Presented by NetSuite
Most companies racing from startup to industry leader face a choice: slow down with poor initial systems or endure costly platform migrations.
DoorDash did nothing. The local-commerce giant expanded from its 2013 founding through an IPO and global expansion – acquiring Helsinki-based technology company Volt in 2022 and UK-based Deliveroo in 2025 – while retaining its core Oracle NetSuite business system. Today, it serves more than 50 million consumers in more than 40 countries.*
Chief Accounting Officer Gordon Lee says the secret is to build a scalable ecosystem that allows teams to use the tools that work best for them.
Choosing flexibility over uniformity
When DoorDash chose NetSuite as its corporate financial control center, it wasn’t looking for a system to enforce uniformity. It looked for a scalable platform that could connect all its systems ranging from ERP, CRM, HR, sourcing, etc.
"Our philosophy is 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, most of the conversation is about managing expectations – what people expect when you grow from A to B."
migration question
Two years after its founding, DoorDash surpassed one million deliveries and expanded into Canada. As the company grew, Lee faced increasing pressure from vendors, who insisted that rapid growth required a new enterprise platform.
He ran the numbers. Switching to another platform could cost millions and take months of their team’s attention.
Instead, DoorDash stayed with NetSuite, which continued to grow as the company grew. 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 flexibility to the team, creating a stable, modern foundation for continued, high-velocity growth.
Expanding the menu without technical indigestion
That flexibility soon proved invaluable. The ability to quickly add new applications – without lengthy, expensive integration – 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 module to handle the specific demands of those new categories.
“There’s flexibility to have or not have, and it’s easy to switch on and off because it’s all integrated,” he explains.
Today, DoorDash’s technology stack spans multiple systems – all seamlessly integrated with NetSuite as the financial hub. “They do that, and you’re done,” says Lee.
Incorporating expertise not at scale, but at a smarter scale
For Lee, true partnerships make vendors part of the team – and that’s exactly how he describes NetSuite Advanced Customer Support (ACS).
"He’s here with us every week. They know all my plans, they know all my data structure, they know all my database structure within NetSuite. Basically, they are an extension of my team," Lee explains.
Close cooperation benefits both parties. DoorDash keeps NetSuite abreast of the realities of hypergrowth and gets immediate feedback on technology potential and scalability. In return, NetSuite remains close to a major customer. According to Lee, negotiations are ongoing – and clearly so.
“We work directly with NetSuite ACS and often get asked, ‘Can NetSuite do this?’ If they can prove this, we’ll stick with NetSuite."
Another benefit is DoorDash’s ability to expand expertise without increasing the number of employees.
"If someone says to me, ‘Gordon, you’re just an accountant. How do you know about the system? I say, I don’t. There’s a network guy with us, an expert.’ This is the kind of partner I want to have with me, so that I can grow beyond who I am.
By combining the expertise of our partnerships, DoorDash leads with precision and control. Lee says this model also applies to other companies preparing for an IPO or global expansion. He says sustainable development depends as much on shared understanding as it does on technology.
Often, finance and IT “see the same need but see completely different things,” Lee says, what he calls the “blue versus purple” problem. “The accountant doesn’t understand the configuration of the system,” he explains. “The IT guy didn’t understand what the accountant was trying to tell him.”
NetSuite bridges that gap. With a unified data model and built-in best practices across finance, operations, and other areas, it keeps teams aligned and information consistent. Lee says this close collaboration is what keeps rollouts smooth, data clean, and growth sustainable at any level.
AI strategy: Trust only internal data, get data ducks in a row
Lee plans to test the NetSuite AI Connector service – which supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and lets customers connect their own AI to NetSuite – to see how fast access to accurate data can speed up development.
By implementing internal examples, Lee is less concerned about disruptive errors than LLMs trained on public data sources.
"Think about a generative AI chatbot. When you ask a question, it can reflect multiple perspectives,” he explains. Chatbots trained on private enterprise systems, on the other hand, benefit from “clean data infrastructure.”
Lee is taking a systematic approach: first get the data pristine, then train the AI on domain-specific terminology, and finally look at how internal AI can get the right information and automate downstream accounting processes to save resources and accelerate growth.
Making long-term bets on your core financial core
From early development to key acquisitions that helped expand its footprint around the world, DoorDash has relied on NetSuite as an ongoing foundation for innovation and scale.
Lee credited NetSuite’s flexible architecture and close partnerships with helping to enable DoorDash as it continued to grow and solidify itself as a leader in local commerce on a global scale.
Their mantra is simple: “Focus on growth instead of churning through salespeople.”
*Based on combined numbers from DoorDash, Vault, and Deliveroo, measured through September 2025.
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