YouSaid · the spoken record

Tony Xu

lines on the record: 87
first: 2019-01-09
most recent: 2019-01-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I think that's right. I think all of those experiments are along the lines of how do we get things closer to you. That's really how you get faster. And ideally we can bring everything to you super close to you.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Should present that. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing is we still need to collect a lot more information about the offline world, not just to make deliveries better. So not just like how long is traffic or where is parking, that sort of thing. We do have to do that. But even just things like inventory systems, do you have the thing for pixies or not? What if you run promotions? So there's a lot of information about the physical world that's not online. That's not organized well. No one has categorized that data set.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what we're going to hope and try to influence this is all the stores are going to have e-commerce solutions. I believe that in order for DoorDash to be successful, our merchants have to be successful. And for them to be successful, they must all have some e-commerce and delivery solution. And some of them are going faster than others, but I believe that, you know, One day, everyone will have those. And that's how they're going to exist. That's how all those stores and brands are going to keep being those stores and brands.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I think that will come in time. I don't think we're quite there yet. We've been working on the problem of working with autonomous systems for about three years now. I don't think we're just quite there yet. Yeah, different types of vehicles on the ground, you know, above ground to be able to do these types. So I do think that that will happen. I don't think that that will replace humans. I think that will augment. That will augment the delivery networks in a very phased way. I don't think we're near either side of the utopian field. I think the other thing is that”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you've got a situation where if you've taken three quarters of your restaurant you built and that's front of house and then 25% kitchen and then you layer on delivery which we're seeing some restaurants in Palo Alto which is the longest market we've been in you know Up to 50% of their sales are now delivery at different parts of my day. They were never designed to do 50% of their sales.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They'll like that Thank you for the money. I think there will be stores. I mean, if you think about all this inventory is like close to you, but like the most convenient offering we have today is sort of Amazon showing up in two days with your stuff. That doesn't make any sense to me. And so for me, you know, I think the push here will be ever more convenient. It won't be two hours, you know, two days. It'll be two hours. Right. And I think that's the system that we're building that will make better use out of the real estate that exists, but it'll require that that real estate change pretty dramatically. Like you need to pick pack, you need to ship. Like you imagine the story of the future will be one third sort of front of house and then two-thirds sort of a pickpack operation that's the back of the house. We've got the inverse of that.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that way we can actually live in a much more positive, I think, view of tech, which is not displacing all these jobs, but actually keeping the 60% of jobs that are produced by these businesses, which that statistic has been true for six decades now in all the tech ups and downs.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We like to do is we started the company Tal Merchants. So we would love to help do that. We'd love to. Offer the infrastructure to be able to do that, whether it's the space, whether it's the technology inside, whether it's the marketing from, whether it's the About what's selling, what's not selling, what's high quality, low quality, what's the right price point, these types of things. We want to be a business partner. To them.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That Fascinating stories. They are. So I think the stories you're referring to are the Hema stores, where they effectively have these. It's almost like Amazon Go.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What if people can redo experiences and put it into a smaller format that is less expensive to operate? And more fun for you and your friends and your family.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're still going to go out. You're still going to go out with your coworkers, your friends. And it's just a matter of where. You may not, you may no longer go into a Super big store that's a format”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then let's take retail. If there are five million retail stores, I think one day there might be more than that. I just think that half of them are going to sell you convenience. They may Delivery only kitchens, they may be convenience-only pickup stores for retail or delivery from those retail stores. And then that model is going to be much... Higher margins so that these merchants, these retailers and these restaurants can reinvest back into store experiences that never existed before so that you will actually still do it. Because look, I still think that people, you're still going to want to hang out with your family. At a store”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think there's an opportunity where there could be maybe one day multiples of that, maybe three to five million restaurants.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The stores are going to get smaller. So I think there's going to be two. So right now there's about a million restaurants, depending on how you count in America.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought this was a big opportunity. It is bigger than I thought. It should have been obvious to me actually in retrospect. I mean, people eat a lot. They want this convenience. And then when you start to think about other categories of whether it's flour delivery or pharmaceutical delivery or retail delivery or B2B delivery, the opportunity is immense. And Tony wanted to bake an enduring company. And that's sort of why I joined the company.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the goal is to be an independent business. I mean, I wouldn't say the goal is to be a public company as an end destination. That's going to be a milestone on the road. But yeah, the goal is to be an independent.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's certainly one way to change any changes to the cap table would be to bake everybody an investor, a public business.