Advice Line with Tony Xu of Doordash

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And you can also send us a voice memo at [email protected] and make sure to tell us how to reach you. And also, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. It's full of insights and ideas from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs you can sign up for free at gyros.com or on substack. And we'll put all of his info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Tony Xu, the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash. Tony, welcome back to the show. It's good to be back. You were first on the show way back in 2018. Of course, it tells the origin story of DoorDash. And for those of you who missed it, we will put a link to it in the show notes. It's a super awesome episode. It's about how Tony worked at the same restaurant where his mom worked when he was a kid because they emigrated to the US when you were like four. You changed your name to Tony because you love the show, Who's the Boss? And it's star Tony Danza, which is such a funny star. Love that story. And of course, how you came up with the idea for a food delivery business while you were at Stanford at the business school. An idea that I should mention was met with a considerable amount of skepticism at the time, right? Yeah, absolutely. And in part because people probably thought, well, the logistics and all the costs associated costs, the margins are going to be terrible. I think when you were on the show in 2018, DoorDash had done something like a hundred million deliveries at that point. And I think as of last year, I read you processed over two and a half billion orders. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. That magnitude of change is hard to comprehend sometimes, but yes, a lot has changed in a short period of time. I mean, it's amazing. DoorDash is now the largest food delivery service in the world. Tony, I know that today, obviously you guys are continuing to build DoorDash into an even bigger, broader platform for local commerce logistics, even expanding into grocery and retail. International markets, I've used some of the other brands that you've acquired, like Walt and Deliveroo, and which I think is still a process. Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the things going on with DoorDash now? What is the sort of vision for expanding the platform? Sure. So, you know, when you and I last spoke seven years ago, we were largely a single product, so restaurant delivery, single geography, United States company. And that occupied, you know, well over 99% of what we did. Today, DoorDash is a business with, you know, five big areas. Obviously, we still bring you lunch and dinner inside the U.S. We, as you mentioned, expanded about five years ago into other categories, delivering you groceries, convenience items, retail items. We now do this also internationally, so you mentioned that, you know, a couple acquisitions that we've announced. We now operate in over 35 countries. We have a B2B business where we help you do delivery from your own channel or help you with online ordering from your own app or your own website. That's amazing. One of the things that I was was wondering about, right? Because when you launched, when you started it out, it was called Palo Alto Delivery Service, which doesn't, doesn't flow off the tongue quite as easily as DoorDash. It was, I think, just, it was like 8 PDF menus and a Google voice number that went to you or warning your founders, co-founders. Yes. How, how were you measuring success? Like, was it, was it from the interest and engagement from, from restaurants or is it from people ordering from the platform? Like, how did you know this was sticking? Yeah. And you're right. There are three questions, actually, to know whether or not the idea for DoorDash would work. But the first question really was would consumers care if we made available all restaurants for delivery? You know, in 2013, only about 10 to 15% of restaurants offered their own delivery. And what we looked for really was how often would consumers order and come back without a discount or some sort of a marketing incentive? The other questions, of course, well, one will, will restaurants actually want to partner with us in adding incremental sales to their kitchens? And the final question was would drivers, the dashers, we call them on our platform, would they actually want to partner with us? Yeah. You know, every once in a while, I'll be on LinkedIn and that video. There's a video of you and your three other co-founders, your pitch video for Y Combinator in 2013. And it's so fun to look at because you guys are so young and just naive and bright eyed and very kind of just, you know, humble. And it's hard to imagine 2013 today, this is a company with a market cap of over $100 billion. I mean, you know, you're, it's just unbelievable to see how quickly it's growing. But during that in that time, I mean, there's been a lot of stress, right? Like we talk even back in 2018, we talked about about on the show how, you know, a certain point Uber saw what you were doing. And Uber was a giant of a he-mith and they started competitor service Uber Eats. How have you managed stress over the years of trying to do a lot of things, of dealing with competitors, of just, you know, changing laws in different states? Like how do you manage all of that and handle the company? What are some of the things you do? Yeah. I think one of the principles that helps a lot, at least for me, is just focusing on