Today, I'm here with Tony Xu. Pretty amazing, actually, you came from China really young, worked very hard, did all kinds of jobs, you know, got to Stanford, started, you know, this incredible company which is now kind of the biggest food delivery company in America, about to conquer the world, made billions, gave lots of them away in philanthropy. I mean, basically, I'm sitting here in front of the American dream. What are your reflections about your journey?

Well, I, I, I think that it's impossible to predict how things go for you, you know, as you think about these things. I think it's, you know, as you recounted that list of experiences, it's only one that can be told backwards. It's not one that when I was, you know, mowing lawns and at the age of seven trying to save up money for Nintendo games or Duck Hunts, uh, or washing dishes in my Mom's restaurant, could I have predicted what would have happened later on. But I think it's just, you know, how incredible, you know, can can be if you you know, put your mind to things, work hard, and get lucky.

How hard have you worked? Probably not as hard as as as as a lot of people, but um, now I've been very fortunate, you know, I, I, I, I think that working hard certainly is something that has um, always really been in my family. I mean, I think this really comes from my parents, right? Both of them came to the US, um, brought me from China to Illinois when I was five, and you know, I really didn't get to see them that much, not because of neglect or anything, but because they were trying to put food on the table. We came to the US with $250 in the bank, and my dad was a full-time waiter as he was getting his PhD. My mom was working three jobs a day for, you know, 12 years before she actually can save up enough money to, you know, practice what she always wanted to do, which was open up a medical clinic. But it took a while for her family to kind of get our foundation and footing in the US, but you know, thanks to them, I got to, you know, really live off of the fruits of their labor, and um, you know, carve out my own path.

And what do you think, what do you think it does to ambitions to come from kind of, uh, you know, to work to work one's way up like that? I think it can have multiple effects, you know, I think sometimes when you grow up in a situation where you don't necessarily see a lot of outs or a lot of ways to progress your current situation, that can be somewhat demotivating. But at the same time, I think, um, you know, it also gives you a lot of independence. You know, when I was a kid, I spent most of the time by myself, right? I learned English by playing basketball and watching TV. You know, I named myself Tony after Tony Danza, you know, from who's the boss.

And and that you did on your own initiative. Found extraordinary. Well, nobody could pronounce my name, you know, nobody could pronounce my Chinese name, that is. And so, but but you know, from from being independent, you know, early on, um, you know, I learned both about good good decisions and and bad decisions, right? And I think, um, it put me in environments where I had to be quite agile, um, you know, to to adapt to whatever the circumstances. I I changed schools a lot when I was a kid growing up because my parents were always trying to progress our economic situation so that I can attend better schools. I moved probably four or five schools in my, you know, Elementary to middle school years, um, and as a result, I think of those experiences, it it it it wasn't as if like it increased massively my levels of ambition, but it's certainly increased the practice at a very young age for independent thinking.

So first of all, what do you think it's uh, what do you think it means to change schools and we we we hear that from C from some various CEOs that they moved quite a bit, they talk about it uh, as helping their agility and so on. What what are your what what is your view on that? Well, I think it's pretty tough, you know, to to to to know this when you're you know, a very young person, um, but you know, I guess looking backwards, it almost always made you appreciate feeling like what it meant to be the outsider, um, or the underdog if you will, right? You're always in the out Community before you can become a member of the in community in terms of you know, gaining friendship or you know, getting privileged to certain circles inside the school, um, but I I I I think it you know, for me, it taught me that, you know, there's value in every interaction that you can be friends with people in a school that's known for teen pregnancy sadly or a school that's known for gifted children or everything in between, and I think as a result of that, it just increased the rate at which I learned probably I I don't think I intentionally knew this when I was a child, um, but whether it was, you know, playing lots of basketball or doing lots of math and um, you know, I got to play in different spheres and I think, you know, probably develop in a way that was, you know, quite healthy, um, it, you know, again, showed me the value of interaction, every interaction, um, that there is a superpower in everybody, uh, and to look for that, and I think if you can do that collectively, you can do great things.

What were the important steps before you started as Stanford? Well, one of the first moments I I remember in adulthood is really graduating from college where my background was in math. I wanted to be a cancer researcher and so I did lots of work in Labs, um, where the work was done at the intersection of mathematics and biology, you know, it was a fairly young field at the time, maybe 20 to 30 years old or something like that. Today, I I I think it's quite Advanced especially with the recent developments in large language models, compute, AI, um, but back then I I I think it was it was just kind of in its Inception or its formation, um, and I thought I was going to do that and and and and do and pursue graduate step studies and and and all of that jazz, um.

