DoorDash (a CRV portfolio company) released its S-1 this week! It’s worth a read just for the amazing food pictures, but also illustrates how DoorDash thinks about owning the “future of local commerce” beyond food delivery.

A few data points that summarize some of DoorDash’s key metrics:

• The company serves more than 18 million consumers per month, 5 million of whom are on DashPass (DoorDash’s subscription service).

• For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, the company had a 23% contribution margin - showing that food delivery orders can be profitable!

• Revenue increased nearly 3x from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020, from $239M to $879M. Meanwhile, net loss has fallen from -64% to -5% as a % of revenue.

• DoorDash has been increasingly gaining market share in U.S. food delivery - the company is now at 50%, up from 17% at the beginning of 2018.

Huge congrats to our partner at CRV, Saar Gur, who led DoorDash’s seed round in 2013. We are so grateful for the chance to learn from him every day!

news 📣

🍔 Beyond Meat’s tumultuous week. Alternative meat producer Beyond Meat announced Q3 earnings this week, disappointing investors by missing revenue expectations and recording a net loss (it was previously profitable). CEO Ethan Brown said that consumers were no longer “stockpiling” food in their freezers, and the company’s foodservice business continues to struggle due to COVID. In a confusing turn of events, McDonald’s announced its own “McPlant” line but didn’t name a supplier. Beyond Meat’s stock fell until a spokesperson clarified that the company co-produced the patty with McDonald’s, leading to questions about the relationship.

👟 Supreme finds a new home. Cult-favorite streetwear retailer Supreme is being acquired for $2.1B by VF Corp, an apparel conglomerate that owns brands like The North Face and Vans. Supreme was founded in 1994, and became famous for generating hype via product drops, offering limited inventory of new items. Consumers will stand in line for hours outside Supreme stores, or pay multiples on the original price on marketplaces like eBay and StockX. The company was previously valued at $1B in 2017, when private equity firm Carlyle purchase a 50% stake.

📱 TikTok seeks clarity on ban. The continuing battle between TikTok and the U.S. government took an unexpected turn this week, as TikTok claimed the Trump administration forgot about its impending ban. As a reminder - if ByteDance didn’t successfully sell TikTok’s U.S. operations by November 12, the app was supposed to shut down. TikTok filed for an extension and requested more clarity on whether its proposed deal with Oracle and Walmart would be approved, but hasn’t heard back. The Commerce Department announced that it wouldn’t enforce the ban, citing the injunction granted by a federal judge after a lawsuit was filed by three influencers.

🚘 Lyft’s stock surges. Lyft reported Q3 earnings this week, beating analysts’ revenue expectations with an impressive recovery in ridership (up 44% QoQ). Unlike Uber, which has a business line that benefitted from the pandemic (Uber Eats), Lyft has been hit hard by continuing lockdowns. The company’s stock climbed 27% on Monday with the announcement of a potential vaccine, and rose again on Tuesday post-earnings. Lyft executives now expect the company to be EBITDA profitable by the end of 2021.

Disney+ celebrated its first birthday this week! The streaming service has massively outperformed expectations, racking up nearly 74M subscribers. At launch, Disney said it didn’t expect to reach 60-90M subscribers until 2024.

It’s worth noting that many of these subscribers are on discounted plans thanks to partnerships with companies like Fortnite and Verizon and a popular promotion in India. However, Disney+ has still had a much more successful first year than many other streaming services (like the ill-fated Quibi).

In a crowded market, Disney has truly differentiated content to keep kids entertained during lockdown - and acquiring the rights to Hamilton didn’t hurt, either! The company announced this fall that it’s reorganizing its entertainment division to focus on streaming, and will release new movies like Pixar’s Soul exclusively on Disney+.

what we’re following 👀

Facebook’s Eric Feng dives into the future of live shopping in the U.S. (a related fundraise this week - Popshop Live raised a Series A from Benchmark!)

In the crazy news cycle of 2020, social media managers are struggling.

Jealous of people who used WFH as a chance to travel? Not after reading this!

Netflix takes a swing at TikTok with a short form “Fast Laughs” video feed.

Xpression Camera launched on ProductHunt this week, and combines two rising trends: (1) Zoom as a “platform” for other apps, and (2) flexible digital identity! The app only works on MacOS and is in private beta - we found that if you enter your email to get access, you get a link to download almost immediately.

Xpression works similarly to Snapchat’s face swap feature. You can either upload a photo/video or search Xpression’s library, and it projects your facial movements onto a “character”. Users can also enable Xpression as a camera option in Zoom and Twitch - so you can make these projections happen live on a call or a stream. The company is reportedly working on gesture/body language matching to increase the realism.

While Xpression’s matching is good, it’s not perfect enough yet to cause deepfake concerns in the way AI-powered audio cloning apps have. Xpression’s use case seems closer to apps like Morphin, which puts users into GIFs that are fun to generate and send to friends. However, the Xpression team says users are already exploring work applications, such as projecting a suit over your pajamas for Zoom meetings.

The more near-term concern from apps like Xpression may be on the security side - what are these companies doing with your image and recordings? Similar to the debate around facial recognition tech that police departments are using, it seems like we will need new “terms of service” to protect consumers in these situations.

Have you seen any cool new apps that operate on top of Zoom, Twitch, or other video platforms? Comment down below, or email us!

jobs 🎓

Obvious Ventures - Senior Associate (SF)*

Kapwing - Senior PM (SF)

Chime - Junior PM (SF)

Unity - Associate PM (SF)

Affirm - New Grad Software Engineer (SF)

Because - Chief of Staff (SF)*

Impossible Foods - Chief of Staff, Product & Ops (Redwood City)

Expansion VC - Analyst/Associate (NYC)

Justworks - Financial Analyst (NYC)

Edison Partners - Associate (NJ)

WHOOP - Project Manager (Boston)

Village Global - Analyst, Associate / Principal (Remote)

Archtype - Founding Developer Advocate (Remote)

*Requires 3+ years of experience.

internships 📝

Getty Trust - Summer VC Investments Intern (Remote)

Carbon Health - Strategic Initiatives Intern (Remote, SF)

Afterpay - Sales and Customer Success Intern (Remote, NYC)

Stream - Sales Ops & Marketing Intern (Remote, Boulder)

DocuSign - Summer MBA Strategy Intern (SF)

Zoom - MBA Product Management Intern (SF)

DoorDash - Summer Software Engineer Intern (SF)

Clever - Summer PM Intern (SF)

X (Google Moonshots) - Summer PM Intern (Mountain View)

TikTok - Summer Interns (LA)

Spotify - Summer Podcast Intern (LA)

IBM Watson - Summer Health Business Analyst Intern (Raleigh)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Raymond (he goes by “Ray”), a 13-week-old mystery breed dog who lives in SF. His parents think he’s at least part terrier - comment below if you have a dog who looks similar!

He enjoys munching leaves, zooming around town, and just generally being adorable. 

Hi! 👋 We’re Justine and Olivia Moore, identical twins and venture investors at CRV. Thanks for reading Accelerated. We’d love your feedback - feel free to tweet us @venturetwins or email us at twins@crv.com.