"I think one of the most important things to remember is that there is no special formula for success that everyone else knows"
Rebecca Burrows Tweet
Rebecca Burrows is the General Manager for DoorDash Australia. She has been instrumental in elevating the delivery platform within a crowded market by spotlighting small businesses and bringing “the best of your neighbourhood to your door”.
Rebecca is a values-based leader and a passionate advocate for small businesses with a deep desire to grow their capabilities and strengthen their frontline relations with consumers. Rebecca brings a wealth of business knowledge and experience to her work, having previously held leadership positions at Australia Post as General Manager of Small Business where she was responsible for looking after Australia’s small business community, and as the Strategic Pricing Lead at Shell in a range of diverse commercial and change leadership roles that also took her to London for a four-year stint.
Rebecca’s enterprise leadership has seen the business employ a sports-focused approach in developing its collaborative portfolio having signed multi-year deals with the NBL, partnering with Touch Football Australia and continuing its role as an official partner of the NRL. Partnering with the NRL & NBL – whose seasons dovetail each other throughout the year – has been a tactical move by Rebecca and the DoorDash team, allowing for the brand to tap into their strong grassroots bases and diversified audiences to grow brand awareness & engagement.
As well as being a strong industry leader, Rebecca is also a dedicated mother of two, passionate coach, proud Melburnian and a Monash University graduate.
Rebecca loves to travel, read and spend time outdoors with her family.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us, please introduce yourself to our readers.
Rebecca Burrows: I am the leader of the DoorDash business here in Australia. I have had a career spanning many countries and industries but my most recent focus has been in ecommerce and logistics. I am a mum to two amazing boys and sit on a number of boards.
Can you tell our readers in what ways you are disrupting your industry?
Rebecca Burrows: We are all about empowering local economies and for us at DoorDash this means meeting the unmet needs of each of our ‘audiences’. Dashers who want to engage in hyper flexible work, business owners who want to find new revenue streams or pull costs out of their businesses and consumers who are waking up to a new era of convenience. There are many examples of how we are disrupting the various industries we work within. One example is our white label service which provides our logistics engine to any merchant, allowing businesses to deliver goods to consumers within one hour of them placing an order (via the business’s own site).
We know that the average ecommerce purchase in Australia travels over 200km and takes multiple days – yet 60-80% of what we buy could be found within 10km of us. By linking local stores to consumers and providing the logistics to complete these deliveries, we are disrupting and propelling ecommerce and the convenience economy, empowering local businesses to reach more consumers and democratising work. Not to mention the environmental benefits of less miles travelled!
Did you become a disruptor by choice or by necessity? Tell us more about the journey.
Rebecca Burrows: Probably a bit of both – but I believe it is always a choice and to be disruptive is a mindset. If I look specifically at the Australian market for food delivery, DoorDash had to be a disruptor in order to enter the market. We work in a super competitive space and a challenger brand like DoorDash needs to disrupt to be relevant! This is why we work really hard to understand the needs of our market and to continuously develop new products to meet these needs. We need to pre-empt and lead the market to the next wave of trends or needs and I love working with our team and our partners to do the impossible! An example of this would be our DoubleDash feature which disrupted the market by allowing consumers to order from multiple stores under one delivery. We are currently testing this on a smaller scale but you can imagine how disruptive ordering Sunday brunch and ticking off errands such as supermarket, chemist or pet store orders from your phone to have everything completed in one hour will be.
Personally, I have a disruptive personality – I am innately curious, a lifelong learner and hate complacency. I have certainly found myself in the right place, with the right company in an agile industry.
Now for the main focus of this interview: Many readers may wonder what are the biggest challenges women entrepreneurs must overcome to be successful?
Rebecca Burrows: There are challenges I face on a daily basis that are not just unique to women building businesses. Having strong ideas but holding them loosely to truly meet market needs and challenges with tenacity and resilience to bounce back after the inevitable setbacks that arise when building businesses. I think as women we may struggle to be bold – which is a key element in disrupting thinking or a market. I can think of many times in my career where I have either watered down an idea to make it palatable on first impression or have failed to back an idea and missed an opportunity. This is something I have focused a lot on and now often get positive feedback on my ability to think big and be bold. When you can inspire and rally people around a bold vision we can truly achieve so much more.
