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DoorDash tracked its first deliveries with Find My Friends
Menus went into Google Drive and onto a simple page of HTML and CSS. Orders came in through a Google Form. The phone number customers texted was Tony's own phone.
To fake real-time dispatch, one founder would go pick up the order while another, from the team of four, watched that founder's location in Find My Friends. The customer then got a text with an estimated arrival of 10 minutes, or 20.
The team was very technical. They could have built a dynamic site with Google Maps and real-time tracking, but the hardest thing to prove was whether people wanted food delivered at all. A pile of free tools was enough to find out.
How does Find My Friends show someone's location?
Apple introduced Find My Friends in 2011 as an iPhone app for sharing location with approved contacts. The phone estimates its position using GPS, nearby Wi-Fi networks, and cell towers, then sends it to the people it has been shared with. Apple folded the app into the Find My app in 2019.
How do founders test demand before building software?
Entrepreneur Eric Ries popularized the minimum viable product in his 2011 book The Lean Startup. It is the smallest version of a product that can show whether people want it. A variation called a concierge MVP has the team deliver the service by hand to a few customers. The approach swaps engineering time for direct observation of what customers do.
Why does manual work teach founders more than code?
Doing a task by hand exposes every step, delay, and complaint that a design on paper would hide. Founders who handle orders themselves see which requests repeat, which details customers care about, and where the process breaks. Software built afterward can then automate steps that are known to matter.
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