
How Doordash got their first 1000 customers - abouelatta
https://first1000.substack.com/p/-doordash
======
sschueller
How many of the first 1000 delivery drivers still "work" for Dordash?

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kumarm
NPR How I Built this Interviewed Tony and covered the same questions:
[https://www.npr.org/2018/11/09/666295686/doordash-tony-
xu](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/09/666295686/doordash-tony-xu)

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goatherders
Nice story, but there isn't anything in there about getting 1000 customers.
And having a good domain = the phone ringing within a couple hours? I highly
doubt it.

~~~
bjarneh
> the phone ringing within a couple hours? I highly doubt it.

The article says they did _everything_ themselves, probably including calling
that number and ordering food :-)

------
tfgg
_> Just in case you live on another universe._

Or any country that isn't the US?

~~~
gear54rus
Yeah lol, hesitant to say this but murica leaks here.

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slantaclaus
"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

~~~
sukilot
Not sure why you need to sign up for a job to learn how to do labor that
anyone with a driving license is already trained on.

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Pfhreak
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.

~~~
sukilot
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.

~~~
Pfhreak
Those are some serious mental gymnastics, and as far as I'm aware they didn't
say that anywhere up front.

------
nogahelena
Hey all, wanted to tell you about Plater
([https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7](https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7)),
a browser plugin i'm building. We're currently journeying for our first 1000
users.

Plater ([https://plater.com](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 savings of 20% per order.
Our search is integrated with * Postmates * Grubhub * Seamless * Uber Eats *
DoorDash * Caviar

Additionally, Plater helps local restaurants by linking to their direct
ordering websites. Direct orders can make a big impact on our local
restaurants by reducing their fees from 30% --> 0%! We're already linking to
~400 local restaurants in NYC and Fort Worth, Texas.

We're in public beta in NYC, Seattle, Houston, Dallas, Austin and Fort Worth,
with over 60k restaurants for price comparisons. We're looking for feedback so
if you're in one of these cities we'd love for you to download
([https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7](https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7))
and share feedback. If you're in a different city and want to use Plater, lmk
and I will get it up and running in a few hours.

Thanks!

~~~
slfnflctd
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?

~~~
nogahelena
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!

~~~
slfnflctd
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.

------
forgingahead
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 nice
set of results on the internet that will give you a replicable set of steps
that lead to a pretty clear outcome.

"How do I get my first 1000 customers" isn't the same, and it's a disservice
to publish clickbait headlines like that.

~~~
mateus1
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.

~~~
forgingahead
Can you share some legitimate resources for those who are looking to improve
their skills? Perhaps for the different stages, first 10 customers, first 100,
etc.

It seems like the work would be different for each stage (finding
product/market fit, finding a niche, scaling that niche, finding another
niche, etc etc).

~~~
shadowprofile77
Second this, any sources for genuinely good, more widely actionable advice
that you could recommend?

------
Jaruzel
> _They named their website PaloAltoDelivery.com in hopes that this would
> prompt the google engine to display their webpage favorably when people
> search for "Palo Alto Delivery." It worked. Half an hour of launching their
> page, they got their first phone call for a Thai Food order._

I don't know much about Doordash (I don't live in the US), but I find this
sentence hard to believe. Launching a fresh new website with some keywords as
the domain name, will not get you immediately ranked highly on Google, and
certainly not within 30 minutes of 'launching the page'.

~~~
awillen
This is exactly what I came here to say... there's just no way, right?

~~~
spqr233
definitely on your side. If I recall correctly, they posted flyers around Palo
Alto, and that's how they get their first users to show up on their site.

------
eruci
My question is, how come Doordash still spams me?

I never signed up or even knew of them until the emails started arriving.

~~~
eruci
Context:

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: Re: Customers in FAIRFIELD are looking for you Date: March 8, 2020 at
8:29:03 PM EDT To: Jeremy O'Connor <jeremy.oconnor@doordash.com>

Fuck off!

On Mar 8, 2020, at 8:27 PM, Jeremy O'Connor <jeremy.oconnor@doordash.com>
wrote:

Hey again,

I am following up on my past emails, we continue to get requests for your food
and it's important that we connect. New customers are signing into DoorDash
daily, and I want to make sure we get you in front of these customers!

When is a good time for a quick chat?

All the best, Jeremy

<X8_vG66jH_4x-rR4fy_bomUVNOlqeyj0uv2FzCb-aGA.png> Jeremy O'Connor

Strategic Account Executive

480.470.4942

901 Market St #600

San Francisco, CA

DoorDash.com

If you'd like me to stop sending you emails, please click here

~~~
detritus
> and it's important that we connect.

Gotta love the unquestioning entitled hubris of this kind of set-up.

------
ilamont
_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 taken a
hit ever since DoorDash started taking orders for his restaurant.

"Customers call us back upset because they didn't get what they thought they
were getting," he said.

At first, he had no idea why.

What he discovered was that DoorDash had started handling orders for him
without asking his permission.

"They took our menu, posted it on DoorDash, and the customer is oblivious to
the fact we have no relationship with Door Dash at all," he said.

He put up a Facebook post urging his customers not to order with DoorDash for
his restaurant.

"DoorDash makes money by 'reselling' our food at higher prices," he wrote.
"They also charge more for delivery. Between the mistakes on the DoorDash
listing for our business and trying to take the order over the phone from
someone halfway around the world who doesn't understand our product...we
simply can't guarantee a DoorDash order to be correct."_

[https://www.wral.com/doordash-delivery-accused-of-taking-
ord...](https://www.wral.com/doordash-delivery-accused-of-taking-orders-
without-restaurant-s-permission/18449432/)

~~~
nogahelena
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](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 ordering links for restaurants that do their own delivery.

I would really love any feedback I can get on this -> we're currently live in
NYC, Austin, Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth. If you want to use the app and
you're based in a different city lmk and I can get it up and running in a few
hours.

Get the app here:
[https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7](https://platerapp.app.link/ZJQoea4Ew7)
Learn more here: [https://plater.com](https://plater.com)

~~~
giarc
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?

~~~
nogahelena
We're comparing the order total which, including menu pricing, tipping,
delivery fee etc. for anyone who wants to help the restaurant the most, the
best solution is usually ordering directly because this removes a third party
from the transaction as mentioned in the comment below. Currently, we're
surfacing direct order links for restaurants who can handle delivery and we're
working on making direct orders even more convenient.

