3 tips for huge mobile app growth - featuring DoorDash

When it comes to growth, few stories compare to DoorDash’s meteoric trajectory in the app world. What began as a university project in 2013, soon became the biggest local logistics company in the US. Today, they boast over 37 million users worldwide and are capable of delivering food, groceries and other convenience products to 96% of US households in just 30 minutes or less. In 2024 alone, they are expected to cross $80bn in Gross Merchandising Value (GMV).

For consumers, DoorDash is known for their delivery services, but there are many other facets to their offering. They provide over half a million restaurants and merchants with the infrastructure to dispatch food and products – and they also supply them with the digital tools to grow their businesses. From an innovative advertising platform to a ‘storefront’ interface that merchants can use to receive online orders, DoorDash’s mission to grow local economies has turned the app into its very own ecosystem.

Toby Espinosa, has been a part of this rapid expansion for the last nine years, joining the company just two years after it was founded. Having started as a ‘launcher’ to get DoorDash into new countries, he later transitioned into business development roles before settling in as the Vice President of DoorDash Ads. To find out how they scaled up from their humble beginnings, and to learn about the innovations they made along the way, Toby joined us for two episodes of our Apptivate podcast – the first of which took place live at AGS San Francisco and the second was recorded with Apptivate host Taylor Lobdell.

The article summarizes some of the key learnings and growth insights which Toby shared during these podcast episodes. Read on now for top growth tips from one of the biggest players in the app world.

It may seem obvious, but understanding the needs of your customers is not to be underestimated. In 2012, the four founders set out to support and grow local businesses – but the app they had built wasn’t solving the most pressing problems that local businesses were facing. When the manager of a small macaroon store explained that her biggest struggle was keeping up with deliveries, a seed was planted – and it quickly sprouted into what we know today as DoorDash.

The founding team at DoorDash recognized early on that their own success depended on the success of their customers, so they quickly scaled their app to solve the delivery issue for other restaurants as well. Toby explained: “Our founding principle was growth. Every product we built for those customers has focused on helping them grow.” He goes on to explain that building a strong and stable business is something you do over time – and that it’s only possible by “continuously asking customers what they need to be successful.”

Solving your customers’ needs may be the key to their success – (and to your own) – but you have to build and curate the right products, features and services. Although DoorDash began as a delivery solution for restaurants and an ordering platform for customers, it was the feedback that DoorDash received from the market that highlighted new opportunities for growth and expansion. Speaking about the advertising platform that they later made for restaurants, Toby explains:

“When we started building our retail network, customers were banging on our door asking for tools to help them grow. We started with discounts, then we went into banner products, then built out a sponsored suite of products with our own inhouse ad tech. Every week since then, we’ve launched incremental new products for all advertisers who have a product store on our marketplace.”

While this laid the foundations for DoorDash’s advertising platform (which Toby today is the Vice President of), he and his team recognized another incredibly important customer challenge that would define DoorDash’s approach to building their advertising tools. He explains:

“Restaurants had to be experts in everything from accounting to digital marketing, but with DoorDash, they can focus on customer experience and making great food. Typically, restaurants don’t have the largest budgets, so they don’t always succeed on programmatic advertising channels. There’s a cash flow problem as well. On day one of the month, they start on a negative, then work to get those dollars back – so they’re not always willing to give money to ad networks. We wanted to change the mechanism through which restaurants actually bid for ad placements.”

What separates DoorDash’s advertising platform from others, is that they only take a commission from the sales that a restaurant generates through DoorDash ads. Traditional programmatic channels on the other hand require advertisers to pay in advance to get clicks and impressions – which do not always guarantee purchases. DoorDash’s unique approach created an ideal value exchange for both sides. According to Toby: “It’s one of the most retentive advertising products out there, with 90% quarter over quarter retention. Customers don’t need to leave because there’s no risk."

The key takeaway here for app businesses is that it’s more effective to build products that are specifically tailored to the needs of your market or your niche, than to roll out a generic, tried and tested solution that doesn’t directly cater for your customers. Toby summarizes this succinctly by saying “We won’t be the world’s top DSP (Demand Side Platform), but we can be number one for our customers.”

Today, the DoorDash platform has scaled into a multifaceted product that is used by a variety of different audiences – from restaurants and delivery drivers to hungry customers. “We’re in 30 countries, and we’re the fastest growing in new categories like alcohol and groceries” Toby notes. ”If you want to be a 100-billion dollar company, they aren’t single-product companies, so you need founders and CEOs to manage multiple businesses within that larger enterprise and to continue educating the next generation of talent.”

Toby explains that “the best businesses are layer cakes. You have to think long term and build products for different cohorts while understanding that each cohort needs its own messaging. We have multiple strategies depending on the audience. For each cohort, we like to find that simple one-sentence to explain why an audience should engage with us. Let’s take delivery drivers (aka dashers) for example. We were advertising with Craigslist, but it turns out that there is a specific audience in the Snap ecosystem who were very empowered by the words ‘a way to make money very quickly’. This ‘side hustle’ term worked really well there. Our business culture is very experimental, so If it goes well, we invest big.”

To wrap up Toby’s insights, there are three key things to consider when building a growth strategy for your business or mobile app. The first is to understand your customers’ needs and prioritize them before your own. In the long run, their success is your success! It’s also important to make sure your products are customer-centric. It’s better to create products and services that directly solve your customers’ needs, rather than relying on one-size-fits-all solutions or third-party products that aren’t tailored to your market. Finally, you have to think in layers. Break your audience down into cohorts and run experiments to find out which channels and which messaging resonates best with your audiences.

To level up your mobile marketing strategy, listen to our Apptivate podcast for more great insights from industry experts, or get in touch with Remerge to learn more about app retargeting.