Uber

DoorDash

Uber

Uber is a marketplace that connects riders with drivers. You request a ride through the app, the nearest driver accepts, picks you up, drops you off, and Uber takes a cut — typically 25-30% of the fare.

The driver keeps the rest. Uber doesn't own any cars.

They don't employ any drivers. They built a $150 billion company by being the middleman with a really good app.

The model expanded into Uber Eats (food delivery, same concept — restaurants cook, drivers deliver, Uber takes a cut), Uber Freight (connecting truckers with shippers), and advertising. The advertising business is quietly enormous — Uber has data on where millions of people go every day, and brands will pay handsomely for that.

DoorDash

DoorDash operates a three-sided marketplace connecting restaurants, delivery drivers (Dashers), and consumers. Revenue comes from three streams: commissions charged to restaurants (typically 15-30% of the order value), delivery fees and service fees charged to consumers, and DashPass subscription revenue ($9.99/month for free delivery and reduced fees).

The DashPass subscription is the retention engine. Over 18 million subscribers pay monthly whether they order or not, creating predictable recurring revenue.

Subscribers order more frequently (about 4x more than non-subscribers), increasing order volume.

Advertising is the emerging high-margin business. Restaurants pay for promoted listings and sponsored placements in the app.

This is essentially a search advertising business built on top of a logistics network. Ad revenue has grown to over $1 billion annually — and it's nearly pure profit because it costs almost nothing to display an ad.

Uber

The idea started in Paris in December 2008. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp were at the LeWeb tech conference and couldn't find a cab.

Camp had been obsessing over the idea of summoning a car with your phone. He bought the domain UberCab.com, built a prototype, and recruited Kalanick to help run it.

The first version launched in San Francisco in 2010 as a black car service — not the cheap rideshare everyone knows today. You'd tap a button, a Lincoln Town Car would show up, and it cost about 1.5x a regular taxi.

Ryan Graves answered a tweet from Kalanick looking for an "entrepreneurial product manager" and became employee number one. He ran operations while Kalanick was still finishing up another startup.

Graves would later become CEO briefly before handing the reins to Kalanick. The app launched with just a handful of cars in San Francisco.

It worked so well that riders couldn't shut up about it.

The real inflection point came in 2012 when they launched UberX — regular people driving their own cars at prices cheaper than taxis. That one decision turned Uber from a luxury black car service into a verb.

Within two years, UberX was available in hundreds of cities and the word "Uber" had entered the dictionary.

DoorDash

Tony Xu grew up watching his mother work multiple restaurant jobs after the family immigrated from Nanjing, China to Illinois. She washed dishes, waited tables, and cooked — sometimes all in the same week at different restaurants.

That experience gave Xu an unusual understanding of how brutally hard the restaurant business is.

At Stanford in 2012, Xu and classmates Stanley Tang, Andy Fang, and Evan Moore were in a startup class looking for a business idea. They interviewed over 200 small business owners and kept hearing the same problem: restaurants wanted to offer delivery but couldn't afford to hire drivers.

Domino's and Pizza Hut had fleets. Your local Thai place didn't.

Their solution was comically low-tech. They built a one-page website called PaloAltoDelivery.com, listed menus from local restaurants (without asking permission), and put their personal phone numbers on the site.

When orders came in, they drove the food themselves. The first order was pad thai from a restaurant in Palo Alto.

Within months, they were drowning in orders and realized this was a massive business. They incorporated as DoorDash in January 2013 and got into Y Combinator that summer.

Uber

Uber's early growth strategy was beautifully ruthless. They'd roll into a new city, launch without asking permission, and deal with the regulatory fallout later.

They called it "Travis's Law" — it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

The playbook was simple: launch in a new city, give massive discounts to riders (sometimes completely free rides), pay drivers signing bonuses and guaranteed hourly rates, and flood the zone until the city was hooked. Then slowly raise prices and cut driver incentives once the market was locked.

They burned billions doing this but it worked — by 2016 Uber was in 500+ cities across 70 countries.

They also weaponized word of mouth with referral codes. Every rider could give free rides to friends.

Every new driver got a bonus for signing up. The viral loop was insane.

At peak growth, Uber was adding a new city every day.

DoorDash

DoorDash won the US market through obsessive focus on suburban and mid-market restaurants — the segments Uber Eats and Grubhub ignored. While competitors fought over Manhattan and San Francisco, DoorDash was onboarding every Chinese restaurant and pizza shop in Tucson and Des Moines.

