Essay · 10 min read

A New Beginning: The DoorDash Story

Stanley Tang · Stanley Tang (DoorDash co-founder) Free Beginner

DoorDash started as PaloAltoDelivery.com, a static page with a phone number and no app, delivering orders by hand. This is the founder telling how that scrappy test proved demand before any product got built. A concrete reminder that a landing page plus manual fulfillment can validate a billion dollar idea.

  • A simple page and a phone number tested real demand in a day.
  • The founders delivered the first orders themselves to learn the job.
  • Word of mouth on a fake looking MVP was the signal to build for real.

The question it answers

  1. Should I build an MVP at all, or can I validate without one?

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