Strategy & Ops Has Its Finger on the Pulse of DoorDash’s Three-Sided Marketplace
(Cross-posted from Job Portraits)
DoorDash’s Strategy and Operations team can fairly be described as the company’s lifeblood: they continuously push out new features and processes to users, then carry valuable on-the-ground insights back to headquarters. Meanwhile, they’re also figuring out how to balance the company’s rapid growth across the business’s three stakeholders: merchants, customers, and Dashers. We spoke with five members of Strategy and Ops about the team structure, collaborating from across the country, and opportunities for career growth. Interested in joining the team? Check out open roles or get in touch with Katie Frank, katief@doordash.com, to learn more.
Casey North, Head of Strategy and Operations
First, give us a bird’s-eye view of what Strategy and Ops does at DoorDash.
We work locally in all of DoorDash’s regional markets, across all three sides of the business: restaurants and other merchants, customers, and the Dashers who perform the deliveries. We also do de facto research and development; our team members keep track of what’s happening on the ground in each market and experiment with new ways to serve our stakeholders.
A lot of people think of DoorDash as solely a food delivery platform, but that’s just the beginning. We started with food because it’s the hardest product to deliver. Ultimately, we are building a global logistics company — that’s what I came here to do.
Tell us about how the team is organized.
The organization is divided into seven regions across the U.S. and Canada. Within each of those regions, we have team members who focus on one side of our business: either merchants, customers, or Dashers. By developing regional experts, we’re able to quickly learn what’s worked in one market and apply those practices to other cities. Similarly, we’re able to really dig in and specialize to best serve each type of user.
What are the opportunities for growth on this team?
People can chart their own course. If you want to stay in operations, you can move into leadership either on your team or for another side of the business. Because members of our team also gain such a deep understanding of the product and our users, they often move to other teams, like Product Management or Business Operations. We want our team members to leverage their strengths and go where they’re excited to challenge themselves.
“What I love about our team is the sense of humility.”
Which qualities tend to make someone successful on this team?
There’s no shortage of brilliant and relentless people at DoorDash, but what I love about our team is the sense of humility. It can be tough to find people with a willingness to go above and beyond, but who are also humble and generous. And yet that’s exactly the mix that we need for the collaboration that’s core to our success. Everyone here is on the same team. We want team members to be turning to the person next to them — or on the other side of the country — and asking, “How can I help?”
If we think of DoorDash as a character in a story, what moment is it in?
If this were a play, I would say we just finished act one this year. The opportunity within our core marketplace of restaurants is massive and there’s a lot of exciting activity there; the biggest national chains, like Cheesecake Factory and P.F. Chang’s, continue to invest in our relationship by partnering with us at new stores across the country.
We’re also testing services like alcohol delivery; we just signed a deal with a national retailer, BevMo. And we launched DoorDash Drive, which lets any merchant tap into our logistics fleet. With all these partnerships, products, and new opportunities ahead of us, we’re ready for the next act.
Mike Henry, Regional General Manager
Tell us about your role on the Strategy and Ops team.
I’m a Regional General Manager based out of our Midwest hub in Chicago. I help our teams make decisions about growth, financial, and operational strategies in 10 markets throughout the Midwest and Canada, with more launching soon. Ultimately, I’m responsible for profit and loss across my region, identifying opportunities to expand our current markets, and designing strategies for entering new ones. Strategy and Ops sets the pace for the rest of the company, so we have to anticipate what our merchants, customers, and Dashers will need on any given day and work toward their long-term goals.
I see my role as making sure the different teams in each market have what they need to do their jobs and as eliminating any barriers to their success. I’m also teaching them to be leaders themselves. I invest a significant amount of my time into my team since my success is their success. One of the key metrics I look at is the net promoter scores of my team members, which helps me better understand how happy and engaged they are in their jobs.
What does your day to day look like?
It’s rarely the same. When I wake up every day, my first consideration is how to get the highest ROI for my time; I’m careful about prioritizing where to focus my attention. One day that might be recruiting new talent; the next it’s growth strategy; the day after that it’s working with top Dashers or merchants, making sure they feel valued.
“Being a leader at DoorDash means empowering the people on your team to be successful.”
