DoorDash's 2020 IPO letter from Tony Xu
- Written by
- Tony Xu
- Organisation
- DoorDash
- Published
- 13 Nov 2020
- Sector
- Local commerce and delivery platform
Read the original at sec.gov (opens in a new tab)
About this letter
Tony Xu, DoorDash's co-founder and chief executive, wrote this letter for the registration statement on form S-1 that DoorDash filed with the SEC on 13 November 2020 ahead of its initial public offering. It opens the prospectus and is written for prospective investors.
Xu begins with his family's story. He arrived from China aged five, and his mother worked three jobs a day for 12 years, one of them as a server at a local Chinese restaurant where he washed dishes. He presents DoorDash as a company about helping local businesses succeed more than about food delivery, and sets out three assets he plans to build: an on-demand logistics platform for the local delivery of any item, merchant services, and a membership programme for the physical world. The letter closes with the company's operating values, each tied to an episode from its history.
Why read it
A founder explains why a delivery app is really a bet on local commerce, and ties each operating value to a decision the company actually made, including a costly early refund.
What to notice
- 1
Xu argues that averages are meaningless in delivery: a customer who receives food in 53 minutes does not care that the average is 35, so DoorDash manages the whole distribution.
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“Averages in our industry are meaningless, it’s the distribution that matters.”
Companies discussed
- DoorDash (DASH)
Topics
- ipo
- culture
- customer obsession
- strategy
- long term thinking
- business model
L3VLUP does not host this document. It belongs to DoorDash; the notes above are L3VLUP’s reading of it.
The same argument, elsewhere
- Lyft's 2019 IPO letter from its co-founders · Lyft
- Square's 2015 IPO note from Jack Dorsey · Square (now Block)
- Klaviyo's 2023 IPO letter from its co-founders · Klaviyo
- Rivian's 2021 IPO letter from RJ Scaringe · Rivian