There’s plenty of financial analysis of the DoorDash S-1 out there. But no analysis so far has focused on how exactly DoorDash went from last to fir

How DoorDash Built the Most Incredible Go-to-market Playbook Ever

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2021-07-16 02:30:06

There’s plenty of financial analysis of the DoorDash S-1 out there. But no analysis so far has focused on how exactly DoorDash went from last to first in a super competitive market — and the answer includes “by using data”.

DoorDash interlocked its operating model with their technology platform, making execution driven by data the key drivers that propelled DoorDash from 17% to 50% marketshare between January 2018 and October 2020.

It’s the 3rd fact or that I think gets too little attribution — data. That’s what this post is about, and there’s a tiny section on page 194 of the prospectus that touches on it:

“We have assembled a team of 617 highly skilled engineers, designers, and computer scientists whose expertise spans a broad range of technical areas, as of September 30, 2020. We organize our team with a full-stack development model, integrating product management, engineering, analytics, data science, and design.”

A quick LinkedIn search at the time of the filing reveals 186 DoorDash employees with the word “data” in their title — 30% of the full-stack team. That’s a lot, in the range of 2–3x higher than what I see with other engineering organizations. Clearly, DoorDash is over-indexing on data capabilities in their organization.