Tony Xu

Xu was born in China and moved to the United States with his family at age 5, growing up in Illinois and California. He helped out at the restaurant where his mother worked, gaining a firsthand view of the day-to-day operations of small businesses; when later discussing his motivation for starting DoorDash, he connected this family experience to helping local businesses reach consumers.⁠[1]

Xu earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2007. Before founding his company, he worked as a consultant at McKinseyMcKinsey & CompanyMcKinsey & Company is a management consulting firm headquartered in New York, United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey and, after Marvin Bower established its “professional service” principles, grew into one of the largest pure consulting firms in the world; as of October 2026 it has more than 100 offices in over 50 countries and about 40,000 employees. It has also repeatedly faced regulatory investigations and public criticism over episodes such as its work with Enron, a former leader’s insider trading case, and its consulting for opioid manufacturers.Open the full entry, worked on special projects for the CEO and CFO at eBayeBayeBay Inc. is an online marketplace company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; it started out with person-to-person online auctions and listed on Nasdaq in 1998. As of the end of 2025, it had 135 million active buyers, and its platform’s gross merchandise volume in 2025 was nearly $80 billion.Open the full entry, and worked in product at Square.⁠[2]

While at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Xu explored entrepreneurship through the Startup Garage course. His team interviewed local merchants and found that some stores had customer orders but lacked delivery capacity, and then tested demand with a simple website and by delivering food themselves. He earned his MBA in 2013.⁠[3][4]

Xu co-founded DoorDash with his team and has served as chief executive officer and a director since May 2013. Starting with restaurant delivery in Palo Alto, the company gradually built a consumer-facing marketplace and delivery services for merchants.⁠[4][5]

DoorDash completed its initial public offering in December, selling 33 million shares of Class A common stock at $102 per share. After the listing, Xu remained chief executive officer and pushed the company to expand from restaurant delivery into broader local commerce services.⁠[6][4]

In a Stanford interview recorded on February 9, Xu described getting into the details as his management approach, stressing that founders must personally understand the experiences of consumers, merchants, and delivery drivers. He recalled how the company tested its business assumptions early on by actually making deliveries, and noted that service platforms have to solve problems for multiple participants at once.⁠[1][7]

On January 11, Xu was appointed a director of Meta, effective immediately. The appointment added a board seat at a major technology company to his role beyond DoorDash.⁠[8]

Xu participated in the $5.2 million seed round of the learning and talent platform Neol, which was co-led by kyu Collective and Global Ventures. At the time, Neol’s business centered on creativity and innovation training and a network of consulting talent; public funding information did not disclose Xu’s individual contribution.⁠[9]

On April 30, the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at the University of California, Berkeley, presented Xu with its inaugural Alumni Achievement Award, recognizing his entrepreneurship and leadership.⁠[10]

Under Xu’s leadership, DoorDash completed its acquisition of SevenRooms on June 13, adding reservation and customer relationship management tools to its business, and completed its acquisition of Deliveroo on October 2, further expanding into international delivery markets.⁠[11][12]

Xu appeared as a guest on David Senra’s namesake interview podcast, in an episode released on March 29, 2026. On the show he recalled an anomaly that surfaced in early experiments: delivering in Palo Alto was faster than in San Francisco; from this the team formed a hypothesis that an efficient logistics system could be built simply by understanding and leveraging the hub-and-spoke structure between main-street commercial centers and the surrounding residential areas. He also said that during the summer it spent at Y Combinator, the team focused solely on answering three questions: whether consumers would be willing to pay a $6 delivery fee, whether there were restaurants willing to partner at a 15% rate, and whether it could afford a wage to pay its delivery drivers, rather than pursuing Demo Day performance or the amount of money raised.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13][13][13]

In July, Xu introduced DoorDash’s direct integration with ShopifyShopifyShopify is a commerce software company that originated in Ottawa, Canada, providing merchants with tools for online stores, physical retail, payments, orders and inventory management. The business began with Snowdevil, an online snowboard store founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke and others, and the standalone e-commerce platform launched in 2006. The company went public in 2015 and now trades under the ticker SHOP on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange.Open the full entry, emphasizing its role in helping merchants reach more consumers. That same month, he announced that DoorDash Air had received Part 135 certification, stressing that drone delivery requires not only flight technology but also reliable operations and handoff processes.⁠[14][15]

DoorDash: Official website: https://www.doordash.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[16]