Tony Xu

The first version of DoorDash took 43 minutes to build: a ten dollar domain, PDF menus lifted from Palo Alto restaurants, and a Google Voice number that rang all four founders' phones at once. The first order came on January 12, 2013, and a co-founder drove it over himself.¹

Tony Xu is the co-founder and chief executive officer of DoorDash, a food-delivery and local-commerce logistics platform that connects restaurants and other merchants, independent delivery drivers it calls Dashers, and consumers. The company began as a way to bring delivery to small restaurants that could not staff it themselves, and later expanded into convenience and grocery delivery and, through acquisitions, into international delivery networks. DoorDash went public on the Nasdaq in December 2020 and holds a majority share of the United States food-delivery market.

Background

Xu was born Xu Xun in Nanjing, China, around 1983 or 1984. His family immigrated to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1989, when he was four, arriving with roughly 250 dollars in savings; he shared a bedroom with his grandmother. His mother, Julie Cao, was a Chinese physician whose medical license the United States did not recognize, and she worked three jobs, including as a restaurant waitress, over twelve years before opening her own acupuncture and medical clinic. His father earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and later became a professor there.

As a child, Xu washed dishes at the restaurant where his mother worked and, at age nine, started a lawn-mowing business, charging extra for checkered mowing patterns. He has said he learned restaurant unit economics early from his mother's account books, noting that a restaurant's to-go business is more profitable than its in-store business.¹ He legally changed his name from Xu Xun to Tony, inspired by Tony Danza's character in the sitcom Who's the Boss. He earned a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2007, and completed an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2013, founding DoorDash while enrolled. He married Patti Xu, whom he met at Berkeley, in 2013.

Getting started

Before DoorDash, Xu worked as a business analyst at McKinsey, in corporate strategy at eBay and PayPal, in business development at the ecommerce app RedLaser, and as a summer intern at Square in 2012. At Stanford he took a course called Startup Garage, where he met his co-founders Stanley Tang, Andy Fang, and Evan Moore.

The founding insight came from field research: the team interviewed more than 300 Bay Area small businesses. A Palo Alto macaroon shop owner named Chloe showed them a binder of delivery orders she had been forced to refuse, since a one-person shop had no delivery infrastructure.¹ Xu has noted that small businesses often carry only 17 or 18 days of cash. The first product, PaloAltoDelivery.com, was built in 43 minutes: a ten dollar domain, PDF menus from top Palo Alto restaurants, and a Google Voice number that rang all four founders' phones. The first order came on January 12, 2013, delivered by co-founder Evan Moore. Early on the founders did every job themselves, tracking deliveries through Find My Friends and handling support, menus, and sales. The company joined Y Combinator's Summer 2013 batch, incorporated as DoorDash in June 2013, and raised a 2.4 million dollar seed round led by Khosla Ventures.²

What he built

DoorDash raised more than 2.5 billion dollars across private rounds by mid-2020, with investors including Sequoia, SoftBank, and Kleiner Perkins. Its December 2020 IPO raised 3.37 billion dollars and valued the company at 71 billion dollars at debut, making Xu a billionaire at age 36. He retains roughly 69 percent of the vote through Class B shares, despite a direct equity stake of around 5 percent.

The company grew through acquisitions as well as organic expansion: Caviar for 410 million dollars in 2019, Wolt of Finland for roughly 8.1 billion dollars in 2021, Deliveroo of the United Kingdom for about 3.9 billion dollars in 2025, and SevenRooms for roughly 1.2 billion dollars in 2025. For fiscal 2025 the company reported revenue of 13.7 billion dollars, net income of 935 million dollars, and about 31,400 employees, with roughly 56 percent of the United States food-delivery market. Operations span the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Australia directly, plus 37 or more countries through the Wolt and Deliveroo subsidiaries.

How he operates

Xu has described doing frontline work personally as a way to learn rather than a way to save money, saying that "whenever you can ship something in 43 minutes to test your idea, I think that's pretty good."² He consistently frames DoorDash as local logistics infrastructure rather than a food app, describing food delivery as the wedge that funds a broader local-commerce platform, a vision the founders summarized from the start as building the FedEx of local.³

Where things stand

As of 2026 Xu remains founder and chief executive of DoorDash, retaining control through Class B shares. He joined the board of directors of Meta Platforms in January 2022 and is active as an angel investor, backing companies including Alchemy, All Day Kitchens, Local Kitchens, and Gigs. His philanthropy has focused on UC Berkeley, Northwestern University, and Asian American and Pacific Islander community initiatives, and he and his wife Patti are Giving Pledge signatories.

Key facts

• Built the first DoorDash product, PaloAltoDelivery.com, in 43 minutes on a ten dollar domain with PDF menus and a shared Google Voice line.
• Learned restaurant unit economics as a child from his mother's account books at the restaurant where she waited tables.
• Interviewed more than 300 small businesses before the Chloe macaroon-shop insight became the company's founding wedge.
• Went from a family arrival in the United States with about 250 dollars to a 71 billion dollar IPO valuation and billionaire status by age 36.
• Retains roughly 69 percent voting control of DoorDash through dual-class shares despite a direct equity stake of around 5 percent, as of the 2020 IPO.
• Sits on Meta's board of directors while serving as an active startup chief executive.