How I built a $400 million food delivery company called Caviar

Shawn Tsao, 34, co-founded food delivery app Caviar in 2012 with four of his college classmates and fraternity brothers from the University of California, Berkeley.

Before Caviar, Tsao and his co-founders created on Munch On Me, a daily deals app for food. But in 2011, the company crumbled amid a meltdown of the daily deals industry. In the ensuing weeks, they decided to switch to an on-demand food delivery app — a novel concept at the time.

In 2014, Jack Dorsey's payments company Square — now known as Block — acquired Caviar in an all-stock deal worth more than $100 million, according to Tsao. Five years later, rival food delivery company DoorDash purchased Caviar from Square in a deal worth $410 million.

Today, Tsao and his co-founders spend their time investing in restaurants and other ventures, and globetrotting with loved ones.