Ryan NisbetOperations, Delphi · Operations at Delphi

The Darkest Moment in DoorDash's History

3 Nov 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:00

In this first‑person recount, a DoorDash founder describes the company’s most critical early crisis in September 2013. On the night of a Stanford home football game, heavy rain caused a sudden surge in food‑delivery demand. DoorDash, only a few months old and fresh out of Y Combinator, was completely unprepared: orders were delayed by about two hours, threatening customer trust. With roughly three weeks of cash runway left, the team chose to refund all affected orders, a decision that consumed about 40% of their remaining cash. To preserve reputation, the team spent the night writing handwritten apology notes and hand‑baking cookies, delivering them to each affected household, emphasizing a customer‑first ethos despite the severe financial strain.

Chapters

What was the darkest moment of your journey as a founder? It's September 2013. DoorDash has just been around for a few months. I remember this was also the night of the first Stanford home football game. They wanted to order food and also it was raining hard that night. So when it's pouring rain, that's when demand spikes. We were just completely unprepared that evening. Everything was late by 2 hours and it was like the worst experience possible. Like they're never going to use DoorDash again. Oh, by the way, like, we probably have about 3 weeks of runway left. We just got out of YC, but you should have the whole— you should get your order refunded. So when we did the math, it was— it actually worked out to about 40% of what the amount of cash we had remaining. We pressed the refund button. We also spent all night writing handwritten apology notes. All the egregious deliveries, we actually hand-baked cookies and delivered to every one of these homes that evening. We are the company that's going to do what's right for the customer.