Whatever I’m doing, I have to understand what’s happening on the ground. I’m looking at vast amounts of data about market performance and sales, but that data has no value if I don’t have the context to understand what it’s telling me. Organization is key, and I need to be able to focus on a specific issue rather than getting dizzy from the whole picture. A lot of what I do relies on other people’s hard work; being a leader at DoorDash means empowering the people on your team to be successful.
Can you speak to the challenges your team is facing?
Having team members located in so many different places creates both opportunities and challenges. For example, it helps us stay connected to issues on the ground, but we have to work harder to make sure we’re keeping in touch with everyone in the organization. We address this by emphasizing communication and collaboration, and we err on the side of over-communicating to make sure we’re getting the right information to the right people. Each of our seven regions has its own weekly standup, as do the customer, merchant, and Dasher teams within the regions. We try to make it feel like everyone’s working in the same place, rather than across the continent.
Another big challenge is scaling all three sides of our marketplace — merchants, customers, and Dashers — at the same rate. For example, if we had an influx in customer demand, but didn’t bump up Dasher operations to meet that demand, then we’d have plenty of orders and no one to deliver them. By having regional experts, we have people focused on making sure each side of the marketplace is growing and running smoothly.
What were you doing before DoorDash, and what’s your trajectory been like?
I like to tell people I’m a recovering consultant and banker. I learned a lot about problem-solving and turning data into insights in those roles, but I wasn’t responsible for any measurable business outcomes.
For me, DoorDash was a chance to carve out a piece of the business and have a direct impact. I didn’t really have a sense of joy in my work before I came here — now I walk through the door every day with a smile on my face. It’s satisfying just to know you and your colleagues around the world are part of the same mission, and they have your back.
“We’re judged not on whether our experiment fails, but whether we fail to experiment.”
Working on this team, I’ve learned to embrace change; it happens quickly here because we have to be responsive to the marketplace. DoorDash also values experimentation. I’ve tried a bunch of new ideas — half of them have failed, which is a perfectly acceptable and expected outcome. The other half were put into our products and scaled across the company. Ultimately, we’re judged not on whether our experiment fails, but whether we fail to experiment.
What’s the culture like on your team?
I would describe everyone as tenacious. “Act like an owner” is a core value at DoorDash, and we definitely live that. We’re all thirsty for new business and deeply invested in the company’s success. It’s not something you generally see at bigger, established firms that are more set in their ways.
Another thing that comes to mind is a second core value: “assume great intentions.” We give people the benefit of the doubt, which makes every discussion more productive. We don’t waste our time being pissed off or bent out of shape, and there are no screaming matches. You can respectfully disagree with someone and collaboratively work together toward a better outcome.
What are you looking forward to in the next year at DoorDash?
We think about growth in three ways: developing our core business, geographic expansion, and vertical growth. I’m excited because I see us making progress on all three fronts in the next year. We’re launching new markets, we’re announcing new partners, we’re experimenting with things like catering and alcohol — I love coming in every day thinking about the next big thing.
Darshini Patel, Launcher
Let’s start with the basics: What do you do at DoorDash?
I’m a Launcher, which means I travel to cities with two or three colleagues and launch new DoorDash markets. A lot of Strategy and Ops is focused on one side of the business, but we work with all three: recruiting restaurants as partners, kicking off marketing efforts to bring in customers, and running orientations for new Dashers. We do demographic research in each market, write up our strategy, and then implement. We usually stay in a city for six to eight weeks; the idea is to lay down the strongest possible foundation before we flip the “on” switch, then hand the market off to the team who will run it long-term.
Can you walk us through the steps you take in a new market?
Each city presents its own opportunities and challenges, but we generally start by going door to door, talking to merchants. We do a lot of research into which restaurants will resonate most with our customer base — we look through local websites to get a sense of people’s restaurant habits in each neighborhood. Then we do our best to bring desirable merchants on board.
As we get closer to launch, our work is more operations-heavy. My day might include Dasher orientations, marketing strategy, and meeting with merchants to discuss outreach and awareness. Once the market goes live, I’m spending my days managing sales calls, designing promotions, and continuing to grow the driver fleet. I’m also tracking growth and making sure we hit our numbers. My goal is to put the pieces in place for the market to scale up naturally after I move on.