what I can control. I don't get to control a lot of things. And just starting by, you know, almost writing on a list of things of what not to worry about. I can't control where their competitors do how much, you know, financial resources they have versus us. But I am able to control what products we deliver. And ultimately, you know, I get to control a lot of how we interact and serve audiences and our customers. And I feel like a lot of times when we experience stress, there's this possible feeling of being overwhelmed where everything is lost. Our agency completely goes away. And I think that's, again, a reason why, both on the professional, what I do day-to-day, as well as personal front of trying to find high-agency activities where I know I'm still in control, I'm still getting to feel very satisfied with the majority of hours I spend doing what I do. That's what allows me to keep going. Tony, are you ready to take some calls? Yeah, let's do it. All right, let's bring in our first caller. Welcome to the advice line. You are on with Tony Shoe, founder of Gordash. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit of extra business. Hi, Guy and Tony, it's a pleasure to be here with both of you. I am Ron Kormai, CEO and founder of Steelport Knifeco in Portland, Oregon. We are a small team crafting heirloom quality carbon steel kitchen knives in Portland, Oregon. Our basic tenant and every product that we make has to pass three requirements, iconic design, functional details and everything US source locally made. Wow, Ron, thanks for calling and so Steelport Knives. I just popped on your website. You make knives in the US, kitchen knives and chef's knives, which I'm a huge fan of because I'm a cook and I've got a bunch of knives. Wow, it's awesome. Tell me how you started this because many of the best knives in the world are today made in Japan and Germany, and even China, there's some excellent knives made, but very few made in the US cut co as an example I can think of. Tell me, but why and how you started this? Yeah, I think it's like any, a lot of stories of entrepreneurs is a source of it has been frustration and seeing a big gap in the market place. My background is technology and I've been involved with 11 startups throughout my career. Wow. My previous company was a company called FineX Cast Iron and we were only premium American made cast iron and we started that in 2012 and I sold it in 2019 and now there are eight other companies that make that categories who created the category and one of my drivers around how do we bring jobs back to US. In 2019, I had the same experience. I went to the kitchen retail stores in the US, all the national ones and some of our local ones and exactly what you said guy, every single knife was made also of the country. Primarily Japan, Germany or low end China. The premium knives? 100% and if you know my background and it's like that, that's like called for a fight. Like why? And if you're in a knife nerds and you know cooking, you know that there's some really good artisans that make amazing knives in the US. So I partnered with my business partner Eitan Seyes who is 25 years of experience making knives, sharpening knives and we started stillport out of that big gap. For your standing on shoulder of a very strong knife industry in the US, even Portland Oregon is a knife town USA because we have so many knives but they're old outdoor knives so we're actually building on that. All right, I want to bring Tony in before we bring him and tell us your question. So my question is that as we are a small company growing, when is the right time for a consumer goods startup like ours to expand his product line versus going deeper into his core offering? But we are smart people and we can start thinking about new stuff like you have a new line of cutting boards that are innovative, it's patent-pending and has a really potential for doing that. How do we approach that decision? Right now you're selling only knives but now you're thinking of cutting boards and other things but when is the right time to do it? Tony Xu, are you cook? Do you cook at home? I do cook. I don't cook every night like you do guy that I just learned. That's incredible. That's an aspirational feat for me to do it every night. But okay, so it's a tough question and first congrats on everything. It sounds like it's an incredible success and I'm going to learn a lot more now also about Portland. I didn't know it was called Knife Town USA. The first part of what I would think through is do I have the management bandwidth? Do I have the talent on my team to do it? What I've tended to find with projects at any company, no matter how much resources or capital you have, what tends to be the rate limiter is do you have a great single leader lead? It doesn't have to manage a large team or anything who can actually be responsible end-to-end for the next thing. In this case cutting boards, if you have that person, it doesn't have to be your co-founder but it could be someone else who you believe you mentioned yet a small team who can do that end-to-end, I think that's a positive. The second question I would ask is do you have the financial runway to be able to manage obviously what I would imagine would require some upfront investment whether it's in materials or team or distribution later on as you think about selling cutting boards? One of the nice things I do see here obviously is cutting boards hopefully will help you sell knives too which means that the two products reinforce one another so that might be