DoorDash is one of the most well-known food delivery companies in the United States right now. Back in January 2020, they made the largest third party delivery system in the country. Yet, as a startup, they've come to that out of pure hard work and well-aligned perfectionism, it seems. We're going back to August 2013. Tony Xu is CEO of this startup and one of its co-founders. And the day comes when it's Tony's turn to pitch at Y Combinator's Demo Day. A room full of investors, months of hard work, and a thirst for growth for their startup. Here's how it all went down and how Slidebean's pitch decks can help whenever you need one. Unclear about pitch deck requirements? We'll cover those at the end, as well.
Y Combinator (YC) is an American seed money startup accelerator. Founded in 2005, its goal is to get startups through their first phase of funding.
The model that Y Combinator uses relies on small-amount investments in plenty of startups twice a year. Selected startups are admitted to an intense review of their foundational structures for at least 3 months. The goal is to make the most out of the business ideas and possibilities. In the end, Demo Day happens. We'll get to that in the upcoming section. From there, alumni networks continue to help new companies throughout their growth cycles.
Think of this as putting in office hours, getting together with like-minded individuals for a weekly talk, and more! Efficiency is at its best. And a startup environment, overall, seeks to get groups of startup founders and co-founders to help each other and work directly with YC during their early stages.
Demo Day is the culmination of several months of work with Y Combinator. On this day, the startups funded by YC give a presentation to a selected audience regarding their companies. The audience also includes members of the press as well as potential investors.
DoorDash is a food delivery service launched in Palo Alto, California. Founded by Stanford students Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang, and Evan Moore in October 2012, it received $120,000 in seed capital from YC by March 2013. As we said, it's now the most extensive third party delivery system in the United States.
On the other hand, it’s not casual that Tony Xu is the CEO as well as co-founder of DoorDash. He's a first-generation American who grew up around his mother's restaurant. For him, DoorDash was a way of allowing small businesses to succeed. And the company's also looking to reduce food waste through Project DASH, by the way. In Xu's own words: "At DoorDash, we have one goal: to get whatever people need in their hands as efficiently as possible."
The company focuses on the best selection of restaurants and matching supply and demand for those that offer to go services and people who want food delivered. Their magic sauce is taking care of everything having to do with that delivery's logistics. They've also partnered up with restaurants to provide additional operational efficiency.
Tony Xu's presentation at Demo Day in 2013 started off with a company name slide and the phrase "we enable every restaurant to deliver." Meanwhile, Xu brought up the current problem with food delivery. But that was just the start of this CEO’s pitch on his YC Demo Day. Let’s see the rest
The second slide on that pitch deck touched upon competition. It included other companies that offered similar services while explaining their shortcomings. Of course, this was topped with the unique solutions the company proposed to those limitations. They then put in logos of those other brands and elegantly put DoorDash next to them.
The third slide shows an iPad with a DoorDash order. It's as if a user were placing it. They followed this with a fourth slide on which you can see a person using the company's app. That image alone was used to explain how easy the app is for drivers to use.
The fifth slide goes into a very simple graph. That's maybe how all graphs and charts you end up choosing should be.
In the case of DoorDash's graphs, they focused on delivery time. After all, this was their strength as they managed to cut it down significantly lower than their peers'. Even when DoorDash worked out of Palo Alto and the competition operated in the city, they maximized these circumstances to stress their win in being less spread out.
Then, a sixth slide follows another graph. Yet, this second one showed weekly order growth from launch to date. That's probably so because we're always trying to give our audience's perspective on our startup status, potential, and growth.
The seventh slide in the deck showed the $1.5 Million annualized restaurant sales they generated. Of course, a figure so significant merits some bragging on a pitch deck.
After all this, their second to last slide consisted of just the words: "logistics + merchant integration." This phrase referred to the formula they used for their growth. Nothing is casual here.
And for the ninth and last slide, we get the company's future. The final comparison matched DoorDash as an option with the FedEx of the food world. Pretty nice wrap-up, don't you think?
Before you go, and in case pitch decks aren't yet familiar grounds, we'll just clarify the overall concept really quickly. After all, we did promise so at the start. So...about pitch decks.
A pitch deck is a short presentation. People debate the total number of slides to an ideal one. Still, they typically range from 10 to no more than 20 slides altogether.
The main goal of a pitch deck is to give relevant stakeholders a short summary of a company. They clarify business plans and startup visions.
In terms of who to pitch, bear in mind a pitch deck can serve very different purposes. Each version calls for a different structure, depending on the setting. Pitch deck variations can help land a meeting with a new investor via email or present stage front.
Want more info on pitch decks, what they are, and how to craft a great one? Check this article out then.