And this all happens in under eight weeks?
Well, we don’t always hit that timeline. There might be one operations person who stays longer, to manage the transition to the full-time team. But generally, we try to stick to our six- to eight-week plan.
What kind of support do you have as you launch new markets?
We’re definitely not going in blind. We have a solid playbook of best practices. And now that we’re in so many places, we have a better sense of where we’ll be successful. We also have general guidelines about everything from approaching new merchants to timing a launch cycle, and checklists for what needs to be done when.
At the same time, there’s a lot of room to be creative. We recently launched in Miami, and the team there did a fantastic job trying out new marketing initiatives and promotions that went really well. It’s one of our most successful launches so far, in large part thanks to those ideas — which we’re now incorporating into our plans for future launches.
“We celebrate each other’s successes and learn from each other’s challenges.”
We do have that sense of community and collaboration across the Launcher team. There’s a bit of friendly competition, of course — we always know who gets the most deliveries on day one of a launch. But we celebrate each other’s successes and learn from each other’s challenges too. Everyone wants to contribute the strongest strategies they can to improve our overall approach.
How have you adjusted to the travel schedule?
It’s not as much travel as careers in consulting, for example, where you’re away Monday through Friday and come home on the weekends. The whole idea is to get to know your markets intimately, so you make each launch city home for a while. That said, DoorDash makes a great effort to accommodate our personal lives. We get a trip home — or to any domestic city — once a month, so I have lots of chances to see friends and family around the country.
“Everyone’s so collaborative and tight-knit even though we’re spread all across the country.”
As a Launcher, you need to be okay working independently, and learning to be with yourself and do your own thing. But you definitely form bonds with your teammates. We socialize after work a lot. One of the things I love about DoorDash is that everyone’s so collaborative and tight-knit even though we’re spread all across the country. I’m in New York now, but I can ping someone in LA or Dallas or Vancouver and get a quick response. You always have that sounding board, so you’re never really alone.
What qualities make someone successful in the Launcher role?
People do well when they’ve cultivated a strong ownership mentality, especially because we are so heavily invested in all three sides of our market. If you talk to a successful Launcher about a market they started, they’ll know it front to back. They can name all the rock star Dashers and bestselling merchants.
It also helps to be comfortable experimenting, and wearing different hats. For example, you need to understand how Dashers and merchants can best work together in a certain region, and you also need to understand how a specific merchant can best market DoorDash to their customers. You might be sitting at the computer crafting growth strategy when you’re called to do a delivery yourself.
How do you know when you’re successful?
We have a lot of metrics we can track. One is delivery volume: Are we getting more orders and growing every day? Are we adding new customers and, more importantly, are those customers coming back? Continued growth is key, because it means you’ve set your team up for success and they’ll be equipped to scale up all three sides. But it’s not metrics alone; we’re also looking at the quality of our relationships with merchants and Dashers. Are deliveries being made on time? How efficient is a given Dasher, and are we paying them accordingly?
“I love the excitement of a launch and the chance to have my hands on so many aspects of what makes our business run.”
Our leadership also understands that you don’t always hit your targets. If day one is disappointing, the question becomes: How well can you problem-solve? How quickly can you pivot to make day two a different story? Our managers understand we’re not going to make our money back in a day. Launching is an investment.
What are the opportunities for growth on the Launch team?
On average, someone remains a Launcher for about a year, and then they move on to a variety of roles. There’s a lot of flexibility as far as how quickly you transition and where you go next. Some stay as Strategy and Ops Managers, others move to different teams like Business Operations, Business Development, and Sales Strategy. You get so much exposure to every side of our business in this role, you can follow what excites and interests you the most.
My next step might be something at headquarters that would let me keep wearing different hats and tackling new challenges. Right now, though, I’m happy to stay where I am. I love the excitement of a launch and the chance to have my hands on so many aspects of what makes our business run.
David Emanuel, Senior Strategy and Operations Manager
First, give us a quick overview of your role.
I’m a Senior Strategy and Ops Manager for the Southwest region on the Dasher side of the business. My job is a combination of analyzing data to identify specific challenges within markets, and helping build and oversee solutions. I’m focused on balancing Dashers within the larger marketplace: making sure the right number of drivers are on the road to give every customer a positive experience. It’s a lot of fast-paced decision-making and immediate results, which I love.