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had they had the demand, I think maybe we'd be talking about them in a different light. No, it was the right idea. I would say some things are direct.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think the third thing is you have to have a unique point of view. You have to have a point of view that's actually different. Ours was, we wanted to help merchants. It wasn't the view that our peers shared, even though we're all in the same space. And you have to execute upon that. Those are the things I would focus on controlling. And then I think it takes a lot of luck. We as entrepreneurs don't get to control the timing of markets. We can influence the shape, the trajectory. But we talked about the web van story.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the second thing you have to do is you have to find great people who are in it with you for a long time. I think right now one of the toughest parts about being a startup is teasing that out when you're hiring and assembling a team. Are you here just because you're collecting a portfolio of great names that might go public one day? Are you here for the long haul when things are going to be negative and positive?”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“LinkedIn lost half their value in a day. Salesforce did that in something like a week. I mean, and that was also when Door Dash was raising it Sirius C. Not the best timing. But that wasn't what we had planned for. And so it was difficult. And through those two years, we really had to hunker down to make sure that the business model would work on the money that we had. And then after that step on the gas raise the money that we did. I mean, we raised 80% of our lifetime financing in one year. That was 2018. And so I think the first, so I think to be an entrepreneur today, you have to have a much bigger goal than just making money or I don't know, building a product.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. Because Yeah, I mean, a couple things happen. I mean, I know there's a lot of wonders right now about the macro environment. But in 2016, let's be clear, there was actually a downturn in the first quarter.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of those, yeah. So, I mean, so yes, we talked about Dorash raising almost a billion dollars, but Previous to 2018, DoorDash raised $180 million, which is a lot of money, but relative to some of the peers in this space. It's a tiny single digit percentage of what the peers have raised. And the external world was very negative about our space.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, well, there's some things in your control and some things that are not. And I would focus on the things that are in your control. So I would say first. You have to have a big reason for why you want to do something, because inevitably you're going to have tough times. And we've had ours.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, I think because that's in the cultural DNA, we never sought that kind of attention. Now, it's one of the reasons why we were fairly understated and under the radar in our five-year history.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Recently. Yeah, I mean, I think we're very cognizant of that. I think the fact that we started the company with a mission to help merchants and because that's in the cultural DNA rather than destro”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Never been easier to start a company. I don't think it's ever been harder to scale a company. It's expensive. The capital, we talked about this. It's hard scaling quality, not just of hiring, but building the product, building decentralized teams. That's really hard right now.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there are a lot of startups. I think You want to make concentrated bets as a startup. You want to go all in on a few things and bet well and bet correctly. And one of those things is getting great talent. But that talent right now is so dispersed in a lot of these mini projects. And I think that's one of the big reasons why you're not seeing maybe more bigger startups. Because I think while it's”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These cities did not have these capabilities. So if you look at Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, we just launched Burlington, Vermont, believe it or not, just to give you a flavor for where we are now. Bremerton, Washington. These sites, they're doing incredibly well because they've never had this capability for. So I love it. I mean, I thrive on building something that people love. I was a customer before I joined DoorDash.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. I love the speed. The thing I like, it's funny. Like with DoorDash, lunch happens every day Dinner happens every day. So we get a report card, you know, sort of twice a day and the pace is such that Know we're launching constantly new products, new features, trying to listen to the customer. The launching to the 3,000 cities this year was a monumental undertaking. And it was awesome to see us be able to do that in 12 months. The thing that surprised me is that the markets we launched are actually doing better than the markets we launched four or five years ago. And I think it speaks to what Tony was saying is that”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, fine. No, no, but if we lived in New York, we don't even have to get delivery. We can just walk down the stairs and we can throw a rock and hit a thousand stores. That's not true in most of America. And so, no, we actually started out by figuring out, can this actually work in a less dense place? Because if you can make it work there, you can make it work in a New York or a San Francisco. If you can make it at a price point work for Middle America, you can make it work for the Bay Area. Not the other way around. So, yeah, so it started like a project and it was this something that Main Street America wanted? Number two, is this something that restaurants wanted and would pay us for? And number three, is this something that we could afford in terms of partnering with the dasher?”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the middle of the country, it's hard to get communience. If we lived in New York or San Francisco. We're always always always.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was East San Jose. It was because we wanted to see if this could be a mainstream product, not a Silicon Valley product. Right.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, while we treat it like a project. Like a project. Yeah, it wasn't, and it was to answer three basic questions, which was, is this something that people want or is this something that just Silicon Valley people want? Well, yes.