Presented by NetSuite
Most companies racing from startup to an industry leader face a choice: limp along with scrappy early systems or endure a costly platform migration.
DoorDash did neither. The local-commerce giant scaled from its 2013 founding through IPO and global expansion — acquiring the Helsiniki-based technology company Wolt in 2022 and UK-based Deliveroo in 2025 — while keeping its original Oracle NetSuite business system. Today, it serves over 50 million consumers in more than 40 countries.*
Chief Accounting Officer Gordon Lee says the secret is building a scalable ecosystem that allows teams to use tools that work best for them.
Choosing flexibility over uniformity
When DoorDash selected NetSuite as its corporate financial control center, it wasn’t looking for a system to enforce uniformity. It sought a scalable platform that could connect all its systems, from ERP, CRM, HR, sourcing, and more.
“Our philosophy has been to create a platform that allows our customers and business partners to use whatever tools work best for them,” Lee says. “When we’re managing growth, the majority of the conversation is about managing expectations — what people expect when you grow from A to B.”
The migration question
Two years after its founding, DoorDash surpassed one million deliveries and expanded into Canada. As the company scaled, Lee faced growing pressure from vendors insisting that rapid growth required a new enterprise platform.
He ran the numbers. The move to another platform could cost millions and consume months of his team’s focus.
Instead, DoorDash stayed with NetSuite, which continued to scale alongside the company’s growth. Built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, NetSuite delivers the performance and reliability of an enterprise platform without the cost or disruption of migration.
Lee concluded: “Why do I bother to move? I already have the scalability I need from NetSuite.”
Today, DoorDash’s NetSuite backend provides enterprise-grade security while its familiar front end provides the team flexibility, creating a stable, modern foundation for sustained, high-velocity growth.
Expanding the menu without the technical indigestion
That flexibility soon proved invaluable. The ability to add new applications quickly — without long, costly integrations — became a major advantage during hypergrowth.
For example, as DoorDash expanded from restaurant delivery into grocery, convenience, and retail, Lee turned to NetSuite’s inventory modules to handle the distinct demands of those new categories.
“The flexibility to have and not have, and turn the switch on and off, is easy because it’s all integrated,” he explains.
Today, DoorDash’s technology stack spans multiple systems — all integrating seamlessly with NetSuite as the financial hub. “They do it, and you’re done,” Lee says.
Embedding expertise to scale smarter, not bigger
For Lee, true partnerships turn vendors into part of the team — and that’s exactly how he describes NetSuite Advanced Customer Support (ACS).
“They are here with us every week. They know all my schematics, they know all my data infrastructure, they know all my database structure within NetSuite. Essentially, they are an extension of my team,” Lee explains.
Close collaboration benefits both parties. DoorDash keeps NetSuite attuned to the realities of hypergrowth and gets instant feedback on technology capability and scalability. In turn, NetSuite stays close to a marquee customer. Interaction is ongoing — and frank, according to Lee.
“We work directly with NetSuite ACS and often ask, ‘Can NetSuite do this?’ If they can prove it can, we stay with NetSuite.”
Another benefit is the ability to extend DoorDash’s expertise without expanding headcount.
“If someone says to me, ‘Gordon, you’re just an accountant. How do you know about systems? I say, I don’t. I have a network guy with us, an expert.’ That’s the kind of partner I want to surround myself with, so that I can grow beyond what I am.”
By embedding expertise within our partnerships, DoorDash scales with precision and control. Lee says the model applies to other companies preparing for IPOs or global expansion. He adds that sustainable growth depends as much on shared understanding as on technology itself.
Too often, finance and IT “look at the same requirement but see completely different things,” Lee says, describing what he calls the “blue versus purple” problem. “The accountant doesn’t understand the configuration of the system,” he explains. “The IT guy doesn’t understand what the accountant was trying to tell them.”
NetSuite bridges that gap. With a unified data model and built-in best practices across finance, operations, and more, it keeps teams aligned and information consistent. That close collaboration, Lee notes, is what keeps rollouts smooth, data clean, and growth sustainable at any stage.
AI strategy: Trust only internal data, get data ducks in a row
Lee plans to test the NetSuite AI Connector Service — which supports Model Context Protocol (MCP) and lets customers connect their own AI to NetSuite — to see how faster access to accurate data can drive growth.
By implementing an internal instance, Lee is less worried about disruptive errors from LLMs trained on public data sources.
“Think about a generative AI chatbot. When you ask a question, it can reflect many perspectives,” he explains. On the other hand, a chatbot trained on private enterprise systems benefits from “a clean data infrastructure.”
Lee is taking a methodical approach: first get data pristine, then train AI on domain-specific terminology, and finally see how internal AI can both find the right information and automate downstream accounting processes to save resources and accelerate growth.
Betting long-term on its original financial core
From early growth to major acquisitions that helped expand its footprint across the globe, DoorDash has relied on NetSuite as a consistent foundation for innovation and scale.
Lee credits NetSuite’s flexible architecture and close partnership with helping enable DoorDash as it continued to scale and cement itself as a leader in local commerce globally.
His mantra is simple: “Focus on growth instead of churning through vendors.”
* Based on the combined numbers for DoorDash, Wolt, and Deliveroo, measured as of September 2025.
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