The economics and trends of the restaurant industry, with Tony Xu of DoorDash

Tony Xu, cofounder and CEO of DoorDash, joins John for a pint to discuss how they won a crowded market by obsessing over retention and the reality of fighting fraud in the physical world. They cover the harsh economics of the restaurant industry, why DoorDash succeeded where Google failed, and the harrowing story of spending 40% of their remaining cash on refunds to save the company’s reputation. Tony introduces Dot, their new autonomous delivery robot, and explains why true autonomy requires solving for the “last two feet” of delivery. Finally, he shares lessons from the early days, including why customer obsession sometimes means baking cookies.

Timestamps

(00:00:25) Why did DoorDash win?

(00:10:50) China

(00:17:10) Restaurant trends

(00:27:59) Loyalty

(00:30:40) Stripe Issuing

(00:44:09) Delivery modalities

(00:51:11) Fraud

(00:58:32) New products

(01:13:26) Dot