a nice offset. The final thing I would say I think if you're feeling fully ready you're probably too late so there should absolutely be some element of risk but I do think you can manage the risks if you can disentangle the problem. I'd really like the points that you're bringing up and again, as your experience in DoorDash probably matches that the answer to those questions never yes, you never have enough resource and it becomes a question of trade-off and I'm curious, as a side I'm also and our role I have is a faculty at University and at John Professor so my oh my god. Professor your question, your polymath. But my personal question always look at the trade-off that's in the classroom environment I can advise that but when it comes to my own business it's really hard especially a small company to project if I grab those resources that you're mentioning and put it in the core I don't really know with any confidence more than 50/50 what it will result versus putting something else and I think looking at the history of DoorDash you had to make similar stuff around do you think this around region and things like that is that certain point you just show your heart seeing it and go with your god. I do think some of these kinds of strategic decisions are hard to your point Ron of putting it in pencil and paper or on a spreadsheet or asking AI to help make the decision I think like you said you're not going to have the inputs required you're not going to have the data required so it is a bit of a gut call but what I'm trying to say is it doesn't have to be this like all or nothing kind of bad that those tended to not be I think the decisions in this particular case where you're talking about you know adding a second product you know one that comes to mind for us at DoorDash was in 2016 we wanted to launch DoorDash Drive which was this product to enable anyone to offer delivery from their own channel from their own you know website their own app now they don't have to list even on the DoorDash app to do this and you know when we thought about starting that project you know some of the things we thought through even though as we were still scaling our own app across different cities was you know who is this small group of leads that we can put together where we don't feel like we have to bet the whole company but we can give it a great college try since you're a professor I'll use that where we're going to put one of our best leads on it who we think can do the job end-to-end first and foremost to figure out whether or not there's something there I totally agree I would start by treating it as an experiment and an experiment in which you are willing even willing to lose on willing to lose money on in other words if you want to do the cutting boards it sounds like you are patent pending cutting boards I'm excited what what what innovations could possibly be being made in cutting boards can't wait to see but what I would what I would probably the way I would go about it is treat it like an experiment right Ronald maybe do a limited drop to the most loyal customers you you just make a few and if it sells out and builds buzz if they're only a hundred available and they sell out and they build buzz you know the demand is real but if not you know you you're you've kind of protected the core here which right now are knives and you could always go back and try it again I think of so there's so many hex clad is a great brand we did that that episode on the show a couple months ago and you know those guys started with pans but you know non-stick pans and pots now it's a multi prime they do knives they've got all kinds of bakeware and it's it's a huge business called hex clad your name steelport gives you a lot of room to try a lot of different things right you don't it doesn't just have to be knives it can be broader category of of a us made kitchen tools right and so I think to Tony's point here you have an opportunity to really just experiment and to take let's say a not a baby risk but like a toddler risk here right not not a full full on you know grown up risk where you're betting the farm but you you you try something and see how people respond I really love the combination I'm hearing from you guys which is testing which is not only testing the market but I think Tony you highlighted the leveraging which is a potential opportunity people like guy might not be ready for a high end top of the line knife but they need a cutting board and why not use this and they might get into and say a steelport cutting board was really amazing I'm ready to make my experience complete or vice versa and that cross leveraging and pollination is not knowable until we actually launched it and guy I really like your connection of the name the name steelport comes from steel first half and port from Portland so steelport combined becomes kind of opens up and a new innovation is basically embedding steel inside two different layers of end grain cutting board and a composite recycled paper so you have a two-sided cutting board with a steel reinforced allows you to not only have two sided cutting board but also make the cutting board extremely thin it's about a half inch thick completely one of those I love that because I have one of those like slots in my kitchen with my cutting boards like I root of all my plastic cutting boards because everybody's telling me that there's you know you're only beating plastic but the wood cutting boards are so thick that it just takes up so much space in that you know that that cabinet great so I