In 10 years, DoorDash will have more human Dashers, not fewer, because the business is growing 25% year-over-year and demand will surge as autonomous delivery makes ordering cheaper and more accessible.
Stanley Tang predicts that despite — and even because of — autonomy and robotics, DoorDash will employ more human Dashers in 10 years due to business growth and demand elasticity from cheaper delivery. ✦ AI generated
Stanley Tang · No Priors · 2026-07-23 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 45:16
“Is the long-term view like you get rid of all the dashers and it's just dots everywhere? What happens?”
My guess is that in 10 years time, we're actually going to have more Dashers doing doing deliveries, not less. uh simply just because again I think it's just the well one I think the pace at which DoorDash is growing is just I mean and the scale at which we're operating is is pretty insane. I I don't know if people know, but like we have over 9 million dashers doing deliveries and the business is growing 25% year-over-year. Like fast forward 10 years time, like like and if we want to 5x from here, 10x from here, well, where are the where's the supply going to come from? ... I think you're going to see a world where we're going to have this multimodal fleet like we're going to need our hand get our hands on every single modality we can get. So, I think you're not only going to see more autonomy and more robotics, but I think you're going to see even more humans as well.
verbatim transcript · starts at 45:16
45:21one I think the pace at which Door Dash is growing is just I mean and the scale at which we're operating is is pretty insane. I I don't know if people know, but like we have over 9 million dashers doing deliveries and the business is growing 25% year-over-year. Like fast forward 10 years time, like like and if we want to 5x from here, 10x from here, well, where are the where's
45:47the supply going to come from? Like are you going to have half America doing doing deliveries for us every month? Like that's probably not going to be the case. like like there has to be we're going to have to find other areas of opportunity to both bring in new modalities as well as improve efficiencies within our business. I think and I think dot robotics drones like Whimos like sidewalk robots I think
46:09we're going to you're going to see a world where we're going to have this multimodal fleet like we're going to need our hand get our hands on every single modality we can get. So, I think you're not only going to see more autonomy and more robotics, but I think you're going to see even more humans as well. And I mean I mean and and and I think I also just think like with the
46:29introduction of autonomy and robotics like and and efficiency gains you're going to see over time like I also think you're just going to see a even stronger surge in in demand as autonomy as delivery becomes um even more affordable and >> I look forward to getting these a day. [laughter] >> Uh amazing. And um Andy, when you think about what you've learned with the initial foray into agentic commerce,
46:56like how are people going to buy differently in the future beyond food? >> Yeah, I mean I think one of the trends that I found fascinating is like over the past couple years, Google search query links have gone longer. Um and I think to me how I've translated that is like okay, people feel more comfortable like talking to like agents or to like apps like they would a normal human