30-04-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Meet DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang: he began computing at 3, wrote a bestselling book at 15, moved to the US to attend Stanford and found his wife in a How I Met Your Mother moment
DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang has made yet another big-money move. On April 1, Tang – a director of the billion-dollar food delivery app – executed a series of stock transactions totalling US$8.23 million, revealed.
That came months after the billionaire sold all his direct shares in DoorDash in an estimated US$7.78 million transaction. According to Forbes, Tang's current net worth is US$1 billion – which is only half of his estimated net worth in 2021.
Wealth aside, Tang, 33, has a passion for flying aeroplanes, making his first solo flight in July 2023 and for poker. He even appeared in a season of TV game show High Stakes Poker. But what else do we know about him?
Stanley Tang is Hong Kong-American
Stanley Tang is the co-founder of DoorDash and a pilot in his free time. Photo: @stanleytang/Instagram
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According to his website, Stanley Tang was born in Japan and raised in Hong Kong, where he attended King George V School, Kowloon. Two years before graduating from high school in 2010, he published the book eMillions: Behind-the-Scenes Stories of 14 Successful Internet Millionaires, which became an Amazon bestseller.
Tang then moved to San Francisco's Bay Area to attend Stanford University. He graduated in 2014 with a degree in computer science with a focus on human-computer interaction. While at university, he was part of the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students organisation.
How did he start DoorDash?
Stanley Tang (left), Tony Xu and Andy Fang, co-founders of DoorDash. Photo: @4chun_cookie/X
Tang started showing an interest in computers from the young age of three and learned how to build websites when he was still a child. By 15, he was being called an 'internet entrepreneur', per his Amazon author biography, having launched websites and successful products. Before completing his degree he briefly worked as a software engineer for Facebook, in 2012. A year later, DoorDash was born.
Tang founded the company with fellow Stanford graduates Andy Fang and Tony Xu. It was previously known as Palo Alto Delivery, in honour of where it all began. 'When we first started, we were trying to solve our own problem of getting food delivered. But soon, it grew quickly within the Stanford community and beyond,' Tang wrote on the DoorDash blog. Fast forward to 2024 and DoorDash made its debut on the prestigious Fortune 500 list.
He's married