expect to have a couple of customers coming through with names Tony and Guy on the you know yeah for sure for sure Ron Kormaie steelport knives is the brand good luck thanks for calling in man really appreciate it thank you for having me have a great day we're gonna take a quick break but when we come back another collar another question and another round of advice I'm Guy Ross stick around you're listening to the advice line on how I built this lab welcome back to the advice line on how I built this I'm Guy Ross and my guest today is Tony Xu he's the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash and we are taking your calls and let's bring in our next caller hi Guy hi Tony thanks for having me I'm Catherine Shaw from Raleigh North Carolina and I'm the co-founder of spring and mulberry a line of date sweetened dark chocolate bars spring of mulberry began with a radical question can sweet speed indulgent without refined sugar thank you Catherine for calling in welcome to the show thank you so spring and mulberry it's a chocolate company you make chocolate bars right I think and but you use dates to sweeten them not cane sugar or corn syrup or other kinds of of sweeteners yes correct we use dates because they're a whole food ingredient they're full of antioxidants they actually have more antioxidants than blueberries more magnesium than bananas and the key is that they're full of fiber and fiber helps slow the absorption of sugar in the body reducing the glycemic index and glycemic load awesome I'm looking at your website and I see that they're very artistic bars it's like the tried strawberries pressed into the bar and pecans whole pecans and like mango pieces really beautiful tell me about the idea or the origin story of the company well it all started on a trip to Dubai on the way to visit my husband's family in India there I discovered dates presented and elevated and beautiful gift boxes and a few years later I unfortunately was diagnosed with breast cancer in my mid-30s and that led me to quit refined sugar and explore the healing power of whole foods and I wanted to showcase this wider world of flavor in our chocolate bars so we either top them with fruits and florals nuts and spices with flavors like mulberry fennel or mix berry or pecan date or we infuse the chocolate with essential oils creating nostalgic flavors like mint leaf coffee and blood orange that's awesome I will tell me a little about your background did you come from food or or confections both my co-founder Sarah and I have worked in consumer products and luxury goods our whole careers she was an early employee at Harry's grooming and at Ziggy's yogurt working in product development operations and finance and I got my start in market a good sales at Unilever and then at LVMH Moette Hennessey Louis Vuitton yeah wow that's a great great background of have is I mean you you know what you maybe you should be telling us what to do with that background one day guys sounds like it hope I hope so tell tell tell us a little bit about how the business is doing you said you started it in 2022 we did we launched in beta in the spring of 2022 launched fully for holiday that year we've grown two to three x year over year consistently and now we're doing mid-seven figures we expect to double that in 2026 wow we have omnichannel distribution strategy we want to be a natural channel grocery stores like Whole Foods and Sprouts but we also want to be in specialty retailers like airports total wine Nordstroms and Bloomingdale's where we've launched this year and direct to consumer is still 50% of our business and probably the best margins of course yeah cool I have more questions for you before we get to to them what is your questions for us well we're really at an inflection point so far to date in the business we've been profitable but we're now starting to feel the cash flow strains of rapid scaling I would love to hear from both of you as we think about what types of capital to raise which partners to bring on and how much risk to take in growth versus profitability what frameworks would you recommend for helping us make those decisions as we fundraise into the next year all right some big questions to answer Tony she'll want to bring you in questions for Katherine yeah I mean Katherine it's first of all incredible your personal story you know of turning a life event into you know this awesome you know solution not only for yourself but for a lot of other people so that's incredible to see you know when I think about what you're saying the first question I kind of want to ask is what is the goal with the company our long term goal is really to help transform America's relationship with sugar and to do that by creating a product that's wholly better to showcase how sweetness doesn't need to come from something that you know is linked to every major disease we face we really believe in kind of sustainable consistent growth but in the next year in order to hit eight figures we need to launch nationally you know at Whole Foods sprouts or other major players and that just requires a lot of cash grocery stores require slotting fees they require free fills where you send in free product you of course need to support the product once it gets on shelf to make sure you know you're hitting strong velocities and so we have two reasons we're in a bit of a cash crunch the first is just the seasonality of chocolate we have to buy all of our holiday inventory during summer which are the slowest months in the chocolate business people switch to ice cream