#037: Shawn Tsao (Caviar) - How we built and sold our $400M food delivery business

Shawn Tsao was the co-founder of Caviar. They sold it to Square for $100M. DoorDash then bought it from Square for $400M.

In this episode, expect to learn how the idea of Caviar came from a failed business, their unique partnership strategy that allowed to scale fast, the interesting discovery that made their customers loyal, why he would do it all over again (with a few tweaks), how the Square acquisition went down and much more…

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Coming up 01:15 Starting a company out of college 04:34 The fall of Groupon and business failure 07:01 Being an accidental founder 10:27 The value of being able to sell 12:56 Being influenced by your environment 16:06 Starting Caviar 18:32 Lessons learnt 22:04 Partnership strategy 23:47 Marketing 25:34 Scaling 28:25 Recruiting 31:20 Competition 34:06 Height of Caviar 35:31 High Retention 38:07 Square takes notice 43:09 Selling to Square 46:12 Continuing to build 48:00 DoorDash steps in 49:04 Would you do it all again? 50:37 Would you change anything? 52:05 Mental health 54:44 What's happening now 56:12 Routine 57:05 Connecting with Shawn

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