Mom and dad really came here to make a better life for me and for dad that meant going to school, getting his PhD and working a job actually at a restaurant on campus at the University of Illinois. And so, for me growing up as a kid, I came to this country with my parents when I was very young, I was five years old, we immigrated here from China. And I think that’s really what starting a company really is and so, when I think there’s lots of variants and you’re learning pretty much on the fly a new job every week in the beginning, later on maybe every month, every six months, you really have to find other maybe first principles that have accumulated in other parts of your life to really get you over the hump at times. Obviously, when we started the company, out of my apartment off campus, we weren’t thinking about what DoorDash would look like seven, eight years later. Tony Xu: Sure, I think it’s really hard to follow maybe a curricula or some prescribed set of steps to do something that has very high variance. I know people are probably really eager to hear about all the lessons you learn from the GSB so this might come as a bit of a surprise for some of the MBA students, but you once said that more things growing up as a kid prepared you to start a business than anything else, could you tell us more about that? Joy Huang: Be careful what you wish for, Tony. Tony Xu: Send me feedback at any point in time. Joy Huang: Yeah, my guess is a lot of audience dialing in are watching this interview with food they got from DoorDash right now. It’s always really exciting to have an alum join us, especially for a product that all of us are so familiar with. You’re listening to View From The Top, the podcast. Tony also shared his wisdom about the importance of truth seeking, optimism, and bias for action. Tony recounted his entrepreneurial journey from saving up for a Nintendo as a kid, to taking DoorDash public. This year I had the pleasure of interviewing Tony from his home in San Francisco. I’m Joy Huang, an MBA student of the class of 2021. Tony visited Stanford Graduate School of Business as part of View From The Top speaker series where students like me sit down to interview business leaders from around the world. That was Tony Xu, cofounder and CEO of DoorDash. Joy Huang: Welcome to View From The Top, the podcast. Tony Xu: You’re never as good or as bad as people say you are, so I think it’s really important to be intellectually honest and I think if you can do that and if you can set that at the beginning of your journey - if you’re building a team or building a company over time that lays the foundation to carry you through the really difficult times.
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