- DoorDash enables every restaurant to deliver food to customers in under 45 minutes
- Services like Seamless or Grubhub don't work in areas where restaurants don't deliver
- DoorDash manages both its own logistics and partners with the merchants, offering the best performance at the same cost
- DoorDash has achieved 44-minute delivery times in the spread-out suburb of Palo Alto, growing weekly orders by over 30% week over week
- DoorDash's driver network and logistic software allows for expansion beyond food delivery to manage local deliveries on demand.

In August 2013, Tony Xu, CEO and co-founder at DoorDash, presented to a room full of investors at YC S13 Demo Day.

Hi, we're DoorDash and we enable every restaurant to deliver.

For customers, we offer restaurant food delivery in under 45 minutes.

And for restaurant owners, we provide our own drivers and we manage the logistics of delivery.

Now, you might think that food delivery is a solved problem, but if you live in Menlo Park or Palo Alto, you know that's not true.

Outside of pizza joints, just about no restaurant in this area delivers.

Therefore, services like Seamless or Grubhub, which merely aggregate menus but don't actually deliver, don't work.

In fact, that means the market is underserved because over 70% of the United States live in areas where restaurants don't deliver.

Now, there are courier services who are sending people to place takeout orders on your behalf, but because they don't partner with the merchants, they are slower and structurally more expensive.

We're the only company in this space that manages both our own logistics and partners with the merchants.

We figured out the model to make consumer deliveries work.

Because we control the entire experience of delivery, we offer the best performance at the same cost.

When an order is made in our system, it gets placed immediately at an iPad installed at the restaurant.

We've also built logistics software to make it dead simple for any driver to onboard into our network.

In over 3,500 deliveries, we've averaged 44-minute delivery times between when you place your order and when you receive your food, better than our peers.

But unlike our peers who operate in the cities, we did this in the suburb of Palo Alto, an area that's much more spread out and more difficult.

Because of our great service, we've grown our weekly orders by over 30% week over week, and we've already generated over $1.5 million in annualized sales for our restaurants.

We figured out how to make consumer deliveries work.

But what's more, our driver network and logistic software enables us to even go beyond food.

If you were building the FedEx of today to manage local deliveries, deliveries wouldn't happen overnight or even same day.

And that's what we're building at DoorDash.

If you're interested in hearing more, please come find us afterwards.


Speaker 0: Hi, we're DoorDash and we enable every restaurant to deliver. For customers, we offer restaurant food delivery in under 45 minutes. And for restaurant owners, we provide our own drivers and we manage the logistics of delivery. Now, you might think that food delivery is a solved problem, but if you live in Menlo Park or Palo Alto, you know that's not true. Outside of pizza joints, just about no restaurant in this area delivers.

Therefore, services like Seamless or Grubhub, which merely aggregate menus but don't actually deliver, don't work. In fact, that means the market is underserved because over 70% of the United States live in areas where restaurants don't deliver. Now, there are courier services who are sending people to place takeout orders on your behalf, but because they don't partner with the merchants, they are slower and structurally more expensive. We're the only company in this space that manages both our own logistics and partners with the merchants. We figured out the model to make consumer deliveries work.

Because we control the entire experience of delivery, we offer the best performance at the same cost. When an order is made in our system, it gets placed immediately at an iPad installed at the restaurant. We've also built logistics software to make it dead simple for any driver to onboard into our network. Our logistics model is winning. In over 3,500 deliveries, we've averaged 44-minute delivery times between when you place your order and when you receive your food, better than our peers.

But unlike our peers who operate in the cities, we did this in the suburb of Palo Alto, an area that's much more spread out and more difficult. Because of our great service, we've grown our weekly orders by over 30% week over week, and we've already generated over $1.5 million in annualized sales for our restaurants. We figured out how to make consumer deliveries work. Our growth proves that. But what's more, our driver network and logistic software enables us to even go beyond food.

If you were building the FedEx of today to manage local deliveries, deliveries wouldn't happen overnight or even same day. They would happen on demand. And that's what we're building at DoorDash. If you're interested in hearing more, please come find us afterwards. Thank you.

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DoorDash at YC Summer 2013 Demo Day