Specialist
Former Senior Manager at DoorDash Inc
Specialist background
- Experienced business development expert responsible for customer acquisition and retention
- Familiar with expenditure on sales and marketing, including how expenditure should evolve in terms of how DoorDash and other players have thought about spends
- Well-placed to discuss the company's thoughts on customer acquisition relative to churn, including DoorDash's biggest competitors types of corporate partnerships and how the company has been able to leverage DashPass
Questions
1.
When you were working at DoorDash, I know you were working on the BizDev, but what products specifically were you working on? What parts of the business did you spend your time?
2.
When you say you guys touched everything, and you're the tip of the spear, what's an example? Your particular role, how did it interface with the other functions in the company? What's an example of how you guys were the tip of the spear? What types of responsibilities would you guys be focused on?
3.
Were you coming up with the idea, this military product that you worked on, that was your idea that you started, or somebody else came up with the idea?
4.
One part we can start with is, you talked a little bit about how one of your areas of focus was on growing the business for the core platform. Could you maybe talk about how you guys thought about that conceptually? When you think about DoorDash as a business, how do you go about growing the business? What are the strategies?
5.
When you think about all of those different options, what are the biggest needle-movers? What are the things that really matter vs things that are more fringe? If you had to distil it down, maybe if there is a way, what are the key levers that DoorDash really needs to pull to drive real sustainable growth from here? I'm sure there's all these little things that will add one or two points here, but is there anything that's the big needle-mover that's what really matters, and what's the North Star?
6.
My higher frequency is more a function of just me getting used to it over time, rather than anything specific that DoorDash is doing to me. I'm never ordering more because of some e-mail I get or something. Maybe I'm not the best example. Outside of getting people on DashPass, that's a huge step up, but then, after that, is it just time to get people to order more, or is there something that they can actually do?
7.
When you think about all the different additional stuff that DoorDash is offering now on its platform, outside of restaurants, what do you say are the most promising, and the furthest along? I just pulled up my DoorDash, as an example. You have the whole top bar of stuff from grocery to convenience, alcohol, pets, retail, flowers. There are all these different things. Maybe the answer is the most promising is the order in which they list the icons, but, I'm just wondering, which do you think is the furthest along, and which ones are realistically going to be the biggest growth drivers in the near to medium term?
8.
Then, on grocery, what's the issue there? I know you mentioned structurally low-margin, and variable cost structure and all that. Maybe this is the incorrect assumption, but it seems like Instacart has been able to do it okay. What's the difference between DoorDash and Instacart? Why can't DoorDash be Instacart?
9.
To me, hearing all those different explanations, it feels like the only one that is really different is maybe just their operational know-how and history. I feel like the UI stuff, I don't know, maybe I just haven't worked at a company before, but can't you just literally copy the UI? I know it doesn't sound great, but I don't know, it's just this bunch of icons. I know that sounds dumb when I say it like that, but if this one UI works better then, if consumers like that UI, can't you just literally replicate the exact same user flow in the app?
10.
What about on the grocery side? You're right, I think Instacart does have a much better grocery selection. I'm just pulling up the app right now in my local area. They have way better supermarkets. What's the reason that DoorDash doesn't have the same breadth of relationships? How come if you're Kroger or something, why wouldn't you just want to sign up with both?
11.
How do you think about the competitive dynamic between DashPass and Uber? If you were a sceptic, you would say that the actual offerings aren't too dissimilar, you're saving about the same, plus or minus I think roughly the same, the monthly fee costs about the same, the amount of savings you get per-order are about the same, and so it's not clear to me that there's one has a significantly better value proposition than the other, the only difference being that Uber, you can make a case that it works with their ride-share business, and so maybe there are some overlapping benefits there, and DoorDash doesn't have that. What's the moat or what's the reason why DashPass will be able to maintain its share on users? How do you think about the slope of DashPass adoption, going forward, given that competitive dynamic?
12.
Can consumers really tell the difference in quality? I'm sure statistically one company has better operations than the other, but then, from a consumer perspective, can they actually tell in reality? Do you get what I'm trying to ask?
13.
How do you think about whether or not somebody assigns the blame to the platform vs the restaurant? If something I order takes 30 minutes and I thought it was going to take 15, in my mind I never blame DoorDash or Uber, I'm always like, "It's just this restaurant operations are slow, or whatever, or they're backed up."
14.
You talked earlier about how one has got better restaurant selection than the other. I get the history behind it, where DoorDash was the first-mover in the suburb and they had a different strategy dynamic in the beginning, but fast-forward to 2023, why hasn't Uber caught up in the suburban markets with restaurant selection? I would have thought they would just do that.
15.
In your mind, what are the ultimate key levers from here for Dash to compete to increase its profitability? Just from the total company, from a margin perspective, what do you think are the things that really matter for margins to really improve?
16.
Just during your time there, and maybe it's changed now, but what does the management team really care about? I know they're going to say all the right corporate things like, "We care about customer experience," all that kind of stuff, but, more commercially, do you think they're more focused on driving top-line growth and/or maybe maintaining market share? Are they focused more on delivering profitability and higher margins? Do they care about the stock price? There are all these different things. What is your sense?
17.
Do you think the stock price matters to him?
18.
What are your thoughts on DoorDash just in general? Now that you've been there, you've left, what's your outlook on the company?
19.
Just curious, what made you want to leave?
20.
I'm just curious your personal thoughts, because it's one of those things we won't know until we actually live through it, but in a recession how do you think DoorDash performs?
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