and then the second is you know the upfront investments to get into these grocery stores got it okay no that's super helpful you kind of stated some of the right principles I think from the beginning in your question I think that's definitely you know principle number one and you know principle number two is you don't want to lose control in terms of you know how you run the business and you know the best way to achieve principle number two of not losing control is actually to achieve principle number one which is to keep up the momentum the way I tend to think about this is you don't have to think about the financing kind of question all in one go meaning you know I ask you a little bit about your goals for the company and it sounds like they're pretty large actually you want to you know take this nationwide you want to take this into other categories over time you don't have to think about all of that you know in this next financing milestone right one of the ways to build momentum is to think about always being able to deliver upon whatever promises you make investors if you keep you know delivering upon those promises you're going to keep likely creating better outcomes for customers which is going to you know give you more opportunities to get more financing if you can keep you know that that expectation again this process I think would do very well for you and so the first question I probably think through if I were in your shoes is what is the next milestone is it to get to all of the whole foods you mentioned in the spouts of the world is it to get to more than that if we were to think about what that milestone is then work backwards on all the fees you mentioned and all the investments perhaps in product development or distribution um and then if you're adding a bit of buffer for some of those plans um you know what does that look like you know that's probably the first starting place and of thinking through what is the investment size you may need to get to the next level of scale for the company then the obvious question for investors will be well what do I get in exchange for for those dollars based on what you're saying if you can healthily grow two to three times which which sounds like you are today which is incredible by the way I think you're going to I think you're going to find lots of willing suitors yeah yeah I want to I want to piggyback on that for a second and ask you a quick question Catherine which is and have you raised money already we raised a precede when we were still low six figure brand and I've used that money over the past two years to get to mid seven figures yep those were mainly strategic angels people who had worked in the industry but we have not raised from venture capital got it we have not taken debt well as you know and you're so let's say you're doing about five six million a year in sales which is amazing right you are at a point now where you need cash right to to fulfill these are so there are a couple of options because you know this better than anyone that that not all money is the same right I mean there's and so is our are there other options you know lines of credit revenue based financing purchase order financing we've had a lot of brands on the show that have gone that route you know they'll get a purchase order they'll go to a you know find lenders it's oftentimes at the high interest rates but it's but you you hold on equity those are all options if you decide that you don't want to go out and raise capital are there are any of those on on the table it definitely makes sense for the summer cash flow crunch of buying inventory because you know that isn't a burn rate problem that's a when money comes in versus when it goes out so I think that makes a lot of sense for debt on the equity side I would say that would be more appropriate for investing in retail expansion investing behind brand awareness building exercises and that sort of thing you know on the debt side you know I feel a little bit nervous about taking on significant debt if we're not going to be profitable and this is the first year where we're you know kind of trying to figure out how close to zero we can be on either side of zero so I guess the follow-up question for Tony would be as you you know you've raised money from some of the most prestigious venture capital firms in the world what questions did you ask them to make sure they were the right partner for you yeah it's a great question I think lots of times we take for granted as the entrepreneur that investors will do diligence on us but perhaps we don't return the favor and do diligence on them you know I think one of the principles that I would add to I think a lot of the great recommendations guy made around alternate financing mechanisms is just what are the time expectations for you know achieving your milestones or getting your money back if you were the investor and what are the examples in your portfolio of companies or previous investments because time I think is one of those things here that is almost always against the entrepreneur where we always wish things could happen sooner the investor actually has a completely different you know dimension of time I would ask for examples of founders and entrepreneurs who perhaps did not make it in their portfolio and ask to you know call three or four of them and then you'll get a pretty good triangulation and speaking with you know the founders of the company especially those who maybe had less successful not successful or shaky situations with the investment firm to give