How DoorDash Has Been Winning the Food Delivery War

Stanford students Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang, and Evan Moore began working on an app for small business owners in 2012. The four students launched PaloAltoDelivery.com, which only had a Google Voice number and menus in PDF format from a few local restaurants. They charged a flat rate of $6 per delivery with no minimum order size, and the four of them personally handled the deliveries. In 2015, DoorDash was operating in 18 different cities and received $60 million in investments. In 2018, when SoftBank invested $535 million into DoorDash, the food delivery service reached a ‘unicorn’ status.