January is always a special time for me, in part because it's the beginning of a new year, but also because I completed DoorDash's first delivery over 12 years ago. While it was hard to articulate our company mission back then (we were a classroom project called PaloAltoDelivery.com, a domain that we acquired quickly for less than $10), it was easy to see the smile on the consumer's face after receiving his order of chicken pad thai and spring rolls. I had no idea in 2013 whether it'd be a good idea to turn our project into a company, but I had a feeling that building a company whose success would depend on growing the GDP within cities would be a worthwhile pursuit.

2024 was another record year for DoorDash. Our approach has relied on four key pillars: 1/ a consistent focus on improving the inputs to our product, 2/ keeping a high bar when we evaluate projects before injecting large amounts of capital, 3/ improving our unit economics as we improve the core product experience, and 4/ a continuous effort in getting more efficient. Compared to 2019, our business in 2024 is more than 9x bigger in GOV, 12x bigger in revenue, and is generating almost $2.4B more in Free Cash Flow. Notably, our profitability grew even as we invested significantly more capital — almost 11x more in research and development compared to 2019. The improvement to profitability was organic and came from our focus on improving unit economics, staying disciplined on headcount growth, and only investing significant capital after we see signs of product market fit.