Tony Xu of @DoorDash on getting rejected by investors, competing against rivals with thousands of times more capital, an | Hanami
Tony Xu of @DoorDash on getting rejected by investors, competing against rivals with thousands of times more capital, and how founders can tell conviction from delusion:
"I had over 100 rejections in a span of over 1,000 days where the company almost constantly ran out of money... I couldn't raise a dime, and we were running out of capital."
"Companies like Amazon or Uber were in the space who had way more capital than we had. Hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times of capital deployed versus the amount that we raised. So then the question becomes, well, how are you gonna win this cash-burning machine?"
"This is where you as the founder have to finely tune that line between delusion and knowing that you have something that others don't understand. What are the customers telling you?"
"We the founders did deliveries for almost virtually every day the first three years of the company's life... And so we had strong points of view on each side of our marketplace that could explain what was happening in the numbers."
"When you have one set of facts, which is your customers, you have another set of facts, what are called opinions and perceptions, you gotta trust the facts. That's ultimately what kept us going."