More than a decade ago, I was sitting in my apartment in San Francisco bemoaning the fact that the only thing I had in my refrigerator was hot sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love hot sauce, but you can’t exactly make it a meal.
1) I'm working on something really exciting and looking for excellent engineers to join. Come build best-in-class products for a very early stage co that has the potential to transform a massive industry. Will share more live.
1 Today I’m announcing that once
@instacart
becomes a public company, I’ll be stepping down as Executive Chairman and transitioning off the board of directors
I’m excited to share that we’ve recruited
@fidjissimo
to join us as Instacart’s new CEO as I transition to Executive Chairman on August 2. As one of the most formidable consumer tech leaders in the world, I’m thrilled to partner with Fidji. Read more:
Today, the company I founded in my kitchen is now publicly traded ($CART)! I’m immensely grateful to the team that built
@instacart
. I also want to thank the hard-working community of shoppers, our incredible customers, our retail and CPG partners and our CEO
@fidjissimo
Last year, I assembled a small team and began incubating products in the digital health space. This work has resulted in the creation of two companies, Bridge and Sunrise Health. A few updates:
Finally, none of this would have been possible had my parents not made countless sacrifices as we immigrated from India to Libya and then to Canada – all so that one day my brother and I might have a chance to pursue our dreams.
These are just a handful of the memories I have from building Instacart. We would not be here today without the extraordinary work of so many people. I'm incredibly grateful to our shoppers, customers, partners and team members who made this possible. Happy Birthday
@instacart
!
YC initially rejected Instacart. Not wanting to take no for an answer, I sent
@garrytan
a 6-pack of beer using our service. He immediately grasped the company’s potential and the next day I was invited to interview at
@ycombinator
My empty refrigerator was an ongoing problem - and a source of inspiration. It was 2012 and I could shop for everything online except groceries. That was a lightbulb moment for me, and I got started coding the first version of the Instacart App.
While this is an important milestone, the work
@instacart
is only just beginning. I can’t wait to see how the team continues to transform the grocery industry. Onward!
Our solution: we decided to buy one of every item in a grocery store, take it to a studio and have it photographed to list it in on Instacart. Customers loved the ability to shop their favorite brands and the stores loved the sales.
Growing safely at this rate was insanely tough to do – with PPE hard to come by and our systems struggling to keep up with the unprecedented demand. What kept us going? It was a picture one of our shoppers sent from a customer’s home:
Proud to announce that today
@Instacart
is accessible to 70% of all households in the US - congrats to our teams on this milestone! Excited by our momentum & continued expansions:
The online grocery market hit a tipping point in 2017 and we couldn’t be more excited to be part of it. Excited to announce
@Instacart
Series E round to transform grocery shopping!
In the next 6 mos., we removed any obstacle that prevented a grocer from partnering with us. We launched Instacart Enterprise and expanded into 100+ markets. Result: Whole Foods became <5% of our sale and 8/10 grocers began working with us.
Team drilled into every detail of the Instacart experience and found 20+ levers that slowly started to add up. Result: we hit the goal before deadline. More importantly, we started to understand the biz at a forensic level, a key competitive advantage that continues today.
4) We will work from my house in the Bay Area until we have an office. I'll serve lunch.
Email me at apoorva.mehta
@gmail
.com and include your Github, Blogs and/or Linkedin
Proud of the investment we’re making in Toronto to launch
@Instacart
North - we’re now accessible to more than 50% of all households in Canada & excited to hire 200+ more engineers in Toronto to help us shape the future of grocery.
Can’t think of a better person than
@garrytan
to lead the next chapter at
@ycombinator
. He is not only one of the nicest ppl around, he also deeply understands what it means to be an early stage founder
But no matter how well you execute, it is impossible to control everything. In June 2017, the CEO of Whole Foods called me to say Amazon had just bought them. In other words, our main partner was now owned by our main competitor.
3 So why leave? Since I transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman a year ago, I realized that I want to pursue a new mission and I want to do it with the same singular focus that I had while building Instacart. Stepping off the board will allow me to do just that.
We made it into YC but solving the chicken & egg problem (pun intended) remained exceedingly difficult. How do you sign up grocers when you have no customers? How do you get customers when you have no grocers?
This visual galvanized our whole team. Result: we helped millions of families safely get groceries, enabled 100s of thousands of shoppers to earn an income when much of the world was shut down and offered grocers a way to continue to serve their customers.
In 2015, the funding environment went from growth-at-all-costs to zero tolerance for losses in a matter of weeks. Our gross margins at that time were -$16/order. We needed to change.
I set a wildly optimistic goal to get to breakeven gross margins in . . . 8 months.