But my world actually 180d um at graduation where I decided to not um start the graduate program in which I was accepted, um, but instead uh 180 into a world of business which I had no experience in. I had why did that happen? Well, I in one of the um uh admit weekend activities where you get to visit you know, the lab that you would be, you know, a part of, I realized that you know, of the four or five students that would be um members of that lab, I didn't feel the most committed and for something that would be a 12year journey actually that would have been a 12-year Journey, um, as a 21-year-old, um, I, you know, made the decision that I, you know, that there might be something else for me.

You must have learned science, you must have picked this up pretty fast, done well. Yeah, you know, thanks to the awesome teammates and and colleagues I had of I did, but but you know, I think it it what that experience taught me was that I think for me to have gone to Berkeley, which is where I completed my undergraduate studies that in many ways, life had already given me so much more than maybe what it's given some other people that I'm going to be okay, and and I think that had a pretty formative opinion, um, for me in terms of just something to remind me that it's probably okay to take, you know, more risk and the fact that McKenzie actually worked out pretty well for me, um, just, you know, added more confirmation to that bias.

What did you do at Stanford then? I think Stanford was a fantastic um journey into thinking about actually myself more so than developing necessarily professional skills, and what I mean by that is um, on one hand, I thought it it was a fairly, you know, expensive use of time. I don't necessarily just mean in terms of tuition or or things like this, but you know, you're sometimes your most productive in your 20s, and so those disproportionately expensive years of my career, um, but on the other hand, you know, the thesis that that I had made for Stanford U or or just for business school, I should say in general, um, was really to think, you know, what are what are other types of skills that I want to develop as well as what are um, things that, you know, I I I truly would want to go and do, um, and and and to take, you know, maybe a little bit of time away from just, you know, working hard every single day, um, to actually go and figure that out.

And the skills that you wanted to acquire there, what were they? Well, so, you know, when when I thought about my journey, a lot of the journey, whether it's growing up as an only child and then moving around a lot, um, or moving in high school from Illinois to California, um, or um, even working in a lab, you know, in research, most or as working as an analyst at McKenzie or um, or or or or or at eBay, most of those work experiences were um, isolated experiences or or or or very solo Journeys, if you will, where most of my contributions um, were measured by what I individually contributed, right? And and I learned a lot by doing hopefully what was considered great work, um, and and uh, but at the same time, I also learned that great things, you know, get accomplished with teams, and I didn't have that much experience working with other people.

Now business school, you know, in of itself does not offer that, but you know, particularly at Stanford, there was this emphasis um, that you know, working well with others and figuring out how to motivate, you know, not just people that are similar to you or motivated similarly the way that I'm motivated, um, that was a big, um, selling point of uh, the curriculum, and it's something that uh, I still try to get better at every day.

Now then you um, set up with some friends what was then Paulo Alto delivery and now door Dash, how did you come up with that? Yeah, so all of us came together because we were excited about local businesses, that's the motivating theme for each of us, and I know A lot's been told about my background, but if you were to look at the backgrounds of my co-founders and their family histories, you know, they also have experience with small business too.

And so the four of us kind of spoke with hundreds of local business owners, you know, some of these people were restaurant tours, others sold retail items, and it was interesting when we asked them, hey, show us all of what you do in a day that when we followed them around, um, there was this one Baker, um, who ran a macaroon shop on University Avenue in Pal Alto, um, who showed us a booklet of delivery orders she had she had refused which to us was quite surprising, you know, a that you would turn down people wanting to pay you and B the significance of that decision given the fact that she was a oneperson shop and that you know, those orders really were the difference of making payroll or having some extra padded, you know, insurance money, you know, for the business.

And and so we started um, you know, from that Discovery talking to more businesses about this issue and and and it was surprising this was 2013 that while delivery was not a new idea that no one in America outside of pizza places um, or certain cities like New York City offer delivery and that was true in restaurants and that was certainly true Beyond restaurants.

