00:41:56 · Aditya Agarwal
[00:41:56] S1: Yeah. No. I I think particularly that last one about, I think, in some ways, reveling in our shared humanity, I think, is, like, really important to not lose sight of. I've been thinking a lot about the agency one myself, which is that it's weird because with the advent of these LLMs, it's such a fine line because even as as an individual, I find myself sometimes getting lazier because I'm just like, alright. It's like just like... Let the let the thing do it. Whereas the right answer is like, oh, I can do anything. Yeah. Like, wake up and you're like, I can do so much more. I'm limited by my own creativity, my desire, my energy. But it's a fine line that I feel personally. So I think that how do I get my children, my coworkers, people I care about to kind of be on the right side of that? It's tricky. Yeah. Okay. Questions? We'll go with Ambrish. Why don't we go? Awesome. Thank you for the wonderful chat. I think we talked a lot about change and how we're adapting. One of the things I wanna ask, you kind of answered that on the personal front, but if you look at DoorDash in thirteen plus years, what has not changed? What has been the invariant? And is that a framework you also use sometimes to make those decisions when you're prioritizing? Any kind of stories or anything about how you think about constant invariant thing customers?
00:43:28 · Tony Xu
[00:43:28] S0: Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that, you know, whenever I evaluate, like, a new way of doing something, whether it's an AI agent, you know, some other new technology is, well, I know that customers are still gonna want more things delivered, not fewer things. Things delivered more cheaply, not more expensive. They're gonna want it probably faster, not slower, and they're gonna want better customer support, not worse. And if that is true, how does this technology help? Why is it better? Is it just better because everyone else is using it? Is it better because it actually truly does something in a better way? This is what I mean by having a a strong point of view of... From the customer's perspective, not necessarily from the company's perspective, because there's lots of things that may benefit a company that may not benefit a customer. Either it's orthogonal or it may be at odds. And that's that's usually the place I would start. And you can ask that same question about, new ways of doing things. You know? I I ask new teammates all the time, like, how would you do this better? I'm sure there are lots of observations of how we do things poorly. But then, you know, in terms of the response, you know, the eval, if you will, is that verifiable set of responses of what does not change.
00:44:52 · S3
[00:44:52] S3: Thank you, Tony and Aditya, for the talk. Earlier, you mentioned that there can be a lot of noise online. And, like, how would you recommend founders balance the the, like, the heads down building kind of mindset with worrying about competitors or, like, news or at the cutting edge?
00:45:10 · Tony Xu
[00:45:10] S0: Yeah. I I think it's very hard because at the end of the day, we're all humans, and humans are very susceptible to to a lot of human nature. And then, you know, finding a human nature is probably the hardest thing that you'll ever do as a founder or you'll always do as a founder if you choose to be so lucky to keep going at it. And I would say your job is just to find product market fit. That really is the name of the game for you. And, know, being maniacally obsessed over that, I think, will be, you know you know, candidly, not just the survival mechanism, but also, maybe, like, what should guide all of the road map. Be... Because I think it's really easy to be caught up in, you know, everything else that comes with being a startup founder. There's more resources. There's, like you said, probably more competitors because of the greater resources. There's certainly, obviously, changes in technology. But at the end of the day, I I think if you just keep asking yourself, like, what is the most important thing on your eval today for the company in terms of company success? If you found product market fit, it's gonna be something else, but until you found it, that's probably gonna be the thing, and you have to define that ideally into a set of concrete things that your teams can work on to knowing, because you're not gonna just hit product market fit and then you just know it. It probably will be one of these these things that's a bit of a nonlinear process.
00:46:39 · Aditya Agarwal, S3
[00:46:39] S1: I believe that a lot of founders kinda share common traits around being obsessive, around being competitive, around kind of, like, having a certain amount of almost like paranoia, competitiveness, of like, you know, energy. Find other things that can help you channel that. Right? Like, I personally love taking on some kind of stupid physical challenge every year that I can then systematically... And it's just like a way of channeling that just competitiveness, that aggression, that kind of desire to improve. And I think that this is net better because I want to stay physically fit for the long term arc of being a founder. So, I think it's just too easy to spend all of your time online. I think it's kind of the lowest common denominator. [00:47:24] S3: Hey, Tony, welcome to SPC. Thanks for your time. A question for you. Delivery, food delivery seems like such an obvious thing today obviously, but looking back through your journey, was there a moment or what was your non consensus insight that you had as a founder when you're talking to people about your idea or scaling that did you have? Was there a lot of no's, was there any non consensus insight that you came across or had?
00:47:53 · Tony Xu
[00:47:53] S0: Yeah. Well, I mean, about three years it was that we believed we ought to exist and that you could build a business out of it. That was the non consensus insight where for about three years, I couldn't raise a dime of capital. And, you know, we almost ran out of cash many times during that period, and, you know, we probably lost about maybe 20 to 25% of the team because, I mean, I'm every week at an all hands like this showing the cash balance going towards zero. You know, it was... DoorDash is a very intellectually honest place. I'm very proud of that. And and there's very talented people. And I said, look. If you wanna polish your resume, I would get it. For a long period of time, I would say for the first half, if you will... DoorDash is 13 years old. But for the first half, I would say DoorDash was a very nonconsensus bet. And, you know, there was very, you know, there's three years what I personally remember getting rejected by over a 100 investors. Yeah. It was nonconsensus that you you can actually build a system where you're trying to deliver something quite perishable. You have to coordinate three parties on every single order just to make one order, and then somehow make the math work. There were many, like, things to believe in in order to actually believe that there was a path forward. But, you know, the best way to tell as a founder of whether or not you're sitting on that border of delusion and ambition is whether or not your customers actually want what you're doing. And, you know, and and and so I think the reason why you may ask, I think, an interesting question could be, well, why did 75 to 80% of people stay? You said 20 to 25% of people left. Yeah, that's true, but the majority stayed by by math. And the reason, I think, isn't just because of a belief that a company like DoorDash, where you're trying to grow local businesses, and grow their connections with local consumers, you know, that that's worthwhile, but that... Well, the metrics were actually indicating that we were onto something and that it wasn't just this mission that is worth fighting for. Right? And what they saw was they're like, wow. Okay. So we actually have better retention and usage than anyone else. We have improving unit economics, and that if you do enough volume, that the math is gonna work. You know, some version... I mean, that...