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There was no shortcut. We had to do everything, fast and well, and double down on what worked. (Later I'll write down how this became a simple growth framework I've used since)
We did everything to grow -- from standing on the street talking up strangers, going to a birthing convention to figure out how to reach new parents, competing on who could hang more door hanger flyers in a day... most of it didn't work but some did.
We worked out of a few houses, and at one point had about 15 people working from a two bedroom apartment. We liked the cozy vibe, especially since we were there all of our waking hours, and some of us slept there.
When one of our first employees arrived for her first day, Tony was sleeping on the floor of the apartment. I tried to quickly deflate and hide the air mattress while he distracted her out front. We wanted to seem like a real company. I'm sure we did not.
I'll stop for now and make a couple points. (there is no climax, sorry, this is just a tiny window into the very beginning)
We would never have come up with this idea in a conference room on a whiteboard. We needed to be with customers trying things out, learning until we found a set of insights that were obvious only in retrospect.
The idea of a prototype is not mutually exclusive from pursuing product excellence. We rapidly found insights, and then built a business on them, with a clear definition of quality for our customers and relentless pursuit of it.
We never slapped the Uber model onto delivery. We solved our problem from first principles. I won’t explain it but we were able to be far more efficient than our competitors even before our series A, just from smartly solving for an on-demand model with three sides.
The qualities that make DoorDash effective at execution are outlined in the S-1, under "how we operate." It's a great distillation of the culture. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1792789/000119312520292381/d752207ds1.htm
Even today, I can recognize people who worked at DoorDash by their intensity. Founders like @ryanbroderick and @therealmikechen are carrying it forward and building more great companies. I'm sure more will follow.