So then you sit down with your with your mates and figured okay, let's start at company. Well, well, so there are few there are a few things that we were thinking about and and so we said, okay, well, if our goal is to help local businesses and we found this discovery that delivery could be a need, the question is, well, do consumers actually want this product because you know, we live in a very capitalistic Market in the US and so a lot of times business ideas um, perhaps were not started because nobody wanted them to be started.

And and so you know, we wanted to test a few different ideas, you know, the first is do consumers actually want delivery from stores that never offer delivery before, you know, second would stores actually want to partner with us and you know, pay us, you know, to help them get new customers, and three, could we attract and recruit, you know, a group of drivers who would be willing to work for a wage that we could afford, and so that was really how we thought about it. In many ways, it was a hypothesis of what needed to be true in order to start the company.

And then the reason why we chose restaurants was because we thought well, if delivery was going to be the way in which we made a difference for local businesses and we wanted to build the largest um, you know, delivery Network or and with the highest quality and the lowest cost, well, you need the most amount of order density and with order density, you kind of need two things, you need lots of frequency of activity and you need lots of coverage.

So one uh, of these two um, requirements was an observation we made and the other was a bet. So the observation we made was if you looked across every category of local retail in America, restaurants has the highest count of stores. It didn't at that time have the highest dollar spend, but there's a million restaurants as an an example versus say just, you know, a couple hundred thousand grocery stores as a as a Counterpoint, um, so that's why we started with restaurants, but and the bet would be that if you can start with restaurants that there would be the most frequency of activity with the most number of stores that that would generate the most order density, which would make it easier to build the last mile Network for any other category.

Tell me about the first order you got. The first order we got actually happened on a Saturday, January 12th, um, 2013. So we um, shipped pal alod delivery.com. Okay, this was the most minimal version of a minimal viable product where in 45 minutes we built a website with eight PDF menus, right? There's no way to order, the only way you can order is to call a Google Voice number that rang the cell phones of the four Founders. Yeah, so a customer in in Menlo Park actually placed an order. I think the only way he found us because the order was placed 45 minutes or so after we launched the website was literally by typing in Palo alod delivery.com in the browser because Google I don't think would have, you know, indexed our our name at the point yet, um, but he placed um, you know, for himself a, you know, an order from Bangkok Cuisine, um, and and and and it was it was two items, it was um, chicken Pat thae and it was spring rolls, and so pretty good basically it sounded delicious.

So he Rings, he he he he calls in I I one of my co-founders answers, he's in the car with me, I'm in my 2001 Honda at the time, and we are literally um, you know, about to drive home, you know, from from campus, but instead we detour and go to Bangkok Cuisine, place a takeout order, bring the order to his house. So you did it yourself? We did it ourselves. And then we um, went in and and I I I was an intern um, the previous summer at square and so I had a lot of these Square card readers it at the time it was this white register product that you can insert into the Jack of the iPhone and so that's how we accept the payments.

What did you feel? It was awesome. It was uh, it was in some ways not believable that somehow he found us, we were shocked he found us, you know, um, so I and and and and you know, as as they say with, you know, entrepreneurial Journeys, um, you may have this amazing feeling of euphoria when when you launch and then quickly that's followed by a trough of Sorrow.

The trough of Sorrow followed pretty quickly thereafter where you know, it wasn't that easy to get, you know, the next set of orders for the first few months. And how did it so how did it scale? I mean, how yeah, what happened? Yeah.

So we effectively were a delivery service at the time for the Stanford campus, right? So we're still students, you got to remember at the time, um, and so we're students, we're running the service, so we're taking classes, you know, in the daytime and at lunch, we take turns, you know, doing deliveries, we would call and take turns dispatching by calling in the orders and then using find my friends, the iPhone app to track where you know, each of us four founder drivers were, we're the only drivers you you know, of the service were, and then we would dispatch the orders ourselves, right? Um, we were the human algorithm, you know, behind the scene, and um, we we did this for about four or five months before we um, applied to Y combinator and um, we launched uh, officially as door Dash June 21st of 2013 in the summer 2013 batch out of YC.

How many deliveries do you have now per year? Per year, I I I believe the last reported number is is is in the billions, um, but uh, so from one to billions, yeah.

