How Doordash got their first 1000 customers • Hacker News Board

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#21

Post by CaptainZapp » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #15

Wasn't Doordash one of the companies that was lowering payments if tips were added? Eg, if they were going to pay $10 for a delivery, and someone left a $2 tip, they would reduce what they paid to $8. The driver gets $10, rather than the $12 you'd imagine. I have a hard time reading anything charitably about the company. If you exploit your workers, I don't care how scrappy and clever you were in bootstrapping.

They also pulled other shitties, like offering deliveries from restaurants, which never agreed to this in the first place.

It's one of those companies, which give tech a bad name.

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#22

Post by nogahelena » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

slfnflctd wrote: post #16

nogahelena wrote: post #11

Hey all, wanted to tell you about Plater ( https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7 ), a browser plugin i'm building. We're currently journeying for our first 1000 users. Plater ( https://plater.com ) is a browser plugin that saves you money on restaurant delivery and helps local restaurants. Plater finds you the cheapest price by automatically compare pricing across different delivery apps. On average, we find users sa…

Are you able to share anything about your revenue model? From other comments I've seen on HN and elsewhere, people in the niches I frequent (myself included) are increasingly interested in actually helping local restaurants by ordering directly and ignoring 3rd parties who are attempting to set up toll gates between us. What makes you different from the six services you mentioned?

We won't become like the services mentioned above because we have no intent of fulfilling deliveries. I think there may be an opportunity in building software for local restaurants that would make ordering as convenient as it is (for the consumer) with the DoorDashes of the world. However, people willing to change their ordering habits for better prices and to help local restaurants is still a hypothesis that needs to be proven...

Can you share some of the niches you frequent? I'm really looking to connect with people who are passionate about this problem.

Thank you!

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#23

Post by nogahelena » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

ultimatefan1 wrote: post #20

nogahelena wrote: post #11

Hey all, wanted to tell you about Plater ( https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7 ), a browser plugin i'm building. We're currently journeying for our first 1000 users. Plater ( https://plater.com ) is a browser plugin that saves you money on restaurant delivery and helps local restaurants. Plater finds you the cheapest price by automatically compare pricing across different delivery apps. On average, we find users sa…

I’m in Chicago and would love that service!

awesome, i'll start setting up Chicago now :) if you download and create an account I can send you a message when it's ready.

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#24

Post by slantaclaus » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

"Moreover, some more prominent corporations seemingly have been going around it well as Dominos and FedEx that each delivers over millions of orders every month. Tony signed up to be a driver for these platforms.."

So Tony, one of the Cofounders of DoorDash signed up to be a Dominos pizza delivery driver to learn how they did it. I love it

Thank you for sharing this article

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#25

Post by slfnflctd » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

nogahelena wrote: post #22

slfnflctd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to share anything about your revenue model? From other comments I've seen on HN and elsewhere, people in the niches I frequent (myself included) are increasingly interested in actually helping local restaurants by ordering directly and ignoring 3rd parties who are attempting to set up toll gates between us. What makes you different from the six services you mentioned?

We won't become like the services mentioned above because we have no intent of fulfilling deliveries. I think there may be an opportunity in building software for local restaurants that would make ordering as convenient as it is (for the consumer) with the DoorDashes of the world. However, people willing to change their ordering habits for better prices and to help local restaurants is still a hypothesis that needs t…

Not sure about that last part, but I will say that I do think sincere efforts to empower small businesses by offering them truly better software with fairly priced SLAs is the right way to go here. If that's what you're doing, I hope you go far. I may have to take a closer look later.

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#26

Post by giarc » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

nogahelena wrote: post #17

ilamont wrote: post #13

Many diners love DoorDash for its fast, easy delivery from hundreds of local restaurants. However, some of those restaurants claim they never gave DoorDash permission to post their menus — and problems with the unauthorized deliveries are reflecting badly on their businesses. Business is good at NYPD Pizza, a family-owned pizza place, but owner Kevin Leidecker fears his reputation for great food and fast delivery has…

In addition to adding them to the platform without their consent, they also charge restaurants massive fees, which increase the total bill and eat into restaurant revenues. shameless plug That is why I'm building Plater ( https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7 ). It automatically compares your order across DoorDash,UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates etc.. and gets you the cheapest price. Additionally, it highlights direct o…

Are you just comparing the delivery fees and other app added fees? Or are you comparing the menu prices as well? Your intention seems to be to save the user money and also help the restaurant, but if you are actually just showing the lowest price, isn't that actually the opposite of helping the restaurant?

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#27

Post by mateus1 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

forgingahead wrote: post #12

If you clicked the link expecting to read about the "How" part, you're not going to get anything useful. I think there's a larger gap here, in that the audience of HN (largely being engineers or "makers" or some sort) generally use "How" as "a piece of advice that is repeatable", ie, we can get the same result if we implement the same steps. So searching for eg: "how do I crop a video using ffmpeg" will produce a nic…

As someone who works in Growth this is what I hate about most of my industry.

A lot of growth hackers sell this BS of "simple tips & fast hacks" whereas the awesome professionals I know have "boring" methods and experiments.

So the market gets crowded with clickbait stupid drivel while the real science is lost.

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#28

Post by sukilot » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

forgingahead wrote: post #12

If you clicked the link expecting to read about the "How" part, you're not going to get anything useful. I think there's a larger gap here, in that the audience of HN (largely being engineers or "makers" or some sort) generally use "How" as "a piece of advice that is repeatable", ie, we can get the same result if we implement the same steps. So searching for eg: "how do I crop a video using ffmpeg" will produce a nic…

I thought HN had code to automatically remove clickbait words like "How" from titles. (Not sure why they aren't simply banned)

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#29

Post by sukilot » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #15

Wasn't Doordash one of the companies that was lowering payments if tips were added? Eg, if they were going to pay $10 for a delivery, and someone left a $2 tip, they would reduce what they paid to $8. The driver gets $10, rather than the $12 you'd imagine. I have a hard time reading anything charitably about the company. If you exploit your workers, I don't care how scrappy and clever you were in bootstrapping.

They were subsidizing tips to guarantee a minimum payout if customers tipped too low. But customers wanted to undertip while still having workers get laid more, and then blamed doordash instead of their own unwillingness to pay.

Re: How Doordash got their first 1000 customers

#30

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #26

nogahelena wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to adding them to the platform without their consent, they also charge restaurants massive fees, which increase the total bill and eat into restaurant revenues. shameless plug That is why I'm building Plater ( https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7 ). It automatically compares your order across DoorDash,UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates etc.. and gets you the cheapest price. Additionally, it highlights direct o…

Are you just comparing the delivery fees and other app added fees? Or are you comparing the menu prices as well? Your intention seems to be to save the user money and also help the restaurant, but if you are actually just showing the lowest price, isn't that actually the opposite of helping the restaurant?

[deleted]