One and a half minute intro to enter Y Combinator
Paul Buckheit, creator of Gmail: DoorDash is the first company I've had the opportunity to follow all the way from filing Y Combinator to IPO, so to celebrate the event, I thought that it would be fun and exciting to share what a great company like DoorDash looked like in its earliest stages.
Getting to know startups early on in their journey is one of my favorite parts of working at YC. By the time a company is successful enough for an IPO, many of the doubts and uncertainties that were in the early stages of launch are largely forgotten, replaced with a retrospective look that makes their path to success much more obvious and predictable. Founders are also transformed by the years of struggle and personal growth required to build and successfully run a big business. The hesitant new startup founder is being replaced by someone incredibly majestic and experienced.
To enter YC, startups must first complete an application , including a one-minute videothat introduces the founders and explains what their startup is doing. Above is the original DoorDash video.
A concise and clear explanation of what you are doing and why is the key to a great one minute video presentation, and the founders of DoorDash have clearly succeeded in this. Even more impressive is the fact that now, more than seven years later, DoorDash remains the same, including their commitment to helping local businesses succeed. This quote is from their S-1matches the app's video perfectly: “DoorDash has always been about helping local businesses succeed, more than delivering food. As students at Stanford, we asked dozens of local entrepreneurs what they need to grow their business. When they shared their shipping problems, we were surprised. Shipping was not a new idea, but very few companies offered it outside of New York in the United States. " Well said in the video, well written in S-1.
Once all applications have been reviewed, we invite the best startups for a ten-minute interview. I first met and interviewed the founders of DoorDash on Friday, April 26, 2013. My notes described them simply as " Caviarfor Palo Alto "and mentioned that they" brought cookies. "This may have been my first delivery with DoorDash.
The company was not registered or funded yet, they didn't have an app (only a website at www.paloaltodelivery. com ), they had launched just a few months before (originally a landing page with a phone number) and made only 217 deliveries.The
business was far from proven, but they did exactly the right thing: deliver food and talk to customers, restaurants and potential drivers. Success would require meeting the difficult task of satisfying all three groups of people, who did most of the delivery themselves, so they well understood the practical difficulties involved in picking up food on time and delivering it to customers.
I would like to say that I knew right away that they were going to be a huge success, but I didn't. At the end of the interview, we ranked all new companies, and I put DoorDash in the bottom half of the list of all candidates who passed.
A few months later, my skepticism remained. Here is one of my notes from June 24, 2013: “Nothing works so well yet. They have to keep trying many different experiments to figure out how to attract users ... I just want an app where I can order from anywhere and they do it all magically. And fridge magnets. "
I really wanted them to make fridge magnets. They wisely ignored this advice.
But they kept trying new ideas, and finally, on July 16, 2013, I noted: “Growing rapidly (to about 35 orders a day from 19 two weeks ago). They figured out how to attract users and have good retention. Just started expanding to MV. Seems much more focused and energetic. "
And then I became a client! July 23, 2013: “We used them for dinner a few days ago and it was great! (although they didn't make a fridge magnet: () we have to make sure they succeed so I can continue to deliver food to my home. ”
Later that week they had a big launch on TechCrunch . This was followed by a Demo Day at end of August Here is their presentation:
Many investors were skeptical and didn't make it to the top picks since demo day, but luckily they were able to pick up the seed round and keep growing.
Although Y Combinator's formal program only lasts three months, we continue to meet with the founders and support them over the years. In the case of DoorDash, this included helping them raise Series A investments , inviting them to come back to talk to new sets of startups, and sharing their ideas with the wider startup community. Through our YC Continuity fund, we are also able to continue to support our companies by investing in their later funding rounds.
At the beginning of 2016 YC Continuity he made one of his first big bets by investing in DoorDash on round the C . It was not the easiest time to attract investmentand it took many months for the round to come together. At the time, Amazon and Uber, two very large and very formidable competitors, were just getting started in food delivery, and people were wondering, "Can DoorDash survive?" While the odds were clearly against them, I saw them constantly growing and improving from the very beginning, and firmly believed that they could surpass those odds. Unlike Amazon or Uber, they were 100% focused on it, and they've been that way for years. Never underestimate a great team that stays focused and continues to improve day after day, year after year.
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