When you when you set it up, what was kind of the the Dre The Dream? What what was the biggest that you thought could happen to this? So it's funny you ask that question because that's literally the question why commentator asks you in the application. So I wrote the application just to feel that why commentator that's Sam that's samman's at one point right? Yeah, so so so Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, and others founded why combinator um, which is this incubator program in Silicon Valley um, that helps, you know, start companies um, uh, Sam mman to your point um, at one point ran YC today Gary tan leads YC um, and uh, but one of the questions um, as as part certainly in the 2013 era that they asked in the application was how big can this service be or how big can your product be? How much revenue do you think you'll earn by year seven or I think it was some version of the question and I think at the time for Consumer companies, we were we were studying, you know, achieving a 100 million I dollar of Revenue was a very significant Milestone and so I just remember writing uh, you know, doing some sanity math about well today we launched in paloalto or we operate in paloalto how many paloalto do there have to exist and how many orders in each pal Alto do we have to complete such that we can generate $100 million of Revenue and that was the math I remember answering so $100 million is kind of what I answered thankfully I was off by a couple orders of magnitude dude um, but you know, these are things that are hard to predict.

So what what are the important Milestones from that stage until now? There are many along the way, you know, and I think it it you know, it it really helped that when we started the company, we did have this organizing framework that was really centered on our audiences, our customers, right? So we have we have three kinds of customers, we have consumers, we have Merchants at the time, there were restaurants, today, they span all of retail, and then there are um, there are Dashers, the drivers on our platform, and we really, you know, for door Das to work from day one, we had this you know, belief that it has to work for all of these audiences, it can't just work for one of the audiences or or two of the audiences, it really has to work for everyone, and so that was a nice organizing framework for us to figure out okay, great, you made it work at Stanford, can you make this work in Palo Alto, then can you make this work in a larger area like San Jose, um, you know, and and and and and how extensible is the service, right? Can you repeat this in places of all social economic backgrounds and populations, and so that was really the journey I would argue between 2013 and 2016 where we proved to ourselves that a we could make it work for all the audiences and make a dollar doing it and B that we can actually launch this in a mainstream way.

And what were the set what were the main setbacks? Oh, there are many, um, so did you like nearly die during this period? Sometimes, many times. I mean, between 2013 and 2018, you know, the company almost always felt broke, and you know, I was singularly responsible for it because as CEO, one of my key or maybe sole job responsibilities, top priorities is to make sure we never run out of cash, but it was really hard. The fundraising process, you know, I remember there were three years between 2016 and 2018, you know, it's about a thousand days where I felt like I was wandering in the desert asking for money from investors, um, uh, you know, for people to to fund door Dash, and it was it was so so what kept you going?

On there's never one answer, you know, I I I think because you know, at some point, you know, willpower gives out, right? And and you need something beyond that, and for us, you know, I think one of the lessons I learned, you know, through throughout that journey and and and even in some of the tough moments early on in the company's life is that while you have this Grand Vision and Mission as the entrepreneur that you're always holding on to, it's really the team that dictates your day-to-day satisfaction, and if you can build a culture where it feels like yes, you want to win and yes, you want to do all the things for the customer and it feels like you're playing for one another and playing, you know, for the team versus just playing for yourself, um, it's a lot easier to get through whatever the moments are because it's a lot easier to have, you know, at the time there's about 250 of us, you know, go through this together versus just me singlehandedly trying to do this on my own.

And look I mean it doesn't mean that there weren't losses, right? We you know, we had a quarter of the team, you know, maybe a little less but close to a quarter of the team who decided that maybe there were greener pastures elsewhere because you know, you see the bank account declining every single week where highly transparent High ownership company where we report out on numbers and and and I understand that and and but but if you think about the people that remain and and stuck with it and perhaps this is you know, one version of survivorship bias, but for the people that remained that you know, hung in there long enough and won by building a product because we didn't have any access to Dollar so there was no marketing spend or things like this that had a product that had higher retention and Order frequency so that we can then get lucky enough to get an investor or two to say Yes, um that you know, that group of people um, I think share a bond that is very very very difficult impossible to break.

Now you started with food and then you broaden out you now do groceries you do uh, you know, other things too what what are you um, what's what's the um, limitations here in terms of what you can deliver?

