Evan Moore
@evancharles
Followers
10,063
Following
1,673
Media
97
Statuses
2,551
Heavy Metal Running Club
San Francisco
Joined March 2008
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Paris
• 951856 Tweets
OAT MAIYARAP X FREENBECKY
• 675847 Tweets
#iHERBLivexENGLOT
• 475379 Tweets
#MyLoveMixUpTHep8
• 306168 Tweets
#ดุจอัปสรตอนจบ
• 115964 Tweets
SNCF
• 106785 Tweets
#それスノ
• 74776 Tweets
ニコニコ復活
• 61178 Tweets
WE LOVE YOU ELVISHYADAV
• 59037 Tweets
フジロック
• 53812 Tweets
Watch Satsang Of Sant RampalJi
• 47532 Tweets
França
• 37474 Tweets
モノノ怪
• 32481 Tweets
Snoop Dogg
• 31806 Tweets
#PostponeGrandBiniverse
• 30496 Tweets
Zico
• 30396 Tweets
オリンピックの開会式
• 29285 Tweets
コインor時短
• 27785 Tweets
#笑うマトリョーシカ
• 22082 Tweets
トイストーリー
• 19402 Tweets
#ساعه_استجابه
• 18995 Tweets
Obamas
• 17356 Tweets
Roxxxy
• 10510 Tweets
キラーズ
• 10055 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
At my lemonade stand, I figured that the product wasn’t lemonade, it was to feel good about supporting a kid learning about business.
So I found a cuter kid from down the block to man the stand, paid him 25% of sales, and cut the lemonade with powder to reduce cost of lemons.
What is your most on brand story from your childhood?
10K
897
10K
23
49
607
On 5/29/13 (my birthday!), I filed to incorporate Palo Alto Delivery Inc., later renamed DoorDash Inc.
It's mostly not my story to tell. But I'll share a bit today about how it started.
My goal is to give aspiring entrepreneurs a window into one founding story.
126
1K
8K
Is there a way to block in bulk the 60k people who liked this tweet?
I’m bored with Elon Musk.
I’m bored with Jeff Bezos.
I’m bored with Mark Zuckerberg.
I’m bored hearing nonstop about a few lucky billionaires, who invented nothing, freed no one, and saved no lives, being treated as superhuman celebrities. They’re just rich dudes. Yawn.
4K
8K
51K
87
53
1K
I’m convinced watching someone load a dishwasher would be more effective than most job interviews
23
62
804
We would never have come up with this idea in a conference room on a whiteboard. We needed to be with customers trying things out, learning until we found a set of insights that were obvious only in retrospect.
1
36
640
One of our most memorable lessons from YC was "do all the things." We came with a list of 20 ideas for how to grow, and asked the YC partners which to prioritize. I think it was
@paultoo
who said something like "How would I know? Do all the things."
1
40
637
We probably took "do things that don't scale" too far. It was absurd. But there was a major upside to doing so many orders ourselves: we understand the details:
6
21
598
Moving to SF today after many months away. Excited to finally be a contrarian.
14
8
595
There is a bank run going on at SVB purely because junior VCs have nothing better to do than text their founders “Hey did you see what happened with SVB’s stock? Might want to pull your cash out in case there’s a run on the bank”
23
29
541
We ignored them. We stayed focused on delighting customers, merchants, and drivers. That company is long dead.
3
13
443
We went door to door and asked business owners to tell us about their work. The most useful question, for me, was "tell me everything you've done since getting here today."
3
11
431
We knew the unit economics weren't terrible because somehow as we were doing this, the bank account wasn't going down. (It was still running out of my personal account. What an irony that while at Stanford b school we didn't know the first thing about starting a business)
1
10
422
Our friends were like “oh interesting” in a way that we knew actually meant “this is weird why are you delivering food.” But it's fun to have discovered a secret. We had more than enough evidence to endure being misunderstood for awhile.
3
14
415
The best alley parking spot for each restaurant, which expeditor at Orens Hummus forgets the hot sauce, how to deliver to large apartment complexes, what happens when you lose cell signal in Los Altos, how a hangry parent looks at you when her order is late ... every detail.
