From a Nanjing Immigrant's Son to the Head of a $78 Billion Company: Tony Xu's DoorDash Story, From Restaurant Dishwasher to the $17 Billion Instacart Deal
The founding story of Tony Xu, co-founder, chairman and CEO of the food-delivery platform DoorDash, is drawing fresh attention after the company's latest deal: on October 29, DoorDash signed a definitive agreement to acquire Instacart at $65 per share, an equity value of about $17 billion, as GSM has reported. According to a Wall Street Journal profile, the company Xu co-founded is now worth about $78 billion and holds more than 60% of the U.S. food-delivery market.
Xu was born Xu Xun in Nanjing, China, in 1985 and immigrated at about age four or five to Champaign, Illinois. His father pursued a doctorate in aerospace engineering and applied mathematics at the University of Illinois; his mother, a doctor in China, worked serving tables and washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant in America, and the young Xu washed dishes there too. His English name, Tony, came from Tony Micelli, the character in the sitcom "Who's the Boss?"
Xu earned a degree in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California, Berkeley, worked at McKinsey, eBay/PayPal and Square, and completed an MBA at Stanford's Graduate School of Business in 2013 as an Arjay Miller Scholar.
The idea for DoorDash came in January 2013 in Palo Alto, when the owner of a French macaroon shop told Xu and his classmates that delivery was her biggest problem. The four launched a simple site, PaloAltoDelivery.com, that same month, then went through the Y Combinator accelerator and founded DoorDash in San Francisco. Focusing on suburban markets its rivals ignored, the company overtook Uber Eats and Grubhub and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2020. The son of a restaurant dishwasher now runs America's largest food-delivery platform.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图为DoorDash联合创始人徐迅（Tony Xu）2018年在TechCrunch Disrupt大会上（图源：TechCrunch/Wikimedia Commons，CC BY 2.0） / DoorDash co-founder Tony Xu at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2018 (TechCrunch/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
- 2026-10-24Instacart in Talks With Uber and DoorDash Over a Possible Sale, Shares Jump About 9% on Friday
- 2026-10-29Follow-up: DoorDash Signs Definitive Deal to Buy Instacart for $65 a Share, About $17 Billion, Closing Expected Late 2027 to Mid-2028
- 2026-10-30From a Nanjing Immigrant's Son to the Head of a $78 Billion Company: Tony Xu's DoorDash Story, From Restaurant Dishwasher to the $17 Billion Instacart DealThis story
