Ep 194: Apptivate Live: App Growth Summit in SF

In this live edition of the Apptivate podcast, Remerge CEO and co-founder, Pan Katsukis, interviews the Vice President of DoorDash Ads, Toby Espinosa, about the company’s advertising journey – live on stage at the App Growth Summit in San Francisco. DoorDash is now one of the largest marketplaces in the world for delivering food, goods and more, generating over 80 billion in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). Hear about their humble beginnings in Palo Alto, how they flipped the paradigm for helping restaurants and small businesses to grow through their advertising platform, and where they are today with their retail media network.

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• Can you describe your role at DoorDash and how it evolved?
• Do you provide tools outside your platform?
• How do restaurants budget for advertising on social media with DoorDash?
• How do retailers tap into DoorDash’s ad tech?
• How was the process of building your advertising technology?
• What’s a trend in mobile you see working well?

• 1:37 The evolution of Toby’s role at DoorDash
• 4:30 DoorDash’s beginning
• 7:30 Advertising that works for restaurants
• 9:37 Digital tools for your growth inventory
• 13:44 Payment-withholding for advertising vs CPA
• 15:08 Building business for retailers
• 17:40 Mindset to build an ad tech empire
• 21:05 Understanding your value proposition

(5:40-5:53) “When we started, that was the whole idea: to provide the delivery service so that these restaurants on Main Street and every small business can grow. So our founding principle was growth.”

(9:38-9:51) “We have a perspective within DoorDash that the best businesses are layer cakes, and they’re built over time. And the way you build that layer cake is by basically continuously asking your customer what they need in order to be successful.”