Well, if you can deliver ice cream cold or pizza a hot, you basically can deliver anything and so that was you know, part of the thesis of again starting with prepared meals not just because of the order density perspective, but also from what you're talking about which is the logistics capability so you know, we've effectively built the most sophisticated Point too system um, where you know, any business can deliver to any consumer and back any business can deliver to any other business and and look there's a long ways to go you know, I I think there's the logistics element to how hard this is as you go from you know, category a to category B to you know, other categories but there's also just organizing the information that's offline you know, none of this information exists if you we're sitting today in Los Angeles if we wanted to ask where's the last parking space in Downtown LA that's a really important question for Dashers who want to be doing deliveries or if we wanted to ask you know, where can we find the last you know, bottle of coke um, uh, you know, at a particular price point very few stores know that information right and and I think while there's an amazing Revolution happening certainly with large language models online today there's still so much information that is Offline that still needs to be organized and assembled.

You talked previously about um, you know, Wars you say there were two Wars there is a war on on bits and there is a war on atoms what do you what do you mean by that?

I think if you think about what's happening in technology um, today and and this is I think even true Beyond technology, you know, we have you know, one world where it's a digital first or possibly digital only world where there is a lot of dynamic behavior in the environment thanks to llms, but also just thanks to a lot of people vying for the consumer's attention, right? Who ultimately want to be that Center Point that digital assistant for your life, right? And and and there's a big battle going on right now, but there's also another you know, War um, where we're talking about physical atoms where you know, people like ourselves are trying to organize all of the offline information and we're also trying to deliver, you know, all of, you know, the products and help local businesses grow incrementally as well as build their own capabilities for their first-party channels.

And I think that you know, what's interesting, you know, is that there's lots of activity happening in both of these Arenas and I also think there's going to be over time intersection between the Arenas, but I think right now there's so much interesting activity, you know, just just happening in developments, you know, that literally are progressing by the day and by the hour in both worlds.

Now you were expanded outside the US as well, um, well, you expanded to Scandinavia, you B Vault yeah, yeah, yeah, door Das is now live in you know, about 30 countries worldwide, 29 outside of the US and you're totally right, um, we teamed up with an awesome company called volt um, who is headquartered in Helsinki so the Nordic um, uh, and um, they you know, they actually Mickey um, kusy who's the founder and CEO of volt actually leads all of D das's International efforts.

So how many different experiments are you running? Well, we run a lot of experiments and and um, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you know, that's a reflection of how many different uh, uh, you know, projects we have. So door Dash has always been a company where the bias for Action is the way we solve and settle debates. We don't analyze a lot, um, or debate a lot, we tend to ship um, lots of experiments, you know, hundreds to thousands of experiments per week, recognizing that most of them will not make it to our audiences, most of them will not make it to customers, consumers, merchants, or Dashers. On the one hand, you can argue that feel feels really unfortunate and there's a lot of just productive energy going away, but the way we think about it is it's about how fast we can learn and how fast we can fix things, um, and if we can do that, um, well, then then then then then hopefully we've earned, you know, another rung in the ladder of satisfying a consumer.

One thing we've learned so so hope FSE can you trial and fail and move on? Well, I mean, I think with experiments that can probably happen in hours, but but but building businesses you you need more than one type of skill, one type of skill we're talking about here is this learning agility and speed of execution and the willingness to try and fail, but there also you know, is I I would say, you know, another side of business building which is really hard sometimes to keep, you know, um, uh, in conjunction, you know, with this willingness to learn, which is the ability um, to have the patience and the long-term conviction um, that you know, perhaps the um, path that we're traveling on is the wrong one, but at least where we're going is the right place.

And and I think you know, that's been true in door das's life in each one of the businesses we have about five businesses now that we we operate, but as we think about inventing business numb 6789 etc etc etc, you know, we have to keep an open mind to have two different systems in which we operate.

So now I work for you and you say, hey, Nikolai, um, could you go and check out this thing? I do this experiment, it's a failure. I come back to you and say, t Tony, I'm really sorry, I've, you know, screwed it up there. How do you react?

I would ask what is did you learn? And you know, I think one of the things that is, you know, so important to contextualize as the entrepreneur, um, on a New Journey is that there's always elements of skill and elements of luck, and you need both as the entrepreneur, you know, I think that when we were founding door Dash, we made some good decisions about what to prioritize, how much to bet on certain dimensions of how a consumer will judge us versus a merchant versus a a Dasher, and there's some points, you know, that we scored from the skill category, but there was a lot of luck around how large these categories could be or that if we made certain decisions to, you know, invest more in this market versus that market, um, you know, it's it's not always something that you get to know in advance otherwise it wouldn't be an entrepreneurial Journey.

