DoorDash’s First PM on Thriving At A Startup

This was an interview-like thing about Partha Sundaram’s experience as Doordash’s first product manager.

The Importance of Focus

Before Doordash, Partha was at Yelp, working obessisively on creating a “magical” user experinece around ordering food.

The niche of online food ordering, the connection between the digital and physical world, was where he was focused. That’s how he was able to spot Doordash quite early. That’s what enabled him to learn all the details about creating a great food-ordering experience that few other people would know.

The interviewer asked him how he was able to forsee Doordash becoming a winner in the busy food-ordering space where Uber, Postmates, and Grubhub were funneling tons of money. His response showed the extreme attention to detail and domain knowledge that comes from focusing on a narrow niche. He said a one of the big consulting companies had said that the top 5 cities in ordering food account for 70% of the market. That’s where all the competitors were focused on. Doordash, on the contrary, started focusing on Palo Alto, San Jose, etc. because they found out that suburban areas actually have a bigger basket size—each order is bigger. Also, there’s a lot more parking space in suburban areas which makes food delivery much easier. It would also be easier and cheaper to hire drivers.

I personally had no idea that parking space mattered. It makes sense but I had never thought about food delivery in depth. This is why focusing on a narrow niche is an advantage.

• Pick a narrow niche that you like.
• Get obsessed with it. Devour every written piece. Talk to experts.
• Work at the edge/frontier on the hardest problems.

Putting in the effort to get a job

After Yelp, Partha started focusing on Doordash before getting employed there. He actually signed up as a Dasher and delievered food for Doordash to get a feel for the experience the company was creating. He started writing one-pagers to the people at Doordash regarding specific details of the experience. For example, he noticed that there would be many doordash drivers just lounging in some Palo Alto places and proposed a better rider dispatching mechanism before working there, already acting as a valuable employee.

This is amazing. This shows the company that 1. you are competent at your career (know what you are talking about) 2. like the company and know a lot about them 3. you have already proved you would be a valuable hire.

Obviously, you can’t do this for every single company you want to get hired at. The interviewer proposed spending 80% of your time doing something like this for a handful of companies you dream of working at and 20% of your time for the rest of the companies you will be applying for.

Benefit of working at a small Startup

• apprenticeship: you get a lot of time with the founder to learn from them
• founders are open to debate. they are looking for new ideas and want to do the best thing. they want the company to succeed
• you don’t have to ask for permission. you can just do work.