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None of my friends' brother-in-laws are cofounders at Doordash, so I'm less attached :-) But this is a great example of the lack of customer lock-in. Even the

by khazhou 10y ago

None of my friends' brother-in-laws are cofounders at Doordash, so I'm less attached :-) But this is a great example of the lack of customer lock-in. Even the slightest improvement over Doordash, and I'd easily switch to Amazon or just bounce between the two. There's a thai restaurant just a bit out of Doordash range -- that would do it. Pictures on the menus -- that would do it. A "re-order" button -- that would do it. I like DD, but all I think of it is: "I order food and it gets here."

dvdhsu 10y ago
Right -- I think this is a problem for many recent startups like Doordash, Postmates, and even Uber. Their pitch to investors that this was a land grab -- whoever conquers the two-sided marketplace first dominates it and extracts profits later on. And so they need mountains of money to build up both sides of the marketplace. But it turns out that there's no switching cost on either side of the marketplace: you or I happily switch between both depending on which drivers are closer, and an Uber driver can just open their Lyft app if Uber is slowing down. You'd happily switch from Doordash if Caviar had better photos, and a restaurant can delivery via both Doordash and Caviar. I think Uber might be able to get out of this by saying "growth / users -> investment -> self driving cars", but I'm not sure what Doordash or Postmates plans to do about it.