How These Two Dashers Made Into Forbes Youngest Self Made Billionaires List 2021
This is the story of Stanley Tang and Andy Fang founders of Doordash
Doordash ever heard of it? If not then you’re either living like a neanderthal mining stone in a cave or have renounced the mortal bonds in search of salvation, to miss such a prominent thing! Jokes apart :), Doordash is the biggest food delivery platform on this planet with well over 45% of the market share and beyond 300,000 restaurants in the US, taking over giants like Uber Eats and GrubHub in a matter of few years.
To sum it all, Doordash is a logistic-based startup that connects consumers with the merchants via dashers; people who are delivering food, through an algorithm by the name of Deep Red who tries to perfect every aspect of this food delivery industry from the user's interface to connecting them with optimal restaurants with the closest dashers to create a perfect experience for everyone involved.
*Fact The algorithm was named Deep Red to pay homage to the IBM system that defeated the legend, Garry Kasparov.
Now you might ask, I clicked on the article not to learn about how great doordash is but how their two dashers got into Forbes youngest self-made billionaire list of 2021, so has the author; Mohit Shangari, deliberately click baited me into this apparently sponsored post. No, definitely not that's not the case, as the rise of doordash is linked with these two dashers who are apparently the founders of Doordash.
Who are these two Dashers?
The dashers who you are keen to know about are Stanley Tang and Andy Fang former Stanford Students, in short nerds who created this haven or platform as normal beings would call, for foodies to get whatever they crave for without stepping out of their houses; which is phenomenal if you ask any foodie like me.
These two guys along with Evan Moore and Tony XU started a website by the name palodelivery.com in Palo, California on Jan 2013. Their initial motto was to develop an app that would help connect a macaroon store with the university students but later turned into a food delivery app after they got a hold of the real problems faced by restaurants which were not for receiving orders but as you might have guessed by now delivering those orders.
So they worked on that plan, made the app's prototype in few hours came up with this website, reached out to various businesses across the Palo, got them on board, and finally commenced their idea. Their platform was such a big hit that they got an investment of 200 thousand dollars in their initial few months and attracted investors of the likes Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail) to raise 2 million dollars in the upcoming years. Later, they changed their name to Doordash which now what they are known by!
The company was valued at 70 billion dollars by NYSE during their initial IPO offering in late December 2020. One thing that hasn’t changed about them is their values. When this platform got started their founders had to deliver food by themselves so every new hire has to be a dasher for a week before joining, which highlights the values engrained into their business.
What Do They Value? Thing You’ve Stuck This Long For
Taking Forbes Data into consideration they both own 4% of the companies share which turns out to be 2 billion dollars individually. Getting Fang 7th and Tang 8th Rank respectively in Forbes Youngest billionaires with their ages being 28. To talk about their positions in the company Tang had been the chief product officer and Fang previously served as the company’s chief technology officer.
This section is for those who are stats nerds and are compelled by data.
- Doordash's market share has gone up from 5% in 2015 to 45% in 2020 which is an enormous growth considering big techs like Uber being in this race. This is evident from the below plot, which compares the market share for the distinctive food delivery apps.
It’s blatant that Grubhub the prime food delivery app in 2016 has lost its market share to Uber Eats and the rising Doordash, which has shown a growth of 900% since 2015 and is expected to double its growth by 2025.
- Looking at its revenue, the food delivery app has been growing like crazy and has reached to revenue of approximately 6 billion dollars in 2020. But the more crazier fact is that the company hasn’t made any profit since the surge in revenue. It has mitigated losses as compared to last year but still managed to lose 400 million dollars in 2020.
All the other has been curated by this amazing site so you can hop over there and grasp every bit of the data related to Doordash.
Takeaway
So what is the thing that made me write this, or what should you take away from this story? If you ask me anything you’re able to, personal stories can inspire you and that’s the reason I brought these two dashers life and backstory in front of you. So that you can discern what you’ve to do in your life and where exactly you’re lacking. Like these two figured out what was the need in the market worked on that with their folks and now they are in the Forbes list of youngest self-made billionaires.
If you want to crack the code, the short way then you’ll keep wandering out in the cold but if you want to go the right way, the actual way you’ll be able to succeed even if it takes time. So keep killing it and keep doing it!
What did you think about the story? I’ll love to listen and will answer to most of your comments!
Thank you for sticking this long and reading this article, and I would like to appreciate you for that.
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