you maybe the comfort you need to actually proceed or or find other financing mechanisms um Catherine it's really really really important advice Tony and I think that it sounds Catherine like you know you sort of have a sense of what you need to do right to to to sort of to build distribution national distribution brand awareness you're going to need equity capital probably right because you're investing ahead of revenue short-term cash crunch there may be other options one one unrelated piece of advice I want to give you just observing your brand is you have a really interesting opportunity here because over the last few years there've been some really big brands that have grown um that are zero sugar lilies for example we did lilies on the show is amazing story yeah um and that was a salted Hershey's there's chalk zero which does a similar thing um and then you've got you know the sugar brands one thing that you could think about as you think about those are your long-term growth and strategy is consider making a package of like squares you know like Giro deli makes those squares and so you're only getting one two grams of sugar per square and it's a small indulgence and it's a it's also less expensive maybe maybe it's only 75 cents or dollar you know at the checkout stand right because your bars are expensive they have to supreme your product but but going forward you might want to think about a bag of just squares that you could down the road sell at Costco because that's really where you start to see big you know large-scale growth right and it gives the opportunity for people to trial to try they buy you know a seven or nine dollar chocolate bar yeah yeah uh Tony any last words wisdom or advice for Catherine sounds like you have a really awesome business and so I mean and you have a I mean a really great head on your shoulders I would just you know keep going and I can tell based on the questions you're asking that you have a pretty strong point of view of what you're looking for and what you're not looking for just stick to those guns and I I think that a lot of times as you know the entrepreneur going through it for the first time um or going into anything less familiar there's always this um desire to seek the expert opinion if you will and sometimes that helps but I think a lot of times um you're got probably already knows the answer for sure Catherine Shav spring and mulberry things we're calling in good luck thank you appreciate it thank you um yeah it's we have done quite a few chocolate brands on the show and uh it's always just a cool it's always super cool you know you think like in all these categories you think well it's crowded there's so many chocolate brands and there are but a good brand a a differentiated one like this one I'm absolutely going to go into some of these stores and yeah and probably I want to you know indulge myself yeah I mean just really beautiful art just artful beautiful bars and so it's it's cool it's a great idea yeah absolutely it's not sugar free but it's right it's lower natural sugar and it's and there's fiber and so I think I looked at the nutritional label four grams of fiber it's a lot of fiber I mean that's you know yeah it's great all right we're going to take another quick break but we'll be right back with another collar stay with us I'm Guy Ross and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab welcome back to the advice line on how I built this I'm Guy Ross and my guest today is Tony Shoe he's the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash and we are taking your calls and let's bring in our next caller thanks for having me or go by I'm calling from Stanford Connecticut I'm the founder operator and investor of Ratt 22 meets for the past 20 years I've been in early stage technology companies in various roles and Ratt 22 meets is a mission-driven company that was created to bridge the gap between small family farms and conscious consumers we ship grass fed and grass-finished meats from small family farms with full trace ability back to the farm where it was raised great thanks for calling in Yuri welcome to the show so route a route depending on your pronunciation route 22 meets it is a you sell grass fed meat basically like a box that is great and ship directly to consumers frozen that's right I'm assuming that's okay great and tell me a little bit about how you started this this business I started this business because I personally was looking for the product and could not find the product that I was looking for that's one one reason the second reason I spent eight years managing the US operations of a medical device company and I was exposed firsthand for the healthcare system and so how broken it is and I want to be a part of the solution I wanted to bridge that gap between quality clean food if you will and conscious consumers got it okay but here's my question right and I think it's awesome I I love grass fed beef I try to eat it basically 95% of the time when I can there are options out there right there are companies tons of options where you can order online get grass fed meat sent to your house even grocery stores many even Costco sells grass fed ground beef I think so what what is the thing that you're you're trying to offer that's a little different so at the at the basic level what we offer is full traceability to the farm so you know you can get a box with different cuts and every cut is going to have a different label and you can see which farm it came from okay we don't work with big farms it's small family