Meet Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash: the Chinese-American tech billionaire once worked for eBay and PayPal, but credits his experience as a dishwasher for his current success
- Apart from his DoorDash success, 37-year-old Xu is also on the board of directors of Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and was included in Fortune’s 40 under 40 list
- The dishwasher-turned-billionaire is an avid sports fan, leading to DoorDash partnering with the NBA to become its first official food delivery partner
The biggest food delivery service in the United States is DoorDash. Co-founded in 2012 by a bright group of Stanford University students, the successful food ordering and delivery platform went public in December 2020. Today it boasts more than a 50 per cent market share and has over 6,000 employees. At the end of 2021, the company’s reported revenue earnings for that year clocked in at over US$4.8 billion.
One of DoorDash’s co-founders, Tony Xu, also serves as its CEO and holds a roughly five per cent stake in the company. Here’s what we know about the Chinese-born tech billionaire.
He immigrated to the US around the age of five
Born in Nanjing, China, Xu, 37, immigrated to the US with his parents when he was a young boy. Though his mother was a doctor in China, she was unable to practice medicine in the United States and so worked multiple jobs to support her family.
As per Forbes, one of the jobs Xu’s mum worked was as a server in a Chinese restaurant. At a young age, Xu even worked as a dishwasher in the same restaurant. He has since credited this experience as contributing to the inspiration behind creating the DoorDash service.
As stated by Xu himself: “DoorDash exists today to empower those like my mum who came here with a dream to make it on their own. Fighting for the underdog is part of who I am and what we stand for as a company.”
He changed his name to Tony
The DoorDash CEO’s birth name was not Tony Xu, but Xu Xun. After moving to the US with his parents, the young Chinese immigrant decided to legally change his name to something that Westerners would find easier to pronounce. According to The Financial Times, he ultimately settled on Tony, inspired by Tony Danza, the actor who starred in Xu’s favourite television show, Who’s the Boss?