I think right now the answer is we don't know and we're trying our best to learn as fast as possible so we certainly have been playing um, with a lot of the advancements in large language models, you know, pretty much for the last you know, two or three years and certainly it's become even more popularized over that period of time and we've seen glimpses of of a lot of um, success um, especially as we think about how can we help organize the physical world um, and build data sets from that and use AI to understand how to fill out those cataloges, um, we've seen AI in in in in other use cases whether it's, you know, helping us with customer support or detecting fraud, um, there's lots of you know, use cases and I think, you know, the best way to kind of think about where we are is just we're very small percentage of the progress bar. It's one we're very bullish on in terms of the general technology, but you know, in terms of you know, Finding, you know, the the the the Home Run I guess that the Mantra we have right now is about making sure that it's about having enough shots on goal where we don't know the Silver Bullet, you know, answer to your question about what is the, you know, know killer application with respect to some of the advances in llms as it applies to our kind of business, um, but we're learning quickly.

Who else is trying to organize the physical world the way you are? Well, I think it's happening in Pockets, you know, I think what's so hard about this is that um, unless it's your mission to grow and to empower local economies where you know, you're on this many multi-decade Journey where that is the sole source of what you want to do, I think it's really hard um, and and and and that's why I think in the past, it's mostly been done in Pockets, right? You know, some people will organize I don't know parts of retail, other people might organize, you know, parts of services, other people might organize parts of department stores and and I think what's what's um, you know, both daunting as well as exciting for us at door Das is just the enormity of the challenge that you know, we see ahead of us where we do want to be both the infrastructure in the um, in in the physical world for every city we operate in and we also want to connect every local Merchant with every local consumer and I think, you know, doing these things are just it's only two things but it's going to take many decades.

At the same time, you try to kind of put yourself out of business. Well, we're always trying to make sure that we're inventing a better product. One of the things that I've learned is that consumers are never satisfied, there is all like no consumer is going to remember the fact that you know, we've delivered faster today than a year ago, they're just going to expect us to deliver faster, you know, a year from now or or even tomorrow, right? And and no consumer is going to ever, you know, ask us to increase our prices or lower our selection or make worse our customer support.

So I think, you know, instead it's I I think building the fortitude as well as the team with the mentality that um, we always have to invent new businesses, but we also must understand the importance that we always have to keep getting better at the main thing too, right? It's it's like you have optimization on one side and Innovation on the other and they require very different Management Systems, they also require to hold both of these things in your head at the same time.

What kind of culture do you need at door Dash to achieve this? I think you need um, you know, several things to come together because I'm I'm glad you asked about um, you know, the culture that that might be the only thing that actually allows you to achieve, you know, um, you know, all of these Ambitions and build all of the products which is I think it's first and foremost, start with a very high ownership High accountability kind of culture where if you think about what we do um, it's more of a utility service versus an entertainment system, right? So if we mess up and we don't bring you your products um, that is extremely disappointing in the eyes of the consumer that's a lost sale which is um, you know, for a business that might be uh, very thin on margins and it's a lost work opportunity um, you know, for a driver.

I mean it really is a reflection of the local economy the way I see it is if you think about GDP and where it gets created most GDP is still produced by the small medium and large businesses physically inside every city and they also these businesses describe the personalities of why we choose to live in Los Angeles or Oslo or San Francisco or other great cities and I think in order for that to stay vibrant and true where we live in a world where all of these businesses will be successful instead of a world where there might just be success at the hands of one or two you know Merchants, then we have to um, take great ownership and seriousness of of that responsibility. I think it starts there.

So how do you find so so now so you talk about accountability and and and ownership so here you interview me now for a job how do you figure out whether I have it? I don't think there are any magical interview questions. I think most of these things, you know, know happen through listening um, than than necessarily asking the perfect interview question. I recognize it's a bit ironic as we're talking about this in a podcast, but but but you know, for instance, I I'll give some examples, right? So when we talk about, you know, High accountability, if I see a senior executive come and you know, the first thing they tell me um, in the in the you know, interview is here are the five reasons why you should not hire me, that's a very different communication mechanism or Choice than someone who just tells me all the wonderful things that they've accomplished, right?