By the time competitors noticed, DoorDash had locked up the majority of US restaurants.

The "last-mile logistics" expansion is the long game. DoorDash now delivers groceries (partnerships with Albertsons, Rite Aid), convenience items (DashMart dark stores), alcohol, pet supplies, and retail products.

The thesis is that once you have a network of drivers and a consumer habit of ordering through an app, you can deliver anything — not just food.

The Wolt acquisition for $8.1 billion in 2022 was the international play. Instead of grinding through country-by-country expansion, DoorDash bought the leading delivery platform in 23 countries across Europe and Asia.

Wolt brought strong unit economics and a beloved brand, especially in the Nordics.

Uber

Where do you even start? Uber might have faced more simultaneous existential crises than any company in history.

Regulatory wars. Taxi unions, city governments, and entire countries tried to shut Uber down.

London revoked their license. France arrested two executives.

Uber was banned, unbanned, re-banned, and sued in dozens of jurisdictions simultaneously.

The toxic culture. In 2017, former engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post describing rampant sexual harassment, discrimination, and HR cover-ups at Uber.

It went nuclear. Investigation after investigation followed.

Board members resigned. Executives were fired.

Travis Kalanick's ouster. After the culture scandals, a leaked video of him berating an Uber driver, and a federal investigation into stolen trade secrets from Google's self-driving car unit Waymo, the board forced Kalanick to resign as CEO in June 2017.

Dara Khosrowshahi came in from Expedia to clean things up.

The cash burn was legendary. Uber lost $8.5 billion in 2019 alone.

They subsidized rides so heavily that riders were paying less than the actual cost of the trip. The company didn't turn its first operating profit until Q3 2023 — fourteen years after founding.

DoorDash

Profitability has been the constant question. DoorDash lost money every year through its IPO and beyond, finally turning consistently profitable in 2023.

The food delivery business has razor-thin margins — restaurants want lower commissions, drivers want higher pay, and consumers want lower prices. Squeezing profit from that three-way tension is incredibly hard.

Regulatory risk is real and growing. Cities and states have capped delivery commissions (New York City caps at 15% for delivery, 5% for marketing).

Worker classification lawsuits keep coming — are Dashers employees or independent contractors? California's Prop 22 temporarily settled this for California, but the debate rages everywhere else.

Each new regulation shaves margin.

Uber Eats is the forever competitor. Uber's massive ride-sharing network gives them built-in driver supply and brand recognition.

They're willing to lose money on Eats to keep their broader ecosystem sticky. DoorDash and Uber Eats together control about 90% of US delivery, and neither can afford to cede ground.

Uber

Uber Rides is the core product — get from A to B in someone else's car. UberX is the standard option, Uber Black is the premium black car tier, UberXL fits bigger groups, and Uber Reserve lets you schedule rides in advance.

Uber Eats is the food delivery arm and competes directly with DoorDash and Grubhub. Uber Freight is the logistics play — basically Uber for semi-trucks, connecting carriers with shippers.

Uber for Business lets companies manage employee rides and meals. Uber now also offers package delivery, grocery delivery, and even boat rides in some cities.

DoorDash

DoorDash Marketplace — the core food delivery platform connecting consumers to 390,000+ restaurant partners across the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Germany. DashPass — a subscription program offering $0 delivery fees and reduced service fees for $9.99/month.

The loyalty engine of the entire business. DoorDash Drive — a white-label delivery service that lets any business (not just restaurants) use DoorDash's driver network to fulfill their own orders.

Basically DoorDash as a logistics API. DoorDash for Business — a corporate platform for team meals, employee benefits, and office food programs.

Wolt — the European food delivery platform DoorDash acquired for $8.1 billion in 2022, now the company's international expansion vehicle.

Uber

Benchmark Capital, First Round Capital, Menlo Ventures, Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs, Google Ventures, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, SoftBank, Toyota, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Tencent

DoorDash

Sequoia Capital has been the most consequential investor, leading multiple rounds and backing Tony Xu from Y Combinator onward. Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and SoftBank Vision Fund participated in growth rounds.

Y Combinator was the starting point (Summer 2013 batch). The December 2020 IPO raised $3.4 billion at a $39 billion valuation, making it one of the biggest tech IPOs of that year.