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DoorDash from Application to IPO

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#201

Post by searchableguy »

boberoni wrote: post #48

Congratulations to DoorDash! Their IPO is quite an achievement. I'm curious to see what the state of aggregated food delivery will be in, say, 2024. Not too far in the future, but long enough for losers to start giving up. My current understanding is that DoorDash-like start-ups are consistently in the red. The upfront expenditure on engineering and marketing for a 3-sided marketplace is huge. The business model woul…

> As an investor, how would you differentiate these food delivery start-ups?

https://www.doordash.com/drive/portal/discover

Probably set it up as a stripe like DAAS for businesses.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#202

Post by sparrc »

nine_zeros wrote: post #160
vincentmarle wrote: post #148

My 2 cts on the long term play of Doordash: The long term trend is that (primarily take-out) restaurants will decline and be replaced by ghost kitchens. The unit economics of ghost kitchens is much better than paying rent for prime real estate. You can run a ghost kitchen from a warehouse. This trend was already underway before covid [1] (see also Travis Kalanick's investments in this space) but has been 10x accelera…

+1 The market for cheap delivered food is much larger than sit down restaurants. Covid just make more of the population comfortable with apps.

doordash is cheap?

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#203

Post by bussierem »

cactus2093 wrote: post #199
moxdahfox8 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a lifeline if restaurants made money from Doordash orders. Some do and for them it's been a lifeline. But many restaurants don't make any profit after the 25% cut. Pre-covid you could write it off as a marketing expense but when in-person dining disappears you're faced with option to close or keep open and make a loss or no money on every DD you get. This is partly why 110,000 restaurants have closed sinc…

How exactly is tech pouring fuel on the fire though? If DD simply didn't exist, what better option would these closing restaurants suddenly have? Like you said here, with DD around it does give some restaurants a lifeline they wouldn't otherwise have. Plus the government gets more tax revenue, over time some large percentage of the currently $60B valuation created by Doordash, which could be used to help the rest of…

I think the implication wasn't that DD was pouring fuel on to the fire of "restaurants closing", but rather that when they, a company that works with restaurants (many of which are closing) are doing so well that they can IPO to the tune of $60B and make their founders/investors VERY rich, this can pour fuel onto the fire of "tech companies making money at the expense of others".

I feel that regardless of your feelings on the truth of that last quote, the connection can still (and will) be made by many people.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#204

Post by throw_m239339 »

bsder wrote: post #164
vincentmarle wrote: post #148

My 2 cts on the long term play of Doordash: The long term trend is that (primarily take-out) restaurants will decline and be replaced by ghost kitchens. The unit economics of ghost kitchens is much better than paying rent for prime real estate. You can run a ghost kitchen from a warehouse. This trend was already underway before covid [1] (see also Travis Kalanick's investments in this space) but has been 10x accelera…

> You can run a ghost kitchen from a warehouse. This trend was already underway before covid And it was already failing before Covid. Delivery requires proximity --every minute in delivery is a minute your food is shittier. And warehouses aren't proximate to residential in most places. Why do you think food trucks became a thing (and even they were declining)? They changed "proximate" to "immediate".

what the parent really meant is "from some dirty basement near you" /s as it is already the case for some of these 'ghost kitchens'. And of course when something bad happens like food poising, ecoli or whatever, these illegal kitchens were never there...

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#205

Post by strombofulous »

bsder wrote: post #197
strombofulous wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there's a lot of reasons they might have been stealing food. To presume it must have been because they were so poor and not because they had delicious smelling food in their car and a near-guarantee that theft wouldn't be noticed is, imo, disingenuous To say that the only reason someone steals food is for hunger is to say that nobody has ever stolen food for any reason other than hunger. Otherwise, there woul…

Dude. People don't steal food if they're not hungry. You are trying to justify THEFT . Not IP theft. Not Copyright theft. Real, actual, physical theft. Of someone's food . And there was so much theft that companies retooled their packaging . Go back and contemplate on your ethics. Like ... a lot.

This is such a wildly incorrect interpretation of what I said. After re-reading my original comment I'm honestly confused as to how you arrived at the conclusion you did (that I was attempting to justify theft).

I wasn't saying they should be stealing. The only thing I was saying was that there is more than one reason to steal food. If anything, I was arguing against theft (but in the moment, I was just responding to GP).

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#206

Post by jxramos »

rkho wrote: post #142
jannotti wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grubbhub, Seamless, Eat24, Foodler, DiningIn. They were all around and fairly large by then. But they didn't go big on spending VC money, so over time DoorDash wins. Pretty interesting, however it turns out.

Sorry I'm going to have to call on this. Until on-demand delivery companies like Doordash/Postmates came onto the scene, the vast majority of places I could have ordered delivery from were the standard fare of pizza, Chinese, Indian, and Thai food within a half mile radius from my home. What this generation unlocked was the ability to pay someone to grab you House of Prime Rib on Van Ness and deliver it halfway acros…

Thank you, this does well to answer the "compared to what" question--compared to a former world where these things did not exist.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#207

Post by the_economist »

standardUser wrote: post #176
vincentmarle wrote: post #148

My 2 cts on the long term play of Doordash: The long term trend is that (primarily take-out) restaurants will decline and be replaced by ghost kitchens. The unit economics of ghost kitchens is much better than paying rent for prime real estate. You can run a ghost kitchen from a warehouse. This trend was already underway before covid [1] (see also Travis Kalanick's investments in this space) but has been 10x accelera…

I had several bad experiences with ghost kitchens (low quality food) and now I look up ay restaurant before I order from them to make sure it has a storefront. Though usually you can tell by the absurd names most ghost kitchen places use.

I was extremely excited about ghost kitchens and have had been disappointed by similar experiences with them all providing low quality food. I'm still optimistic that the supply will shape itself over time and eventually a market for high quality food ghost kitchens will emerge.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#209

Post by gravity13 »

localhost wrote: post #165
vincentmarle wrote: post #148

My 2 cts on the long term play of Doordash: The long term trend is that (primarily take-out) restaurants will decline and be replaced by ghost kitchens. The unit economics of ghost kitchens is much better than paying rent for prime real estate. You can run a ghost kitchen from a warehouse. This trend was already underway before covid [1] (see also Travis Kalanick's investments in this space) but has been 10x accelera…

Another take on this is that restaurants are in the entertainment business, not the food business. Post COVID people are going to have a lot of pent up demand for entertainment that isn't in their homes. So perhaps this is more of a complement to restaurants rather than a replacement. But is DASH valued as a complement? But then again price is king right now, not value :)

Exactly. This is why cocktails you order from the restaurant don't taste nearly as good as they do in store (unless you know what you're doing with them).

I can't wait to get drunk in a bar with people again.

Re: DoorDash from Application to IPO

#210

Post by icedchai »

My experience with food delivery has been mostly negative. Drivers often get lost. I put very specific directions, yet only about 50% of the drivers would actually make it to my door.

The other 50% would go to a different building, a different unit in my building, or not even bother and call me from some nearby location. One guy was like "your food's here." I go outside and he's in the parking lot across the street. He didn't even get out of his car.

These days I don't bother. I order the food and pick it up myself.

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