Meet DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, the 36-year-old food delivery app entrepreneur whose net worth soared to more than US$3 billion amid Covid-19

Mar 8 , 2021

Tony Xu, DoorDash’s CEO, came from humble beginnings – and it’s helped shape the company’s philosophy. Photo: DoorDash

He went from being a young immigrant who washed dishes, mowed lawns and considered McDonald’s a ‘luxury’ to a Stanford graduate who founded a hit delivery app

DoorDash’s value skyrocketed to US$32 billion after its IPO and in turn made its CEO, Chinese-American Tony Xu, a billionaire – but what was his backstory?

Tony Xu found life tough as a Chinese immigrant in the United States. His family had to rely on a federal assistance programme, they juggled multiple jobs to survive, and even considered visiting McDonalds a “luxury”. Now, as the co-founder and CEO of food delivery platform DoorDash, Xu’s net worth sits at over US$3 billion, according to Forbes – testament to the fact that hard work and persistence pays off.

Before founding DoorDash in 2013, Xu washed dishes in a restaurant, earned money through a lawn-mowing business and even worked as a Domino’s delivery driver. His early exposure to hard work likely played an instrumental role in inspiring his future financial success.

DoorDash said its revenue more than tripled last year thanks to pandemic – but it still lost money because it spent more heavily on marketing and expanding its business. Photo: AP

When DoorDash launched its IPO a few months ago, its valuation skyrocketed to US$32 billion. The lucrative public offering made 36-year-old Xu a billionaire, who, according to CNBC, owns a 5 per cent stake of the company. Becoming a billionaire so young is a huge feat, so what was Tony’s life like before he got here?

He had a good work ethic at a young age

Tony spoke about his humble beginnings in a recent online lecture moderated by the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He described his parents’ journey as the “classic immigrant story”, with his family coming to the US with just US$200 in the bank. His mother was a licensed doctor in China and his father was a graduate student at the University of Illinois.

His parents had to juggle multiple jobs during their early years in the US. In the Stanford interview he explained that he “didn’t see [his parents] that often” as a result, but believes that may have been a good thing in the long run, saying: “Most of my time was pretty unstructured and as a result of that unstructured time I was able to … trial a bunch of new things and … that taught me a lot of lessons.”

Education first

Tony Xu has an MBA from Stanford, something his parents worked hard for him to be able to do. Photo: @deborahweinswig/Instagram

Tony’s parents worked hard to put him into a prestigious university. Tony attended the University of California, Berkeley and has an MBA from Stanford. It was with his business school classmates that he conceived the business that would eventually become DoorDash.

He worked at Domino’s