# Elisha Ong > Maker + Builder Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/elishaong ❤️ Build cool things. Make people’s lives better. Enjoy the journey. Wander in the wonder. 🤙 ## Work Experience ### Co-founder & Founding Designer, Zesty by DoorDash @ DoorDash Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area Built DoorDash’s first native AI consumer product. Shaping how XFN teams collaborate and build with AI. Building Zesty — a personal dining concierge shifting dining from search to intent, and laying the foundation for agentic commerce. Zesty helps people decide where to eat by understanding what they’re in the mood for — not just filters or keyword search. It brings together personal taste, social context, and real-world signals to make discovery, planning, and booking seamless. Today, that shows up in a few key ways: • Vibe-based search — talk to it like a local friend; describe a feeling • Social decision-making — bring friends into the process and combine tastes • Personalization — a living memory of your preferences and routines • Trip planning — build day-by-day food itineraries anywhere in the world • Generative lists — create, save, and share “food playlists,” and follow others for real word-of-mouth recs • Seamless booking — go from idea to reservation without switching apps ### Director of Product Design (IC) @ DoorDash Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area ### Principal Product Designer @ DoorDash Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco Bay Area See around corners—spotting gaps, patterns, and emerging behaviors across Consumers, Merchants, and Dashers—and turning them into bold, strategic bets. I operate at the intersection of product, design, and zero-to-one thinking: shaping ideas from early insight to vision, prototyping, and real-world impact. Focused on reimagining the future of local commerce—not just delivery, but how people discover, experience, and connect with their cities. From flexible work to autonomous services to social discovery, the goal is simple: build what’s next, and make it feel inevitable. Key contributions: • Dasher Vision — reimagining the Dasher experience with a new homepage and unified task framework • Live Order Manager — reinventing merchant operations with a touch-first, real-time system • Social Commerce — bringing discovery to life through short-form video, feeds, and creator-driven lists • Going Out — expanding DoorDash beyond delivery into in-store experiences, deals, rewards, and reservations ### Staff Product Designer @ DoorDash Jan 2020 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco Bay Area Reimagined map-based discovery as a shared, reusable platform across DoorDash—enabling Pickup, Dine-in, Nearby, and a broader ecosystem of in-store experiences across web and mobile. ### Entrepreneur / Volunteer / Helper @ Various Startups Jan 2010 – Present | United States and Singapore Investor, advisor, and helper to various startups and non-profit organizations. Craft vision, identify trends, spot challenges, tackle roadblocks, direct product strategies, and design user experiences to 10x teams and companies to the next level (and next phase of their growth trajectory). ### Head of Design, New Mobility @ Uber Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area Transform cities of the future and make shared micro-mobility (Uber x JUMP, Lime, Getaround, Cityscoot) an everyday part of how people get around. Founding member and principal designer for New Mobility at Uber. Later transitioned to manage and grow the design team from 3 to 15 (including product designers, researchers, and writers). Oversaw rider experience, growth, supply operation, and mobility hardware user interface. Helped launch in 20+ cities across US and Europe. Bridged multiple cross-functional teams including hardware, software, firmware, brand, product marketing, and regional operations. Instrumented design thinking sprints with stakeholders and leadership team as part of roadmap planning process –– setting long-term goals and strategies, identify risks, streamline customer problems, create compelling narratives, and test realistic prototypes. Obsessed with crafting magical customer experiences and unlocking paths to sustainability. ### Senior Product Designer II @ Uber Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area Lead designer on Global Growth, Southeast Asia market. Tackled complex issues in a rapidly growing but highly fragmented market including UberMoto, Pool and Hourly Rentals for drivers. Launched hourly rentals for drivers and consumers in San Francisco. ### Lead Product Designer @ Zendesk Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area Systems and patterns. Connected the dots through product, user experience, business, and brand. Evolved into a multi-product company. Led conceptualization to the launch of brand new systems design and brand identity with 40+ product, design, research, and engineering counterparts across 6 countries. ### Senior Product Designer @ Zendesk Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco Bay Area Co-led new product innovation and special projects including “Inbox by Zendesk” with co-founder and Chief Product Officer. Winner of Zendevian Cup (Company Hackathon) and co-created Zendesk SMS as a channel. ### Advisor @ Workato Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Cupertino Co-directed and prototyped early concepts of Workato. Reimagining workplace automation through drag-and-drop user experience, and community-driven recipes – without writing a line of code. ### Co-Founder & CEO @ Burpple Jan 2010 – Jan 2014 | Singapore Co-founded Burpple - the social food guide for your everyday life powered by editorial and eater community recommendations. Raised seed round from notable international VCs and angel investors including Silicon Straits, Neoteny Labs, QuestVC, and Brad Porteus (former Yelp CMO). Grew and led a team of 10+ in Engineering, Product Design, Content, and Community teams. Grew Burpple from scratch and overcame incumbents to become Singapore's and Southeast Asia’s leading restaurant and food discovery platform. Served over 6 million users with 3 million reviews in 18 months. Awarded Top 10 Startups of Asia in 2012. ### Lead Designer @ Qik (acquired by Skype) Jan 2009 – Jan 2011 | San Francisco Bay Area Pioneered live mobile video streaming, filters, and video chat across multiple mobile OS. Designed the world’s first video chat user interface on a smartphone. Launched at Google I/O. Acquired by Skype, then Microsoft. ### Staff Sergeant @ Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Jan 2005 – Jan 2006 | Singapore ## Education ### NOC Silicon Valley Batch 17 NUS Overseas Colleges ### Stanford Technology Ventures Program Stanford University ### Bachelor of Business Administration National University of Singapore ### Hwa Chong Institution ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/elishaong - Portfolio: http://www.elishaong.com - Portfolio: http://www.burpple.com/sg - Portfolio: https://www.uber.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/elishaong JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/elishaong/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13