Tell us a bit about your background, and how your job has changed since you joined DoorDash.
I studied mechanical engineering at Brown University. I really just wanted to build things from scratch. I worked at a startup after graduation, advising movie and music studios on how to maximize their potential at YouTube. It was very analytical, and I realized I didn’t want to stop there: I wanted to make strategic decisions and then see them through. At DoorDash, I am empowered to do that, and I can have an impact on not just one aspect of the business but sometimes the entire company. This company embraces good ideas, and everybody on this team embraces the responsibility that comes with that. We’re determined to leave our mark.
I joined the company two years ago as an Operations Manager. I was promoted to Associate General Manager, then General Manager for Los Angeles, and transitioned to my current role when we began building our specialized teams. Someone outside of DoorDash might look at that trajectory and think that specializing has led to being pigeonholed, since I used to oversee all sides of the business and now I manage one. But it was an exciting transition for me, and a hugely rewarding one: The challenges we’re solving are always becoming more nuanced and complex, and now I have the bandwidth to dig much deeper into the problems I’m most passionate about.
What does collaboration look like within Strategy and Ops, and at DoorDash generally?
Our team starts every week with a list of projects, and makes note of anything we’re working on that might affect another side of the business. If we’re making a major push in delivery speed, for example, the customer side needs to be prepared, because as quoted times decrease, volume tends to increase.
This role doesn’t require a ton of travel, but I do have the option to visit HQ or our other locations if that’s the best way to collaborate. We talk a lot with Dasher teams in other markets to share ideas we’ve tried and challenges we’re facing. We also pick the brains of any Launchers who visit our office. There’s tremendous value in having fresh eyes on a problem.
“I’ve heard this repeated often: ‘Speak as if you’re right. Listen as if you’re wrong.’”
We also work with Business Operations to look at the bigger-picture data beyond our own team, and with Engineering to help them improve the product. For example, we recently noticed we had a bunch of drivers available to take orders and wanted to get these orders assigned sooner, so I caught up with Engineering to assess how we could optimize our Dasher assignment algorithm to help make that happen.
How do DoorDash’s values play out on the Strategy and Ops team?
I’ve heard this repeated often: “Speak as if you’re right. Listen as if you’re wrong.” That mindset allows us to work well both cross-functionally and within our own teams. You can’t be afraid to speak up when you have strong beliefs and the data to back them up, but at the same time, it’s essential that we listen to other perspectives and work together. We’re curious too. Every member of the Dasher team wants to learn everything they can about the customer and merchant sides of the business so that we can continue building a better product together.
Can you talk about how your team handles challenges?
Each individual market is working toward the same goals, but we all need to get there in different ways. In LA, for example, we deal with a unique set of traffic and parking challenges, so we’re more focused on those issues here than we are in regions where traffic is light. But the cool thing is, there may come a time when other regions are trying to address similar problems, and they won’t have to reinvent the wheel. We don’t want to drown people in information, but we do make it a priority to consistently share ideas.
What have you learned in your time at DoorDash?
I’ve learned to love being wrong. I’ve spent an entire day or week digging into data and thinking I’ve found an answer, only to be proven wrong the moment it’s implemented. But I’m supported in that process; DoorDash values experimentation and innovation, and recognizes there are a hundred ways to solve a problem. Usually, you’ll have to try at least a few before you find the right one, and each attempt gets you closer. I love that process.
I’ve also learned to look at every conversation from the other side. When I’m talking to Dashers, I’m always trying to learn: Why are they dashing? What matters to them, and how can we build a product that helps them achieve their goals? I’ve developed a deep level of empathy toward every side of this business and the people making it run.
Kyra Huntington, Strategy and Operations Manager
Tell us what you do on the Strategy and Ops team.
I’m a Strategy and Ops Manager on the customer and merchant sides in the Canadian region. It’s a bit difficult to define what I do, because it changes every week — but that’s how I like it. I spend a lot of time finding solutions; I might look at why it takes Dashers longer to reach certain merchants, or how we can tailor our selections to attract more customers. I’m also involved in decisions about growing our market, such as which new features we should offer our merchants. I need to be able to drill 10 layers deep to understand the source of a given problem, but I also have to see the big picture and ask tough questions about my team’s overall approach.
