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DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said he's not focusing on how his company's business is being affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
- Even as the coronavirus pandemic disrupts industries and markets, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu says he's not thinking about how the epidemic is affecting his own company's business.
- Instead, he told Business Insider in an interview, he and his company have been focusing on and trying to mitigate the health impacts of the outbreak on DoorDash's employees and partners.
- The company has closed its offices in Seattle and is offering free hand sanitizer and gloves to its delivery drivers as long as they pay the price of shipping.
- The outbreak has come as DoorDash is laying the groundwork for an IPO, and potential investors will likely be eager to know how the pandemic is affecting its business.
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SAN FRANCISCO - The coronavirus outbreak is spreading far and wide, disrupting whole industries and panicking investors.
But DoorDash CEO Tony Xu says he's not thinking much about how the pandemic is affecting his own company's business, at least from a sales and bottom-line standpoint.
Instead, he's been focusing on the public-health impacts of the crisis on his company's employees, delivery workers, and restaurant partners, he told Business Insider in an interview this week at DoorDash's headquarters here.
"I've paid way less attention to the business impact than I have to all the precautions," Xu said. "Because to me this is a public health crisis. This is not a business moment."
Of course, many people are worried about the business impact of the coronavirus outbreak. Global stock markets have fallen dramatically. Companies ranging from Apple to Southwest Airlines have warned about the impact of the pandemic on their sales and earnings.
DoorDash last month filed confidentially for an initial public offering. Assuming it goes through with an IPO - something Xu indicated DoorDash wasn't committed to yet - the still-private company will have to open up its books to and start meeting with potential investors. They'll almost certainly want to know the coronavirus epidemic has affected DoorDash's business.
But Xu said that's far from his own mind.
"I don't think about that," he said, continuing, "because the business is going to do what the business is going to do. Like, that's out of my control, in terms of how people will order."
DoorDash is focusing on the health of employees and partners
Instead, he said, he and his team have been worrying for months now about contending with the health-related impacts of the contagion.
Starting in mid-January, DoorDash quietly asked employees who had traveled to areas affected by the virus in its early stages to quarantine themselves, he said. The company mandated that its Seattle-based employees work from home and this week, its offices here were largely empty as many of its employees were themselves working from home.
Meanwhile, the company has stockpiled tens of thousands of gloves and bottles of hand sanitizer that it's offering to its delivery drivers free of charges other than shipping. And it announced earlier this week that it would offer up to two weeks worth of compensation to any of its drivers who come down with COVID-19 or are forced to be quarantined.
Instead of worrying about the effects of the outbreak on DoorDash's sales and bottom line, "I can only worry about the inputs," Xu said. "And the inputs are: Make sure that people are healthy or as healthy as possible. And that there's a backup plan."
The number of cases of COVID-19 in the US and in other countries has been growing exponentially. While he was an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, Xu studied cancer research and got a good sense of what exponential growth can look like in the context of diseases, he said. And that's what's got him worried, he said.
"I think we're underestimating the reported cases by probably a hundred X right now, Xu said. He continued: "It's a big deal. And so that's really what I'm focused on, making sure that everyone's taken care of."
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