I mean, you know, something else we look for is this, you know, strong bias for action. One of our, you know, um, early Builders at door Das and he's still someone who works with us, but but in in a in a smaller capacity, um, was Christopher Payne, um, you know, who who was our chief was our first Chief Operating Officer and president, you know, he uh, I remember spoke with on a Friday for about 4 hours, um, in 2016 and later that evening like, you know, within a matter of a couple hours basically he and his 13-year-old son Andrew at the time, um, 13 at the time, you know, they literally went out and just did deliveries for three or four hours. That's a high bias for Action. I didn't ask him to do that. I didn't say, hey, can you tell me what's wrong with our Logistics system? No, he just went out and did deliveries and figured it out, right?

You know, we we care about people who operate at the lowest level of detail because the physical world is messy and everything is an edge case so you know, our first our former CFO our current president prier darkart prier shows up in my first interview or conversation where he brings a 10 megabyte file that's a model of what our financial projections would look like, you know, for the next five years. I didn't ask this was a this was a coffee it was supposed to be a coffee chat what turned out, you know, to be a 4-Hour examination of unit economics and you know, the progression of, you know, our markets and our performance, right?

We look for people who can hold two opposing truths at the same time, right? So people who are not dogmatic in how they think we look at people who are great at building teams, so we look at the track record that doesn't have to come from an interview. We look at people who have strong followership, um, because it takes a team to to sustain in order to win, and so we look at, you know, when people move jobs for example, you know, so even before the interview, we look at when they move jobs, how many people literally follow them MH and you know, so these are some of the things we call them the attributes of Excellence that we look for in building a culture that I think you know, can meet the demands of what we're trying to do at door Dash.

This um, ability to get people to follow you or being a talent magnet um, is key here. What why do people want to follow you? What is it that you have as a leader which makes it attractive to work for you, you think? Well, I think you should ask that I already would love to work for you, so you you got already lined up I think you should ask them Nikolai, but but I look I I think one of the things I always believe and I believe and I told you this at the onset of our conversation today is that I believe that everyone has a superpower and it's my job as the leader to get it out of them and give them the maximum exposure for for that superpower and and I hope that superpower uh, that that exposure will always be at door Dash, right? I hope that to be true, but even if it's not true and it has to be somewhere else, I think you know, maximizing someone's strength is is is is really really important.

And and so I think one of the things that people have appreciated when they come to Door Dash is that it's a place um, that sets a high bar, you know, for for achievement and and and excellence, and I think, you know, people who are very motivated tend to be motivated similarly. It's a place that you know, is very rigorous and um, maniacal about um, the the the the outcomes, but but but we very flexible on how we get there. It's a place that bets on people perhaps before their resume has achieved maybe The credibility to deserve or warrant that job opportunity. It's a place that is willing to take, you know, risks um, um, sometimes that's time risk, sometimes that's Financial Risk, sometimes that's operating risk, um, and I think, you know, all of this sums up it's a place where we are trying to make you the best version of yourself and and hopefully, you know, one of the aspirations I always have had at door Dash is it's not to just make you successful at door Das that's great, but really if you know, if we are successful as As Leaders at door Das if you know, the day that you left door Das and decided to do whatever you know, happened to be next for you that you are so confident that you can achieve, you know, that scale of ambition than we've done our job.

What is your superpower? Sometimes I'm still trying to figure that out, but but I think one of um, the things that I find a lot of joy and um, spend a lot of time on is spending time with people um, that have more Talent than they do experience and identifying those people early but also giving them um, exposure in the right ways that so that means you don't just you know, give them maximum exposure and just you know, let them sink or swim, but you know, giving them the right amount of support um, while pushing them, you know, um, to the edge so that they still have their confidence so that they can achieve the next level much faster than they otherwise would have.

You are on the board of U meta, you know, um, Facebook basically um, what are you learning there that you have taken into your business I think sometimes um,

One of the hardest things to keep up as you become more and more successful um, and when you talk about meta you're talking about, you know, a family of apps, right? That are used by more often than you know, any other products in the world um, and you're talking about audacious bets in AI in reality Labs um, and building, you know, the next ecosystem.