Who do you work with most closely?
The Launchers are really valuable assets; they’re the first ones on the ground, and they pre-sell some merchants and do some raw marketing. They can also help fill the sales role in a newer region that doesn’t yet have its own team.
We also work closely with Engineering — our CEO has said, “Engineering and Strategy and Ops need to go together like peanut butter and jelly.” Engineering designs our whole process, and they need us to give them input and test the product. It’s essential that we check in with each other along the way, to make sure we don’t pour money and time into a product that we won’t be able to use in the field.
What characteristics help someone excel in your role?
It’s important to take initiative. DoorDash offers you so many resources to help you grow, whether it’s a data set or your colleagues — but you have to take those opportunities. You also need to think creatively and be willing to experiment. Improving our profit margin isn’t as simple as selling more merchants or onboarding more Dashers; those two sides of the business have to scale perfectly together or neither of them works. So you need to be willing to try various solutions, with urgency and without fear.
“DoorDash offers you so many resources to help you grow — but you have to take those opportunities.”
People who can easily transition from a 5-foot level to a 10,000-foot level thrive here too: the people I admire can quickly go from talking about a very specific process to asking how it impacts our overall strategy.
Tell us about what you were doing before DoorDash, and what brought you here.
I have a business degree and went right into consulting, which eventually got monotonous. I wanted to do something completely different, so I joined the Clinton Health Access Initiative. I was working in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as a finance consultant for the government, when DoorDash reached out to me. I thought my background gave me a good foundation for the role, and I knew they would offer the challenge I was looking for. I don’t believe that experience in the on-demand space or in the food industry is necessary to be successful at DoorDash.
What are the opportunities for growth in your role?
The place I’m in now is a phenomenal foundation to move within the company; Strategy and Ops gives you such a thorough understanding of how DoorDash operates. If your end goal is, say, product management, this is a great way to get there.
We’re evaluated every six months, and if you’re a manager but you’re acting at a higher level, you’ll be moved to senior manager at that point. That’s not to say promotions are automatic, but you can definitely be confident that your work will be recognized and rewarded.
Can you speak to any challenges your team is facing, and how you’re addressing them?
Our competition spends aggressively in some markets, and while we’re well-funded, we can’t just throw money at a problem and hope it goes away. We need to address it strategically. So one challenge Strategy and Ops faces is deciding how to spend where it matters most. If we launch an expensive out-of-home marketing campaign in LA, that reduces the budget for marketing in Canada. That’s a natural part of our business, so it’s important to communicate and make sure everyone plans for those events.
“Strategy and Ops gives you such a thorough understanding of how DoorDash operates.”
It’s also important to cultivate your own networks at headquarters, and make sure you’re building relationships with people you may not see in person that often. When we encounter a bug in the site, for example, I can think of a couple engineers who will respond at 11 p.m. on a Friday night if I need them. That’s invaluable.
What have you learned in your time at DoorDash?
I’ve learned to push back a little bit. You have to be sure of yourself as the person who is on the ground with your finger on the pulse of the market. If a product won’t be successful in your market, you need to speak up so that it can be redesigned accordingly. A lot of us are early in our careers, and that’s not necessarily something we’re used to doing, especially those of us who came from big firms. But here, it’s welcomed.
I’ve also learned a lot about tech. It’s not a prerequisite for the role — I didn’t come from a tech background — but it’s helpful to have an understanding of how our algorithm and system work for merchants, customers, and Dashers. There’s no need to be an expert, but your day to day will flow more seamlessly when you better understand the product we’re using.
What’s coming up that you’re excited about?
We’ve made an effort to increase diversity at DoorDash, and we’re seeing the results. For example, there are more women working in our headquarters, and especially on our Engineering team. I’m really excited to see that growth, and it’s been amazing to add such diverse viewpoints to the mix.
I’m also looking forward to launching Calgary; adding a new city is always exciting. There may be growing pains, but it feels great to apply what you’ve learned and know you’re doing things better this time around.
Interested in joining the team?
Check out open roles or email Katie Frank at katief@doordash.com.
