Raising a seed round is one of the hardest challenges for a founder due to limited data and traction, especially in a space with past failures like grocery delivery.

Despite initial struggles, we showed some growth, prompting an investor to suggest we raise a Series A round, which I eagerly prepared for.

During the early days, we ran experiments to confirm that consumers would pay for DoorDash's service, which gave us confidence in our business model despite initial doubts from investors.

Investors were hesitant to back DoorDash because, although we had strong numbers, it wasn't clear that we would emerge as the largest player in the market.

We faced existential crises, especially when we realized there was no retention in our early model, leading us to question if there was even a viable business model for grocery delivery.

All you need is one investor to say yes; in 2018, when we raised our Series D, it became clear internally what was going to happen next for DoorDash.

We raised our Series A after initially facing many rejections, but ultimately secured $3-4 million from various investors.

We raised seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, and Benchmark, who understood marketplaces well.

Our first investor didn't believe in the education business model, thinking it was a bad investment, but they were primarily interested because I had previously sold a company to Google.