farms on that level now what you mentioned is part of the challenge is because there is a trend and a lot of more people become aware of of the health benefits of grass fed and grass-finished meats but there is no clear regulation that constitutes what grass fed meat is the USDA dropped that definition 2016 so essentially you can go the supermarket find on the shelf a product that not necessarily mean the standards of grass fed and grass-finished interesting it's sort of like when you see things that'll say all natural right nothing all right I'll before I bring Tony in what's your question for us today the question for Tony is like given our size and resources how can we most effectively educate consumers and stand out in a market where larger players can outstem outspend us but cannot match our authenticity full traceability the regenerative standards and true grass-fed and grass-finished meats all right I'm Tony Shoe you can before we answer your each question maybe you have some questions for him well maybe I'll I'll start with the thought you're in first you know as a as a consumer I'm a big believer in what you're doing one of the things as I hear you talk about is this importance of finding the right customer for your initial product and obviously it's someone who cares deeply about the same things that you do and the the so the first thing I almost want you to say is not lose that I think there's two challenges I see one is can you build a product that that truly delivers upon you know the promise that you're you're talking about and the second is how do you actually market it so it can actually maybe grow an awareness in a way that is authentic but also I think differentiated from you know others who can outspend you we really have to make sure that it's a product that people actually care about meaning it's not only grass-fed and it's traceable to your point but that it actually tastes good and that it's as good or ideally better than what's available you know I think that's a big part of what how we get judged then the second piece is almost like can we can we work together with a group of customers to figure out what is a term we can use to almost you know build a standard if you will for the type of product or the quality ingredient that you're actually bring to the customer you mentioned that you know maybe the USDA is is not yet a willing partner that's okay but is there some term that almost the community of customers that you have that comes back and again and purchase your product over others that we can then use as actually the way to you know tell our story it's always best to tell the story from the customer's perspective versus our perspective because it's a lot more natural and promotes that viral word of mouth growth. Yuri I'm curious give us a sense of your revenue so far you I think you mentioned you found it last year how much how much have you done sales so far? so we're we are probably going to finish that 12 months of operation with about 100k that's great about the building and the farming community. It's awesome but funny enough used to be a McDonald's building we fixed the building and now it's being used as a distribution center and later on this year we intended to turn into a farm store and bring more farmers to sell their products because farmers are good at forming but they don't you know cold supply chain is something that is complex e-commerce and things like that so we want to build the platform that will enable them to actually make the product available to people across the country. Tony are you finding that that I mean I know that on DoorDash you know there's healthy options there's a bunch of there's a bunch of different categories are you as able to discern any trends like are are you seeing people looking out for more sort of keto focused diets or grass fed I mean is there a way for you to even know that? Yeah well we look at search terms right and so we definitely you know see search behavior in your right I mean I think while there are geographic differences I think the the mega or macro trend is still on point to what your your building which is everyone wants to be healthier and that's you know there's exercise the obviously nutrition and diet is a massive part of it and so on DoorDash people do look for these other options and I think the key is you know it's almost like you're building this fire right and the most important things for that fire to keep burning in the beginning and it's going to keep burning if you have the group of passionate people whether it's you know at the fitness enthusiasts the people who are searching for this could be the restaurant tour who really appreciates you know food from very clean supply chains and I think as that fire you know it keeps going the weights and it keep going as a they they actually love your product so I think it has to be both authentic clean and it tastes great and you know well they actually want to keep coming back to it talking about it and then that gives you the right to you know build this huge you know explosion of a movement which then allows you to build this platform into you know for all farms across the country the world perhaps one day to do this yeah that's great and you're in one last bit of advice I think I think a one or two well placed podcast interviews right or you know or or even a public talk at a library something is is much better than thousands of dollars spent on Facebook ads right because if you can spend time talking about about these issues and why you believe that grass