DoorDash's founder recalls September 2013, when a Stanford football game and rainstorm flooded the service with orders it couldn't handle. The collapse tanked first-time customers' experience. With only three to four weeks of cash left, the company faced an existential crisis.
What was the darkest moment of your journey as a founder and what did it teach you? I'll say the one that stuck out to me the most was actually a moment very early on at DoorDash. It was maybe 9 months into the company. It was September 2013. DoorDash has just been around for a few months. Uh, and I remember, uh, this was also the night of the first Stanford home football game. Everyone was excited for the game. They wanted to order food. And also it was raining hard that night. So, and for us, like when it's pouring rain, that's when demand spikes. And we were just completely unprepared that evening. Orders just kept flooding in. And of course it ended up being a complete disaster. You know, like, and then a lot of the time for a lot of these customers, this was the first time they ever used DoorDash. And it was like the worst experience possible. Like they're never going to use DoorDash again. And oh, by the way, like we probably have about 4 weeks of runway, 3 weeks of runway left. So, so we got back and it's like everything was disastrous and we're like, holy crap, what the hell just happened? And it's like, like no one's ever going to use DoorDash again. And so the question became like, what do you do in that moment?