I think to see that constant Drive despite all of the success it already has achieved is astounding because it means that the company has an enormous willingness to fail. If you think about it, they're still trying to invent new things whether it's in AI or in the metaverse and some of these ecosystems, you know, certainly are not here yet, some of which might be many years away to have the willingness I think to perhaps go against the wisdom of the crowd um, to do that to have the courage of their conviction um, to to do that both in the new as well as the existing, you know, that the family of apps with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and many other fantastic products, I think that's super inspiring and I think it's, you know, it's a great um, almost like look forward for for for for me and and and and I think others where you can see both management styles of running scaled businesses and inventing the new, you know, the other thing I've learned is just um, how great um, the leadership team at meta is at building the Next Generation, you know, meta is a company that largely not not entirely but largely has been built from within um, in terms of um, uh, mentoring and and giving the opportunities, you know, across the board um, across various products and I think, you know, that that also is something that resonates quite a lot with how we think about talent development at doores.

How do you relax? I uh, I love to exercise so I um, and I heard you do have Norwegian kind of exercise regime, right?

I've tried I've tried it's called the Norwegian 4x4 which is one of the most proven exercises scientifically to increase your V2 Max um, although I would say it's a it's a difficult workout and I wouldn't recommend it if you've never ran before that's not the first exercise I'd recommend for you um, but you know for me I really believe in routines as a way to find balance and normaly or or balance may not be the right word but but to integrate my life and my work right and so for me right now and and routines can change you know, your life circumstances can change um, I started door Das as a single you know, person and I was dating but you know, now I'm married with two kids and my life is very different from you know, 10 11 years ago right and and so now my routines are you know, continuously exercising still I still exercise every single day um, it for me that used to mean you know, running and and and and a lot of it was distance running um, today that's shifted and morphed into other types of sports whether it's you know, weight training or Jiu-Jitsu um, trying a new types of sport Beyond just running.

What do you read? Uh, I try my best to keep up in Reading, um, although that's been a bit light recently. I I try my best to read, you know, books, um, every month. I'm a big fan of non-fiction, so I you read history, yeah, a lot of history, but but a lot of it is different from my wife who who is a an exclusive reader fiction, so we we we don't really have overlapping necessarily reading interests, but and what kind of History do you read what you find useful?

A lot, you know, one of the things I like to I love to read about real people, you know, I think one of the things is I truly believe that life is more interesting and entertaining sometimes Than Fiction, I I think some of these things you just cannot invent and U well some tell me some of the real people you've you admire have read. Well, there's a lot, you know, and so I don't I don't want to necessarily single out any any particular um, you know, leader, but I've really enjoyed, you know, histories and biographies around, you know, military leaders um, or different Wars that have you you know, um, been been started or the study of Industries or the study of businesses um, that that that more is not necessarily a business school, you know, per se textbook, but more a a a book actually about the business and the people that you know, at the beginnings of that company and and you know, trying their best to to not not you know, tell the story backwards, but but but really to tell the story from the perspective of when things were happening and and I think it just goes to show you how incredible humanity is.

And when when are you going to write the story about does uh, probably not anytime soon, but um, but you look our our story is still evolving, we're a 10-year-old company, and so I can't believe it on one hand that it's been 10 years on the other hand, I still remember the apartment in which you know, my co-founders and I built the company out of.

What is your advice to young people? How young are we talking? We are talking 20.

I think one of the things I would say is to be proud of the person in the mirror. I think that sometimes young people um, get thrown lots of advice, you know, from their parents, from their friends, from social media, from the news and it's really easy to get lost in the wind. I I was almost that way would are the thing that make you you know, who you are? What is your superpower? What are the routines that describe you such that you feel like work is not work that you would do you know, this for free or that the type of people you enjoy spending time with the people that give you energy the people that replenish you and look it doesn't get figured out overnight. I'm still trying my best to figure this out, but I think sometimes the world's advice isn't about being proud of the person in the mirror, it's about chasing you know, some Shadow or finding the ne next exciting thing to be excited about and I get that topically like I'm super curious about lots of different things intellectually but I think you know, the ways to build strategy whether it's for your life or for your work is you kind of have to bet on the things that don't change and I think one of the things you have to bet on is to figure out what are the things that you're you know, truly you know, that that were really gifts given to you um, that naturally make you you know, really excel at something and I think if you can do that and figure that out in terms of what it means for your personal life, I think you're going to live a very satisfied life.

Well Tony, you should be really proud of the person in the mirror and uh, this has been a real well conversation for me. Likewise, thanks Nikolai. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. Appreciate it.