3
6
411
There was no shortcut. We had to do everything, fast and well, and double down on what worked. (Later I'll write down how this became a simple growth framework I've used since)
5
14
400
Hours later, Tony and I were driving home when we got the first order. I grabbed a notebook and wrote down what the guy wanted from a local Thai restaurant. We placed a takeout order, drove to the restaurant, bought the food, took it to the customer and charged him with Square.
2
8
384
“Unfortunately I have a policy against wet signatures. Please inform your compliance team.”
This actually worked. You’ll never know if you don’t try.
11
17
381
Even today, I can recognize people who worked at DoorDash by their intensity. Founders like
@ryanbroderick
and
@therealmikechen
are carrying it forward and building more great companies. I'm sure more will follow.
47
6
354
We quickly had trouble keeping up. I remember running out of class to answer the phone more than a few times. We started hiring others to help us deliver, from craigslist, flyers, and by ordering pizza and hiring that driver on the spot.
5
9
350
So we tested just the consumer part first. We made a static html page at with a google voice number and a few PDF menus from local restaurants, offering delivery for $6. We launched a small adwords campaign to see if anyone was searching for it.
2
11
331
The qualities that make DoorDash effective at execution are outlined in the S-1, under "how we operate." It's a great distillation of the culture.
6
19
327
We were maniacal about growth - 10% weekly. We wrote down on a whiteboard the number of orders we needed per day to hit that target, and the result at the end of the day. We made a simple order counter that we could obsessively check from our phones while we were out driving.
3
12
326
Then we found that restaurants had a more acute pain point. Most didn't deliver, and the few that did HATED doing it. It made no sense for a restaurant to have its own delivery people when they could have 5 orders one day, 20 the next - a pooled resource would obviously be better
3
9
326
You'll hear people say the team was obviously impressive, or they had conviction in the vision, but we were not special, it was not a hot space, and no one thought it made sense at first. Starting from the belief that we had to "earn every inch," as Tony often said, was integral.
4
7
322
The idea of a prototype is not mutually exclusive from pursuing product excellence. We rapidly found insights, and then built a business on them, with a clear definition of quality for our customers and relentless pursuit of it.
3
14
310
We kept the experiment going. We sent the link to some Stanford students. We were open a few hours per day, around dinner, and we took turns answering the phone and driving to deliver. We used Find My Friends to see each others' locations and dispatched orders via text.
3
11
308
We never slapped the Uber model onto delivery. We solved our problem from first principles. I won’t explain it but we were able to be far more efficient than our competitors even before our series A, just from smartly solving for an on-demand model with three sides.
1
11
296
@lessin
could not feel more differently. When you send me a calendly link, I’m now in control and can pick a spot based on when *I* want to meet, automatically factoring in your availability. What trust you have given me!
2
0
282
Delivery first came up at a macaroon shop. We were wrapping up an interview when we overheard the manager turn down a delivery order. If there was a lightbulb moment, this was it - why couldn't businesses send things across town, on-demand? There should be an on-demand Fedex!
4
11
273
We did everything to grow -- from standing on the street talking up strangers, going to a birthing convention to figure out how to reach new parents, competing on who could hang more door hanger flyers in a day... most of it didn't work but some did.
1
4
255
Currently in stealth mode, [goes on to explain what the company is, who the team is, who has invested, what other companies those people have invested in, and link to the website where you can use the product]
8
7
250
Soon, the conversation with restaurants totally changed. "I see you here all the time -- why are you buying so much food? How can we work together?"
1
9
253
We came together without an idea, but a shared desire to build something we'd be proud of, and a common interest in serving small businesses.
3
8
246
The most important hypothesis, for this to work, was that excess consumer demand existed. We'd also have to prove out the labor economics for delivery, and that restaurants would be open to delivery. But consumer demand was clearly the driver that would convince restaurants.
1
8
248
A few months in, we explicitly decided to reset our lives, move in together, and devote 24/7 to building DoorDash. After YC, we made the same commitment again. A business like this doesn't get built without sacrifice. I can only imagine what it's been like to do this for 6 years.
1
8
243
I'd start my day by taking out cash from the bank. I'd go to multiple Safeways and buy the max allowed number of Green Dot cash cards, give them to drivers to pay for food, then I'd dispatch and drive, collecting the cards at the end of the day and pay drivers in cash.
2
6
233
So we thought we could build "delivery as a service." Businesses would feed us their orders and we'd deliver them. With our pooled service, all the restaurants in the 'burbs could now deliver!