With that being said, access to capital and connections are some challenges I know female founders face. I feel incredibly lucky that I have been able to flex my entrepreneurial spirit in a number of ways by being able to building businesses within businesses which has minimised some of these barriers throughout my personal experience.
How did you overcome these obstacles? Who helped you during these difficult times and how did they?
Rebecca Burrows: I have always sought mentors and sponsors in any role I have held. Generally, I have found mentors and sponsors within the organisations I work in and have fostered these relationships as a priority. Finding someone to stress test ideas with and give ‘cover’ for your work and experimentation is critical, especially when working in a larger system (such as building a business within a business). These people have been so useful in many ways – providing critical feedback, helping me shape ‘asks’ for resources, challenging my thinking and championing me and the businesses I have run. I also focus a lot on building the right team – with diversity of background, experience and interest. I am an excellent generalist but I make sure to hire people who are infinitely better than me at their craft – and I learn from them daily.
Finally, my family is my biggest support system and gets me through challenging times – whether by distraction, cheerleading or provided perspective.
How did these lessons shaped the way you conduct business today?
Rebecca Burrows: I am very aware that part of my role as a leader, and the importance of fostering and nurturing talent. I think consciously about who I can help and what mentoring or sponsorship would be most useful for the individual and for the business we are operating. In any quarter there is always limited time, but I make a point to invest my time wisely in the people around me. I have also learned that women seem to be less successful in fostering strong networks or having the opportunity to be invited in, so this is something I have actively worked as I stepped into this role by engaging the network I have built throughout my career. I have also learned the importance of asking for help- you don’t need to go it alone. Asking for support is a key step in building networks and if you don’t reach out, it can get quite lonely!
The other key learning would be on boldness and vision. I have tried hard to channel my inner bold self – setting challenging goals, boldly stating them and asking for resources. – It all comes down to backing yourself, a skill we need to learn to but one that I only mastered over time.
What advice you wished you had received when you started, that you’d like to share now with aspiring women entrepreneurs?
Rebecca Burrows: I think one of the most important things to remember is that there is no special formula for success that everyone else knows. Imposter syndrome is real and something we all grapple with, so the sooner we learn to manage that the better.
Also know that we learn some of the most valuable lessons from our mistakes! A setback can often be the catalyst for even greater success.
What do you plan on tackling during the 2022 year? Share your goals and battles you expect to face.
Rebecca Burrows: It’s important for me to continue to set goals and re-evaluate what success looks like with each new year. 2022 will see the launch of a range of new businesses and the facilitation of large scale partnerships for the business. I’m very excited to continue to push the limits of what myself and DoorDash are capable of. There’s also something to be said for balance and setting as many personal goals as professional, and one that is something that I have missed greatly is travel. I plan to get back out there this year and explore more of the world again.
I foresee intense competition, war for talent, managing short term versus long term thinking and results, prioritisation and making the right bold bets all to be battles that will need to be overcome.
I’m sure our readers will be very thankful for the insights you have shared. What is the best book you’ve gone through lately and please share some take away lessons from it.
Rebecca Burrows: I actually read a lot, however I find myself reaching for a book as a way to relax rather than for business inspiration! Instead I prefer to listen to podcasts as a way of digesting business concepts. I’ve recently tuned into a range of podcasts on crypto and the metaverse as these are areas I currently know little about but have a feeling I should start to become familiar with.
I have also read a few parenting books to help as I raise two tween/teenagers!
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, I do have one more question for you. When was the last time you did something for the first time and what was it?
Rebecca Burrows: As life has thrown lots of unexpected obstacles our way over the last two years, I’ve realised I have tried a lot of things for the first time. I can truly say I’d never thought I’d home school my kids but that’s just one example of how the pandemic pushed a lot of us out of our comfort zones. Sitting down to family dinner every night of the week is something I am most proud of and probably my favourite outcome of the trying COVID-19 restrictions. I seems crazy that I previously didn’t eat dinner with my kids, but this ritual has now carried on over into our post-pandemic lives. For something a bit more exhilarating, I tried hang-gliding with my son a few years ago- that was the first time I jumped off a literal mountain!
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Rebecca Burrows for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Rebecca Burrows or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin
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