Nikhil Sonti’s Post

From Dorm Room to Dominating Delivery: A Look Back at DoorDash's Early Days Ever wonder how DoorDash became the food delivery giant it is today? Check out this throwback video featuring the DoorDash engineering team in 2013, pitching their vision to VCs! This glimpse into their early hustle is inspiring - from their introductions to their initial traction (crushing $10,000 in months!), it's a reminder that big things can start small. #Doordash #StartupLife #Entrepreneur #VC #FoundersJourney #FromTheGroundUp #FoodTech #Delivery #Inspiration #Hustle P.S. Who knew a good delivery app could be such a game-changer?

With the new year approaching and many would be entrepreneurs will take the plunge with a New Year's Resolution and start a new business. Here's a good interview to watch. In 2013, Stanley Tang and his friends never intended to start a business. “It was literally one of those typical Stanford dorm room class projects,” Tang recalls. The team, consisting of Tang, Andy, and Tony, began interviewing local business owners in Palo Alto to understand their challenges, unknowingly setting the stage for something big. One enlightening encounter was with a manager at a local macaron store. “She brought this really thick booklet,” Tang remembers. It documented numerous delivery requests she had to turn down due to lack of resources. This challenge wasn’t unique to her store; other small business owners shared similar struggles. The trio saw an opportunity to develop a solution for local deliveries. They decided to run a quick experiment, setting up a makeshift website named paloaltodelivery.com, featuring menus from local restaurants. Tang admits, "It's probably one of the ugliest websites I've ever made in my life," but their goal was simple: to validate customer demand. To their surprise, it worked. "An hour and a half in, all of a sudden a phone rang," Tang recounts. A customer placed an order for shrimp pad thai and egg rolls. Despite their initial plan to explain this was just a class project, Tang and his team decided to fulfill the order themselves—thus, the first delivery was made. What began as a class project transformed into something monumental. The humble beginning in a Stanford dorm room had unknowingly laid the foundation for what would become a pioneering force in local delivery services. Conclusion; Test the concept with a working prototype watch the interview: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/g-UyRkbm #startups #entrepreneurship

🚀 This is DoorDash's Application Video for YC 📹 2014: 4 founders with a dream. 🤩 Mission: to deliver food to everyone, everywhere. 🚗 4 founders becoming the first delivery drivers. 🗣️ Interviewed 100 small business owners before writing a single line of code. 💪 No algorithms or systems, pure hustle and effort. The early days were all about grit and resilience. 🔥 1st month they got 150 paying customers, generated over 10k in sales. 🤯 Fast forward to 2024: Doordash is worth $45 B💥 🙌 The core principles remain the same. Start with passion, keep the customer at the heart of your mission, stay agile, and build a team that believes in your vision as much as you do 💪 #StartUpGrind #EntrepreneurLife #Hustle #ExecutionMatters #DoorDash #Innovation #GetStarted #StartUpStories #FounderJourney #EntrepreneurLife #Inspiration #BusinessSuccess #Innovation #CustomerFirst #Teamwork #StartupLife #Entrepreneurship #FounderStory

✨ Big Milestone Alert: Crafty Ramen is now available in over 1,500 grocery stores across Canada AND we're partnered with HelloFresh nationwide! ✨ When we first started Crafty Ramen at-home, the vision was simple but bold: to bring high-quality, restaurant-worthy ramen to homes across North America. Achieving this kind of scale—especially as a startup—has been nothing short of a journey. Behind the scenes of every shelf placement, every partnership, and every package delivered to your doorstep, there are countless sleepless nights, tough decisions, and lessons learned. Building a startup means embracing the unknown, taking hits, and often operating on sheer belief when the path ahead feels uncertain. Here are a few truths I’ve learned along the way: *Growth isn’t linear—it’s messy, chaotic, and often comes with growing pains. *You’ll make mistakes—some costly—but the key is to learn quickly and adapt. *Surround yourself with a team that shares the same hunger and passion because, in the hardest moments, they’ll be the reason you keep going. *Celebrate every win, big or small. They’re what fuel the journey. To our amazing Crafty Ramen team: this milestone is because of you—your creativity, resilience, and tireless commitment to our mission. (Jared Ferrall 🍜 Miki Ferrall, Justine Seah, Adam Kennedy, Bill Hahn, CPA, CA, Vanin Ferrall, Joanna Silveri, Jonathon Barraball and so many more!) To our partners: thank you for believing in what we’re building. And to our customers: your love for our ramen keeps us inspired every day. This journey is far from over, but today, we pause to appreciate how far we’ve come. From a little 600 square foot ramen shop to a household name in the making, here’s to what's next. Slurps Up!! 🍜 #startupjourney #entrepreneurship #CPG #ramenstartup #CraftyRamen #hellofresh #growth

Stanley Tang Tony Xu and Andy Fang founded DoorDash while they were students at Stanford. In today’s clip, Stanley tells the founding story of DoorDash and the three startup lessons he learned from this time. 1. Test your hypothesis During his junior year at Stanford, Stanley wanted to build technology for small business owners so he sat down with the owner of a macaroon store in Palo Alto to learn about her problems. The owner took out a large booklet with pages of delivery orders that she had to turn down because she couldn’t fulfill them. This seemed like an interesting problem to the DoorDash founders so they spent the next few weeks talking to another 150-200 small businesses who also didn’t have a good solution for delivery. This led the founders to wonder: “Delivery is such an obvious thing. Why hasn’t anyone solved this before? We must be missing something. Maybe people have tried this in the past but failed because there wasn’t consumer demand. So we thought, okay, how can we test this hypothesis?” They decided to create a simple experiment and spent an afternoon putting together a quick landing page with some PDF menus of local restaurants in Palo Alto with their personal cell phone number at the bottom. They called the company Palo Alto Delivery and weren’t expecting much: “We weren’t really expecting anything. We just launched it, and all we wanted to see was would we get phone calls from this? If we got enough phone calls then maybe this delivery idea was something worth pursuing.” Later that day, the founders received a call from their first customer. They picked up the Thai food order and delivered it themselves. The next day they got two phone calls. Then five the day after that. Then seven. Then ten. . . #entrepreneur #business #motivation #success #entrepreneurship #inspiration #mindset #smallbusiness #goals #entrepreneurlife #lifestyle #marketing #money #businessowner #quotes #instagood #startup #believe #motivational #hustle

𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟬 𝘁𝗼 𝟭𝟱,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗶𝗻 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟭𝟴 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘀. 🚀 That’s the kind of hypergrowth Gorillas experienced, and behind the scenes, Bobby A. was leading the charge in scaling IT support and governance to keep up. One of the game-changers? Embracing SaaS management early to control costs, manage chaos, and ensure everything stayed on track. 💻💥 In this must-listen interview, Bobby dives deep into his journey: 🚀 How he scaled IT operations during a period of explosive growth 👋 His decision to leave IT and dive into entrepreneurship 🧐 The evolving and complex landscape of SaaS management Don’t miss Bobby’s insights and lessons learned from the frontlines of rapid growth! 🎧✨ #ITLeadership #SaaSManagement #Entrepreneurship Watch the full interview 👉 https://okt.to/evfosw

𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟬 𝘁𝗼 𝟭𝟱,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗶𝗻 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟭𝟴 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘀. 🚀 That’s the kind of hypergrowth Gorillas experienced, and behind the scenes, Bobby A. was leading the charge in scaling IT support and governance to keep up. One of the game-changers? Embracing SaaS management early to control costs, manage chaos, and ensure everything stayed on track. 💻💥 In this must-listen interview, Bobby dives deep into his journey: 🚀 How he scaled IT operations during a period of explosive growth 👋 His decision to leave IT and dive into entrepreneurship 🧐 The evolving and complex landscape of SaaS management Don’t miss Bobby’s insights and lessons learned from the frontlines of rapid growth! 🎧✨ #ITLeadership #SaaSManagement #Entrepreneurship Watch the full interview 👉 https://okt.to/zVRb3y

🚀 In 2019, my co-founder and I were flying high. One year later, we were out of business. This is my failed startup story 🔴. Back in 2017, my co-founder Stefan Rafales and I, started a company called RestoDepot. At the time, the F&B industry was at an inflection point. You could feel the buzz and the pull of the market. It seemed that there was a new restaurant business opening everyday. 💯 The idea behind RestoDepot was simple, simplify access to food service products for F&B businesses through our B2B e-commerce platform. Initially, we did really well: ◾ 50% monthly GMV growth for 24 consecutive months ◾ Partnerships wtih brands and principles like Nestle, ABC Heinz, Bungasari and more. ◾ Served customers like The Duck King, Ismaya and hundreds of more ◾ Successfully raised VC funding Then, the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic hit us: ◾ Restaurants closed their doors, orders disappeared ◾ Our ARs froze and had to pay back with our own personal money ◾ Investors didn’t want to touch us with a 10 foot pole 8 months into the pandemic, we ran out of capital and made the hard choice to close down the business. As a result of winding down the business, we had to: ◾ Break the news to all our investors (some whom were my friends) ◾ Lay off 20+ amazingly hardworking people ◾ Couldn’t prove the doubters wrong At the time, I couldn’t see the silver lining and I couldn't see past the failure. 🔥 But looking back, I realize this was the most profound learning experience of my life. I picked up valuable skills around coding, sales, fundraising and leadership. Most importantly, it taught me the meaning of resilience. I learned how to face adversity head-on and emerge stronger because of it 💪. Ultimately, this experience didn't just teach me about business – it reshaped my entire approach to professional challenges and opportunities. Have you been through a similar situation? What did you learn from the setback? How did it shape you into who you are today? Leave your experiences and learnings in the comments! 👇 #startups #entrepreneurship #personalgrowth

𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟬 𝘁𝗼 𝟭𝟱,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗶𝗻 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟭𝟴 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘀. 🚀 That’s the kind of hypergrowth Gorillas experienced, and behind the scenes, Bobby A. was leading the charge in scaling IT support and governance to keep up. One of the game-changers? Embracing SaaS management early to control costs, manage chaos, and ensure everything stayed on track. 💻💥 In this must-listen interview, Bobby dives deep into his journey: 🚀 How he scaled IT operations during a period of explosive growth 👋 His decision to leave IT and dive into entrepreneurship 🧐 The evolving and complex landscape of SaaS management Don’t miss Bobby’s insights and lessons learned from the frontlines of rapid growth! 🎧✨ #ITLeadership #SaaSManagement #Entrepreneurship Watch the full interview 👉 https://okt.to/3HptVv

𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟬 𝘁𝗼 𝟭𝟱,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗶𝗻 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟭𝟴 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘀. 🚀 That’s the kind of hypergrowth Gorillas experienced, and behind the scenes, Bobby A. was leading the charge in scaling IT support and governance to keep up. One of the game-changers? Embracing SaaS management early to control costs, manage chaos, and ensure everything stays on track. 💻💥 In this must-listen interview, Bobby dives deep into his journey: 🚀 How he scaled IT operations during a period of explosive growth 👋 His decision to leave IT and dive into entrepreneurship 🧐 The evolving and complex landscape of SaaS management Don’t miss Bobby’s insights and lessons learned from the frontlines of rapid growth! 🎧✨ #ITLeadership #SaaSManagement #Entrepreneurship Watch the full interview 👉 https://okt.to/kCIOuM