But immediately we saw it'd be hard to get restaurants to change their behavior.
3
7
231
There was another startup that launched the same week in the same town with the same model. They spread lies about us to restaurants and tried to poach our drivers. They met our eventual seed investors before we did.
4
8
228
We worked out of a few houses, and at one point had about 15 people working from a two bedroom apartment. We liked the cozy vibe, especially since we were there all of our waking hours, and some of us slept there.
8
4
218
Tony and I had discussed ideas for awhile without much progress. During our second year in b school, we wanted to build something. I met Stanley in a class and asked if he wanted to work together. He brought in Andy, and the four of us met up.
2
3
193
Our first restaurant partner showed us how they receive orders from GrubHub via fax and asked us to do the same. I was excited to have a programmatic way to send orders, and then noticed one more thing -- GrubHub took a huge commission!
2
4
194
When one of our first employees arrived for her first day, Tony was sleeping on the floor of the apartment. I tried to quickly deflate and hide the air mattress while he distracted her out front. We wanted to seem like a real company. I'm sure we did not.
2
6
193
@ChatfieldKate
Kate your bad faith response (and absurd comparison) motivates me to donate to the recall campaign. I wish you were more interested in, and open-minded about, why many are leaving our city over crime.
1
3
165
We tried a few things. One of them was a short marketing attribution survey placed on ipads at retail point of sale. We realized that a surprising % of people would answer 1 question while waiting for their card to process. It was a nice-to-have, not obviously compelling.
1
1
184
GrubHub didn't even do the deliveries, they just forward orders, so if we were doing both, surely we could generate a similar commission.
1
2
184
@JuddLegum
@Target
At least in San Francisco, incidents are under reported to police by potentially an order of magnitude. It’s nice to try and get data but this analysis is bad.
13
2
181
That restaurant delivery was such a large opportunity was counterintuitive even to us. There were many (crummy) local services around. But at this point the latent demand for restaurant delivery was slapping us in the face.
1
3
180
Part of the Bay Area’s appeal to me was the utter rejection of fashion.
14
1
176
SBF just set back nerdy Jewish founders by like 0.4 Zuckerbergs
3
2
162
I used to think ideas are cheap and execution is everything.
Now I think one-sentence ideas are cheap (like "uber for x"), but a clear logic explaining why something non-intuitive works can be incredibly valuable.
And I still think execution is pretty much everything.
4
10
163
Winding down a startup sucks. But it's great to see founders realize they are better off having taken the chance, they are more prepared for the next challenge, and people around them respect effort and intellectual honesty.
3
5
144
Just talked to a startup that isn't charging yet but a customer sent them money because they love the product so much.
For a leading indicator of p/m fit, that has to be as good as it gets.
6
5
146
I'll stop for now and make a couple points. (there is no climax, sorry, this is just a tiny window into the very beginning)
1
1
135
I didn’t understand instagram until I used it on behalf of my dog
I get to play a fun character and share cute pics of myself and friends
I think that’s what other people do too, but like they are their own dog
10
6
127
Shout out to everyone trying to grind at a WeWork right now. I sat down to write some emails, moved once to avoid errant ping pong balls, another to make room for weekly cocktails (at 3pm) and again because they are showing a movie. At least they have inspiring
#hustle
wall art.
9
5
120
Spending 20min answering cold emails is often the highlight of my day. All you "find a warm intro" people are seriously missing out.
7
6
121
For years I've held a private opinion that I worried will alienate me from friends and coworkers, but it's time to come clean.
I hate Notion.
10
2
117
When I first saw Kudi's metrics I thought there had to be a mistake. There was not. It's been a thrill to watch this team execute.
3
23
101
Excited to be a part of this bold project
Real-estate startup Juno plans to build its apartment projects using techniques familiar to car makers via
@WSJ
6
8
101
Amazed at how much talk there is about the "metaverse" just because Facebook changed their name to deflect from their PR problems. I can't believe that actually worked.
7
4
94
Seems like a startup's use of the word "disrupt" is inversely correlated with actual disruption
Maybe because what matters is making something people love, and disruption sometimes happens as a result but isn't a worthy goal in itself
4
9
90
let's get something straight: market maps are for keeping VC associates busy, not for picking investments, right?
