Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

DoorDash, the $13B on-demand food delivery startup, says it has confidentially filed for an IPO

The on-demand food delivery wars continue to heat up in the US. Today DoorDash announced that it has filed confidentially to go public. The company noted that its Form S-1, a draft registration statement, was filed with the SEC and is now being reviewed. It did not say how many shares it would potentially sell, nor the price range for the IPO, nor what the timing of its next steps would be.

A public listing would be another way for the company to pick up a significant injection of capital at a key time in the on-demand delivery industry where competition is fierce and we’re seeing a lot of consolidation globally. The timing of the news also underscores just how cash-intensive this business can be. DoorDash — which by some estimates currently leads the food delivery market in the US — closed its latest round only in November last year, just over three months ago. That was for $700 million at a $13 billion valuation.

In the US — which alongside parts of Canada, is only country where DoorDash currently operates — the company is understood to have 33% of the market. It operates in heated, and subsequently expensive, rivalry with the likes of Postmates (10% share) and Uber Eats (20%), and more legacy players like Grubhub (32%). That fierce competition is very capital intensive and has led to rumors over the years that the company has explored mergers with Uber Eats, and with Postmates.

But DoorDash has also had its share of controversy, specifically around labour issues and how it interfaces with and pays its thousands-strong workforce of contractors. It also faced a data breach last year that affected nearly 5 million consumers, workers and merchants. It’s also been quietly building up its technology stack, with acquisitions like Scotty Labs to explore autonomous driving systems (to complement or potentially replace human delivery drivers).

Confidential IPO filings allow startups that are still in “growth” mode (and often unprofitable) to explore the early stages of setting themselves up for a public listing without the public scrutiny that comes with the process. Although it has been popularised by companies like Spotify and Slack — both of which went public — it doesn’t always lead to an IPO. Witness WeWork’s filing and subsequent u-turn after it disclosed more details about how the company worked. And Postmates, which filed for an IPO a year ago, has subsequently raised money and is said to be delaying any public moves.

More to come.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line
Post a Comment
Read more

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities

ProtonMail , a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French authorities managed to obtain the IP address of a French activist who was using the online service. The company has communicated widely about the incident, stating that it doesn’t log IP addresses by default and it only complies with local regulation — in that case Swiss law. While ProtonMail didn’t cooperate with French authorities, French police sent a request to Swiss police via Europol to force the company to obtain the IP address of one of its users. For the past year, a group of people have taken over a handful of commercial premises and apartments near Place Sainte Marthe in Paris. They want to fight against gentrification, real estate speculation, Airbnb and high-end restaurants. While it started as a local conflict, it quickly became a symbolic campaign. They attracted newspaper headlines when they started occupying prem
Post a Comment
Read more