fed is there it means many different things and that what you're offering is different it would be worth having even if it's a podcast it's only heard by a thousand people or five hundred people it could have a really significant impact because it's your business the kind of business that grows through word of mouth it's people saying to other people I'm getting this great meat from this place yeah yeah we should keep going at it and uh reaching out to other communities yori gabe that brand is called route 22 meats uh good luck thanks for calling them in thank you thanks yeah it's it's interesting because I think even even though I know a lot about this world because I I've been eating grass fed meat for a long time like probably 15 years used to order from a farm out in Idaho I didn't know that I I assume that when people say grass fed it's grass fed like that's what they're the animals eating the whole time no I think it's a I think a lot about while starting with their bodies and then you know to the things we put into our bodies um I think we kind of just take for granted or we don't think about it and I think you're absolutely right actually there is a massive void in society and but but also in in the in the food industry where someone like yori can actually occupy that space to define it for us you're you're spot on I mean this the traceability point is one that I I didn't know about until probably a couple of years ago yeah yeah and and you know in in this space I mean food uh certain I mean certain brands can have a huge impact I mean chipotle with diamond ranch pork I mean right I mean absolutely they they when you can sort of scale this in a sustainable way you can have a huge impact um and you know grass fed beef is still it's got to be less than 1% maybe maybe even smaller than that of all beef consumed in the US yeah but as more and more people kind of learn about the benefits that you know it's there's there's a there's a lot of growth there yeah a hundred percent Tony I should have known that your advice to be great amazing I mean you've been you've been through versions of all these things like the dilemma over fundraising over how to expand your you know your your line uh you know how to build awareness of this thing that it was weird to people wait what you know so I mean it's it's amazing because it wasn't that long ago when you were having these these conversations yeah 12 years ago I mean I think one of the things that is a privilege of being an entrepreneur is that implicitly and I suppose with shows like this explicitly you belong to a community of other founders who honestly go through the similar problems whether it's in chocolates or knives or um you know what yori was doing with meats and it's just um they're very similar I mean you're a founder and you know you've gone through these similar issues too if you could go back to when you know those early days look at that video of you and and Andy and Stanley it's not it's awesome it's an awesome video you should you should you should be really proud of it if you go back right yeah and to you to yourself when you were learning how to be a leader and how to you know and how to start a business and you knew what you know now what what do you think might have been helpful for you to have known then I think the first thing that comes to mind especially as I was hearing some of the stories of of the founders on your show just now is um a lot of times the founders know the answers to the questions that they're seeking help on and it's this recognition that other people and you cited so many of them you know who've created great products were no different from any of the founders who are calling into your show and trying to get advice about all these different business building questions and that's something that I that I wish I would tell myself you know 12 years ago that trusting my own instincts writing things down so I wasn't delusional and I can use that as a very intellectually honest exercise to debate with whoever I was trying to get help from I think those sorts of things I would just put extra emphasis on and you ask me you know sometimes where I gain sources of motivation or lessons learned a lot of it comes from my own team and watching what they do their successes their setbacks and you know deriving lessons from them that's awesome Tony thank you so much for coming back on yeah thanks guy for having me that's Tony shoe co-founder and CEO of DoorDash and by the way if you haven't heard Tony's original how I built this episode you've got to go back and give it a listen we will put a link to it in the show notes thanks so much for listening to the show this week please make sure to check out my newsletter you can sign up for it for free at gyraz.com each week it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever and if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business the issues or questions you'd like help with and hopefully we can help you with them and make sure to tell us how to reach you you can send us a voice memo at [email protected] or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there and we'll put all this in the podcast description as well this episode was produced by Carrie Thompson with music composed by Rumteen or Bluey. He was edited by Andrea Bruce and our audio engineer was Sina Lefredo. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Ramel Wood, Sam Paulson, Deepa Grant and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raaz and you've been listening to How I Built This.