Presented by NetSuite
Most companies racing from startup to market leader face a choice: limp along with poor early systems or endure a costly platform migration.
DoorDash did neither. The local commerce giant has scaled since its founding in 2013 through IPOs and global expansion – acquiring Helsiniki-based technology company Wolt in 2022 and Britain’s Deliveroo in 2025 – while retaining its original 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 building a scalable ecosystem that allows teams to use tools that work best for them.
Choose flexibility over uniformity
When DoorDash chose NetSuite as the company’s financial control center, it wasn’t looking for a system to enforce uniformity. It wanted 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 the tools that work best for them,” says Lee. “When we manage growth, most of the conversation is about managing expectations – what people expect as you grow from A to B.”
The migration issue
Two years after its founding, DoorDash surpassed one million deliveries and expanded into Canada. As the company grew, Lee faced increasing pressure from suppliers who insisted that rapid growth required a new business platform.
He went through the numbers. Switching to another platform could cost millions and consume months of his team’s focus.
Instead, DoorDash stayed with NetSuite, which scaled with 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 should I bother moving? I already have the scalability I need from NetSuite.”
Today, DoorDash’s NetSuite backend provides enterprise-grade security, while its trusted front end provides the team with flexibility, creating a stable, modern foundation for sustainable, rapid growth.
Expand the menu without the technical indigestion
That flexibility quickly proved invaluable. The ability to quickly add new applications – without lengthy, costly integrations – became a major advantage during hypergrowth.
For example, as DoorDash expanded from restaurant delivery to groceries, convenience stores and retail, Lee turned to NetSuite’s inventory modules to meet the specific demands of these new categories.
“The flexibility of having and not having, and turning the switch on and off, is easy because it’s all integrated,” he explains.
Today, DoorDash’s technology stack includes multiple systems, all of which integrate seamlessly with NetSuite as its financial center. “They do it, and you’re done,” Lee says.
Embedding expertise to scale smarter, not bigger
For Lee, true partnerships make suppliers part of the team – and that’s exactly how he describes NetSuite Advanced Customer Support (ACS).
“They’re here with us every week. They know all my schedules, they know my entire data infrastructure, they know my entire database structure within NetSuite. Essentially, they’re an extension of my team,” Lee explains.
Close cooperation benefits both parties. DoorDash keeps NetSuite attuned to the realities of hypergrowth and receives immediate feedback on technology capabilities and scalability. In turn, NetSuite remains close to a major customer. The interaction is ongoing – and candid, Lee said.
“We work directly with NetSuite ACS and often ask, ‘Can NetSuite do this?’ If they can prove this is possible, we will stay with NetSuite.”
Another benefit is the ability to expand DoorDash’s expertise without expanding its workforce.
“When someone says to me: ‘Gordon, you’re just an accountant. What do you know about systems? I say: I don’t know. I have a network man with us, an expert.’ I want to surround myself with that kind of partner, so that I can grow beyond what I am.”
By embedding expertise in our partnerships, DoorDash scales with precision and control. Lee says the model applies to other companies preparing for initial public offerings or global expansion. He adds that sustainable growth depends as much on shared understanding as on the technology itself.
Too often, finance and IT “look at the same requirements, but see completely different things,” says Lee, describing what he calls the “blue versus purple” problem. “The accountant does not 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, teams stay aligned and information stays consistent. That close collaboration, Lee notes, ensures that implementation runs smoothly, data stays clean, and growth remains sustainable at every stage.
AI strategy: trust only internal data, collect data in a row
Lee plans to test the NetSuite AI Connector Service – which supports Model Context Protocol (MCP) and allows customers to connect their own AI to NetSuite – to see how faster access to accurate data can drive growth.
By implementing an internal instance, Lee can worry less about disruptive errors from LLMs trained on public data sources.
“Think about a generative AI chatbot. When you ask a question, it can come up from many perspectives,” he explains. On the other hand, a chatbot trained on private enterprise systems benefits from “a clean data infrastructure.”
Lee takes a methodical approach: first ensure the data is clean, then train AI in 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.
Long-term focus on the original financial core
From early growth to major acquisitions that helped expand its footprint around the world, DoorDash has relied on NetSuite as a consistent foundation for innovation and scale.
Lee credits NetSuite’s flexible architecture and close collaboration that made DoorDash possible as the company continued to scale and cement itself as a leader in local commerce globally.
His mantra is simple: “Focus on growth instead of looking for suppliers.”
*Based on the combined figures for DoorDash, Wolt and Deliveroo, measured as of September 2025.
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