send the drivers efficiently to get the orders to the customers at a really fast time.

Yeah, and the 4 of us actually started off as delivery drivers and Over time we hired more as we grew.

And in our first month of launch, with not much marketing, we got over 150 paying customers in the Palo Alto area, which was really awesome.

And from that we generated over $10,000 in sales.


Speaker 0: Hey, I'm Stanley. I'm a Stanford CS major. I did Funding Engineering at Facebook.

Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Andy. I'm also a Stanford CS major and I did Platform Engineering at Facebook.

Speaker 2: I'm Evan. I was on the founding team of Vivo, the music video service.

Speaker 3: And I'm Tony. I was a product editor at Square.

Speaker 1: And the 4 of us

Speaker 2: came together about 6 months ago to work on software for small business owners. But we didn't have a need at first, so we just went out and talked to all the small business owners we could find. After over a hundred interviews, we came across a really interesting problem with small business restaurants in an area like this, Palo Alto.

Speaker 3: Yeah, so it turns out restaurants in Palo Alto don't deliver even though they really want to, but they can't afford it. But their consumers are craving for it, but the places that the consumers love just can't deliver. And we also found out about these delivery drivers who had a ton of spare time, and they all want to earn extra cash during that downtime.

Speaker 1: So that's when we built an initial product, PaloAltoDelivery.com, and how it worked is the customer goes to the website and places an online order that gets automatically sent to the restaurant. And then we as the dispatchers, with some pretty neat routing and badging algorithms were able to send the drivers efficiently to get the orders to the customers at a really fast time.

Speaker 4: Yeah, and the 4 of us actually started off as delivery drivers and Over time we hired more as we grew. And in our first month of launch, with not much marketing, we got over 150 paying customers in the Palo Alto area, which was really awesome. And from that we generated over $10,000 in sales.

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DoorDash's Application Video for YC S13