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the way I think about this is it. There is no company out there today that is a business partner to the businesses. Locally If you think about it, if we wanted to make t-shirts and we wanted to sell them online, we might sell through an Amazon or an eBay or we might buy ads from a Facebook or an Instagram or Google. But if we wanted to open a t shirt store on the street, on Market Street, and we wanted to get business, how do we do that? It's not obvious. There aren't obvious business partners that you would go to. And so I think there's a massive opportunity to be that unique company.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been a great partnership. One of the big benefits of partnering with Walmart is that grocery deliveries actually happen at varied different times than, say, when restaurant meals get. And so as a result of that, dashers now have even more choice. There are more work opportunities in different hours of the day in which they can deliver different types of things. And so you can work a couple hours in the morning delivering Walmart groceries, or you can choose to deliver longer and extend that into lunch.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, yeah, yep, yeah. And so we look at what people like to buy and we look at, you know, how often they buy it. And we also look at whether or not it gives the dashers the opportunities in the right hours of the day. So for example, we mentioned that we deliver groceries from Walmart. We do this for 500 of their biggest.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We started with food just because it was the hardest problem. It's not just because it's high frequency, but because if you can figure out food and figure out if you can deliver something in 30 minutes, you can deliver something in an hour. The reverse not true.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So when we're thinking about where it's going as a business, when you think about what else you're going to deliver, you obviously start with food. What do you look at? What do you think the most promising areas are for you guys?”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really different by geography. While it's really, really competitive here in the Bay Area and competitive in places like Where no one owns a car, or only 11% of the population drives a car. Most of America, it's not. In most of America, people drive cars. In most of America, people would love these types of opportunities. And again, I think it's again why. Why is because this is an augmentation to what they're already doing? If it were not, if it was a true substitute and replacement, I think that might be different.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, that we're getting same thing with Uber, same thing with as you move, as you iterate through the system. It's a really, how is the competition for workers going then or dashers or task rabbits or whatever? What is the competition like? How do you look at it?”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The issue shouldn't be about classification. If you think about what is the root problem, the root problem is how do we maximize all this flexibility, which dashers love, and provide a security blanket for those who need it. That's the root problem. And what ends up happening, though, Kara, is that there's lots talked about and reported on the classification. Turns out in these types of classification issues, lawyers make millions of dollars, dashers get $50 in their pocket. That doesn't solve the root problem. So what has to happen is we have to work together as an industry. By the way, also with other types of industries that have contractors, warehouse workers, truckers, doctors.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Time goes by, there will be more things offered to people that do more on the platform. That's definitely one of the things we try to do with people that sort of do lots and lots of deliveries on the platform. But to me, the foundation here is one of bringing sort of opportunity to, in our case, hundreds of thousands of dashers. And I think that's very powerful.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Becomes this way, we have to redesignate employees in new ways and new fresh ways to think about how they move with healthcare, they move with all kinds of rights that they don't have in these environments.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To the world at large, the US and North America. And I think that's very, very powerful. I think a lot of the question about whether this is employee versus independent contractor misses a little bit of the point that this is like work for people and it gives them immense flexibility.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's, I mean, if you talk to the average dasher, I mean, they love the flexibility of being able to dash on DoorDash. I mean, if you say, why do you do this? You'll get the answer of, I can make incremental money. The number one reason sort of a dash or leaves DoorDash is I met my objective. So a lot of times you'll hear dashers say I was saving up to go on a vacation. I talked to one recently that said I was saving up to take a class at a university. And DoorDash enables me to do that. And then I come back to it. You'll have many people come back to it. To me, that's a service that we're bringing.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In retail, now you can work between 25 and 30 hours typically in any city. And so you're looking for this gig that's between 10 and 15 hours a week, but you need to pick those hours because you already have something that's occupying the majority of your week. And so that's really that void that we fill.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“80% of your efforts are focused on school related stuff. And so you may have some time to look for a part-time gig. If you're working in retail, the number of hours that you can now work has been dwindling over the last 10 hours. It's 10 years, excuse me.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, one of the things that we found is, so the dashers on the platform come to us in two groups, from universities and from retail. And most of these folks already have a full-time job. They're just trying to add to it. I think one of the things that's interesting about how labor is changing for the tens of millions of folks looking for flexible work is that you have to put yourself in the shoes of where are they coming from. And if you're in school”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, one of the things that's interesting about the dashers is that they're actually not the same people that deliver food and deliver people. So the average dasher on the platform is in their mid-20s. The average ride-sharing driver, name your favorite service, is Early 40s, 40% of the dashers are female, 15% roughly in ride sharing are female. And that's for safety concerns. So the first point is that they're actually not the same people. In fact, in most of the country, the overlap is less than 10%.”
2019-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and COO Christopher Payne · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT