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Wow what a crowded space. This reminds me of the daily deals site era, but at least then there was some room to compete because there wasn't a $40 billion behe

Wow what a crowded space. This reminds me of the daily deals site era, but at least then there was some room to compete because there wasn't a $40 billion behemoth waiting to crush them. I suspect that at whatever point Uber Logistics (or whatever they choose to call this inevitable extension of their service) takes flight, DoorDash and its $40 million will quickly vanish. This definitely isn't a space I would be doing a startup or investing in at this point.

WhitneyLand 12y ago
I share your opinion, but I would have passed on a Twitter seed round so what do I know. What would really be interesting is to understand why so many smart and experienced people have the exact opposite opinion.
- downandout 12y ago
  The only reason that Twitter is successful is because it was embraced by celebrities very early. I would have passed at the seed round stage as well, but that's because no one could have predicted the celebrity embrace of such a service. The reality is that they, along with most other startups, got seed funding not because of the idea but because of the pedigree of the founders. I suspect there is some of that going on here as well. They are all current/former Stanford students and have been involved in successful companies. According to Crunchbase: DoorDash was founded by four Stanford students: Evan Charles Moore worked on the founding team of Vevo; Tony Xu was at Square and Red Laser/eBay; and Andy Fang and Stanley Tang spent a summer together at Facebook. Moore and Xu were friends in Stanford's business school, and Fang and Tang are undergrads. Same deal with Larry and Sergey, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel, and most others. They weren't merely college students; they were Ivy League students. As much as people say college doesn't matter anymore, the evidence says otherwise. We'll probably never know if entrepreneurs from lower-tier and public universities can succeed at an equal rate, because they won't be given the funding to try.
  - harryh 12y ago
    Celebrities didn't embrace twitter for three years after it was launched. That counts as "very early"?
    - downandout 12y ago
      That must be why they didn't really grow until about 3 years after they were founded: http://static1.businessinsider.com/~~/f?id=4abbcbef60b187740be440e1 http://static1.businessinsider.com/~~/f?id=4abbcbef60b187740... And yes, it was "very early" in their growth cycle. In fact celebrity embrace was the catalyst for their growth. No Ashton Kutcher = no Twitter today.
      - harryh 12y ago
        'eh. I think cause and effect are pretty hard to untangle here. Mostly I think you're wrong. But I'll admit that it's hard to bring real evidence to the table. There were a billion tweets before Ashton though and the celebs showed up because there was an audience to be had. I can see your point of view though.
paul 12y ago
Many things look similar from a 1000 miles away. At the actual business level, Uber and DoorDash are different in almost every way. This is one advantage that investors close to these companies have, and one reason why it can be so hard to understand any of this just by reading blog posts. DoorDash has a great business, in many ways better than Uber's.
- downandout 12y ago
  Whether carrying passengers or food, they are both in the delivery business. The primary difference is that one is worth $40 billion and one is not. Doordash may have some restaurant relationships that Uber doesn't, but that is ground that can be quickly made up with money. These VC's are merely hedging their bets with this investment.
  - paul 12y ago
    In that case you should assume that FedEx will put them all out of business. There's a lot more going on than "delivery".
    - downandout 12y ago
      I wouldn't assume that. Fedex has many constraints on its business, and shares almost no core competencies with DoorDash or Uber. Its fleet consists not of nimble passenger cars, but of large, fuel guzzling trucks - making one-to-one pickups and deliveries inefficient and unprofitable. It also has no expertise in the area of recruiting independent contractors to perform work for it, which is one of the core competencies of both DoorDash and Uber. I wouldn't turn to DoorDash to deliver live lobsters to me from Maine overnight, and I wouldn't turn to Fedex to get me food from down the street. Those are very different businesses requiring very different infrastructures. Therein lies the problem for DoorDash: they are not that different from Uber. They have similar core competencies, but Uber is vastly better known and financed.
      - paul 12y ago
kzhahou 12y ago
Few startups die because someone else stepped in. Most of the time they die by their own mistakes.

WhitneyLand 12y ago

I share your opinion, but I would have passed on a Twitter seed round so what do I know. What would really be interesting is to understand why so many smart and experienced people have the exact opposite opinion.

downandout 12y ago
The only reason that Twitter is successful is because it was embraced by celebrities very early. I would have passed at the seed round stage as well, but that's because no one could have predicted the celebrity embrace of such a service. The reality is that they, along with most other startups, got seed funding not because of the idea but because of the pedigree of the founders. I suspect there is some of that going on here as well. They are all current/former Stanford students and have been involved in successful companies. According to Crunchbase: DoorDash was founded by four Stanford students: Evan Charles Moore worked on the founding team of Vevo; Tony Xu was at Square and Red Laser/eBay; and Andy Fang and Stanley Tang spent a summer together at Facebook. Moore and Xu were friends in Stanford's business school, and Fang and Tang are undergrads. Same deal with Larry and Sergey, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel, and most others. They weren't merely college students; they were Ivy League students. As much as people say college doesn't matter anymore, the evidence says otherwise. We'll probably never know if entrepreneurs from lower-tier and public universities can succeed at an equal rate, because they won't be given the funding to try.
- harryh 12y ago
  Celebrities didn't embrace twitter for three years after it was launched. That counts as "very early"?
  - downandout 12y ago
    That must be why they didn't really grow until about 3 years after they were founded: http://static1.businessinsider.com/~~/f?id=4abbcbef60b187740be440e1 http://static1.businessinsider.com/~~/f?id=4abbcbef60b187740... And yes, it was "very early" in their growth cycle. In fact celebrity embrace was the catalyst for their growth. No Ashton Kutcher = no Twitter today.
    - harryh 12y ago
      'eh. I think cause and effect are pretty hard to untangle here. Mostly I think you're wrong. But I'll admit that it's hard to bring real evidence to the table. There were a billion tweets before Ashton though and the celebs showed up because there was an audience to be had. I can see your point of view though.

paul 12y ago

Many things look similar from a 1000 miles away. At the actual business level, Uber and DoorDash are different in almost every way. This is one advantage that investors close to these companies have, and one reason why it can be so hard to understand any of this just by reading blog posts. DoorDash has a great business, in many ways better than Uber's.

downandout 12y ago
Whether carrying passengers or food, they are both in the delivery business. The primary difference is that one is worth $40 billion and one is not. Doordash may have some restaurant relationships that Uber doesn't, but that is ground that can be quickly made up with money. These VC's are merely hedging their bets with this investment.
- paul 12y ago
  In that case you should assume that FedEx will put them all out of business. There's a lot more going on than "delivery".
  - downandout 12y ago
    I wouldn't assume that. Fedex has many constraints on its business, and shares almost no core competencies with DoorDash or Uber. Its fleet consists not of nimble passenger cars, but of large, fuel guzzling trucks - making one-to-one pickups and deliveries inefficient and unprofitable. It also has no expertise in the area of recruiting independent contractors to perform work for it, which is one of the core competencies of both DoorDash and Uber. I wouldn't turn to DoorDash to deliver live lobsters to me from Maine overnight, and I wouldn't turn to Fedex to get me food from down the street. Those are very different businesses requiring very different infrastructures. Therein lies the problem for DoorDash: they are not that different from Uber. They have similar core competencies, but Uber is vastly better known and financed.
    - paul 12y ago

kzhahou 12y ago

Few startups die because someone else stepped in. Most of the time they die by their own mistakes.