So exciting! This is actually a surprisingly difficult business because of the need to be so fast and efficient, and there was a lot of skepticism early on as to whether there was actually a viable business in this space. The DoorDash team has done a great job of proving the model and creating a playbook for scaling and expanding the business. They are one of the startups that I most often refer to when advising new YC companies.<p>Also they feed me! (that was one of the key questions I asked during interviews: "Will you deliver to my house?" They answered correctly! :)
I've used DoorDash 3 times in the past few months and they always underpromise and overdeliver. Emails and texts are sent at each stage of the delivery (order, pickup, en-route, driver is 5 mins away), they always beat their estimates and the drivers are very friendly.<p>The logistics for ensuring food arrives hot when you don't have any control over the cooking process and timing is hard, but they always managed to do it. I'm impressed.
I don't get this. How often do people order-in from places that don't deliver? Is this a Bay-area phenomenon? Or is this more of a replacement for the restaurant owner's teenager?
Good luck!<p>Would you mind elaborating on that defensibility claim ("if you look at any of these local businesses, whether they’re Yelp, or Grubhub, or whatever… once they’re built, they’re defensible")?<p>Why wouldn't this be a race to the bottom where "courier as a service" companies will be lowering prices until competition has eroded profits completely?<p>(just to be sure, to clarify: I'm genuinely asking out of curiosity - I'm sure if you have <i>both YC and Sequoia</i> backing you, you have some excellent answers for this question)
Congrats to the team!<p>I respect what you've done so far, but I can't help wondering how investors can base their analysis on an experiment restricted to Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Jose. From what I see, the bulk of orders (in $) are from fellow startups ordering lunch and dinners. Where else is the world (except SF and maybe NYC) do so many companies, in such a small geography, order so much food from restaurants?<p>I'm not saying it's not a good business. I'm wondering if there is really room for growth (a growth big enough to justify the huge series A valuation) outside of very specific geographies.
I've never seen a restaurant post a menu on its website with different prices than what you would find in person, however this is exactly the business model of DoorDash. My question is, why <i>don't</i> restaurants do this? Is it illegal? Out of laziness? A tacit custom? Genuinely curious about this.