10
3
88
Culdesac’s first project in Tempe will have space for 1000 people and no cars. They are building the future so many of us talk about wanting.
Excited to announce Culdesac Tempe - the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US.
@liveculdesac
#carfree
48
109
733
0
3
88
My adjustment to investing has been a challenge, but today I pushed back a catch-up meeting, which was originally scheduled for February, for the fifth time. So it's fair to say I'm making progress toward being a Real VC.
4
0
86
We don’t need to ban AI but we absolutely need to ban threads about 8 things you didn’t know you could do with ChatGPT
7
2
86
No you don’t understand - our venture fund is doing things differently. We back *extremely* ambitious founders whereas others only back *very* ambitious founders
9
0
86
But does the M1 have enough power to load a Business Insider article on chrome?
7
2
83
SF moment for the history books: DA candidate running on platform of fighting property crime, on his way to vote at city hall, happens upon a car break-in right in front of him.
Good reminder to vote today.
All of sudden, one of them broke the window of the truck immediately in front of our car and jumped in. We both shouted and sprinted towards him. He fled on a bike with a backpack, leaving a trail of broken glass and three pieces of luggage still in the truck. (3/9)
2
1
14
1
20
81
@GaryWinslett
There are millions of people on this app just looking to be upset about things. Your tweet was entirely appropriate.
0
0
77
@eddiekimx
Literally nothing in your tweet is correct. I don’t think you mean to lie, but it’s time you seriously question where you get info from.
1
0
80
Not many people know I was once an executive assistant. Excited to go back to my roots and get
@zebulgar
his coffee at
@khoslaventures
8
0
78
@eade_bengard
The realization that by postponing it, I was only shortening the meaningful time I'd have with them. The idea of extending my independent/fun years before kids now seems asinine.
2
0
77
Thrilled to be a Figma investor
(via today's purchase of Adobe stock which will include Figma in 2023 if the acquisition goes through)
7
3
76
I was on Jeopardy! I believe this is what they call a triple stumper.
8
1
76
Has anyone here successfully raised a round, series A or beyond, where they wore a hat during the first meeting or partner pitch?
Important research question
16
0
71
@ArmandDoma
I keep saying the left should steal the whole "family values" thing, esp if someone like Trump runs
11
2
67
I recently heard myself tell a founder "ugh that's a tough business." Afterward I remembered that I'm best known for cofounding what became a very large company in *food delivery*
5
0
70
I've done over 20 mock interviewees with YC applicants this week and gosh it is so energizing to talk with passionate teams getting started. I'd do this every week.
4
1
68
I've joined the board of a handyman service called Honey Homes, started by
@VishwasP
. I've had the benefit of being involved since day 1 and I'm not sure I've ever seen an idea work so well so quickly.
3
2
66
@ Janet Yellen I just want to say if you ever need anything I gotchu
1
0
65
One thing I miss a ton about operating is knowing more about my business/customers/product than anyone else.
0
1
63
Everyone will be looking at their office caterer differently on Monday
2
0
59
Motion to have Dreamforce and burning man on the same week next year to balance each other out
0
2
59
I'm super proud of being involved in a small way in
@culdesac
by leading another round with
@khoslaventures
. The demand for the first community is wild, and I can't wait for them share more about what's coming. Also wild is the density of talent on that team.
Excited to share that we’ve raised a $30M Series A led by
@KhoslaVentures
, along with
@foundersfund
, LENx (
@Lennar
), Byers Capital,
@ziggcap
, and
@Initialized
.
This capital will accelerate our mission to build cities for people, not cars.
80
94
1K
1
5
56
“In light of the coronavirus pandemic...” is another good one you can use for almost anything
1
3
57
When I joined KV, I wanted to take my learnings from Opendoor and start or invest in a fix for financial inclusion in real estate. My investments in Up&Up are the primary outcome of that work. I’m excited to start talking about a better model than traditional renting.
Excited to share we’ve raised $300M+ of venture and real estate capital to build
@upandupco
, the no-brainer way to build wealth *while* you rent.
Very grateful to be backed again by
@khoslaventures
and
@foundersfund
.
🧵 on what we're building 👇
31
29
276
1
3
55
I think "If I fail I will still be glad I did it" is a pretty good filter for what to do
1
5
56