In the beginning, VCs struggled to understand what
@instacart
was and dozens rejected us. In fact, a VC handed me a floppy disk with Webvan’s business plan on it to demonstrate that Instacart would never work.
I called an all hands and shared that we are entering Wartime and we had to focus on only one thing: bringing every major grocer in North America onto the Instacart platform. Everything else could wait.
Nothing could have prepared us for what happened when the pandemic hit. Everything changed overnight. We saw volume growing at 10% DAY-OVER-DAY, basket sizes were up 50% and everyone’s grandma was in search of a delivery slot.
My dad spent 10 min at dinner tonight gushing about
@apoorva_mehta
and towards the end he said “gosh, I don’t know how people start from scratch to make a successful company.”
(Also said “that guy is good looking too”)
Glad I have something to aspire to.
4 I know the company will continue to thrive and is in the capable hands of
@fidjissimo
. Instacart has an enormous opportunity ahead and I have confidence in the team’s ability to achieve its full potential. Onwards!
So, we built
@Use_Bridge
– a one click checkout for health insurance. Bridge gives telehealth companies the ability to accept insurance within a matter of weeks. It will be launching with several pilot customers in the next few months.
Thank you for the kind words,
@davehclark
. This means a lot, especially coming from you. There are very few people in the world who understand at-scale complex logistics as well as you do.
Congrats
@apoorva_mehta
@fidjissimo
and the whole Instacart team…as an observer from afar for a long time it’s super impressive what you built. Many won’t ever appreciate the complexity you had to overcome in grocery they will just enjoy the magic which is what makes it great!…
2 I care deeply about Instacart. It’s the one thing I have thought about for every waking minute of the last decade! This is what made it an incredibly difficult decision and something that I have been struggling with for months.
1/ The events of the past week have created a flashpoint for awareness, action, and change -- one that we at
@Instacart
recognize is long overdue. We want to help, and to that end will be investing $1M to support our internal teams and help support actionable change.
I’ve adored my time working in the technology start-up world, as an operator and an investor. Magic happens with absurdly high frequency here! Now, after 12 years at
@a16z
, it’s time for the next adventure. To the a16 team, the founders we’ve funded and our LPs – thank you for…
2) About you: have an unrelenting sense of urgency and the capabilities to move fast, can take full ownership of shipping finished products, can deal with ambiguity and love working hard.
So, we built
@findsunrise
, a product designed to make obesity care accessible through physicians and if medically appropriate, access to GLP-1 medications. Over the last 15 months, Sunrise has helped 200k+ patients and is doing $XXm in ann rev, is profitable and growing
We learned early on that there is no equivalent to Stripe in telehealth! Every digital health company must individually contract and integrate with 100s of regional plans to accept insurance as a form of payment.
So what’s next? Bridge and Sunrise are going to be led by world-class leaders from the founding team. Bridge will be led by
@keatonbedell
and Sunrise will be led by Jacob Gilson. I will continue to support as a co-founder and advisor.
Thank you
@OfekLavian
for your hard work. Because of your work on EBT Snap, millions of families who use food stamps will be able to have the accessibility of Instacart. Excited about what you do next!
Celebrating 10 years of
@Instacart
🥕today! One of the greatest stories, led by a legendary founder
@apoorva_mehta
.
Grateful to have witnessed a small part of this journey.
3/ We are making a $250k donation to
@FeedingAmerica
&
@FoodBanksCanada
to support communities of color that are disproportionately struggling with food insecurity. We're also donating $250k to
@eji_org
, an organization that challenges racial and economic injustice.
Consumers expect a frictionless digital experience that rivals the best apps, the convenience & personal recognition of the corner store, & quality that beats the farmers market. That's
@Instacart
and we're thrilled to welcome them to the GC family.
Proud to rollout the new Instacart Pickup product - another important step as we work to provide more choice for busy consumers & more flexibility for our valued retail partners 🥕 -
Excited to welcome
@Instacart
's new CTO Mark Schaaf - looking forward to partnering with Mark to support & double our engineering teams. via
@techcrunch
2/ We’re prioritizing the safety of our shoppers by investing $500k to compensate in-store shoppers and teams for any disruption to their shifts due to store closures or local curfews, and provide additional tools and features that support shopper safety.
At the beginning of the pandemic, our team members were working 18 hour days / 7 days a week from their kitchen tables (in many cases with no child care) as we ramped up to support our community during the pandemic. This was incredibly inspiring to see. Thank you
The hardest and the most rewarding period of my time at Instacart - helping millions of people stay safe and get their groceries delivered and providing income opportunities to hundreds of thousands of shoppers. Most of us worked 18hr days and didn’t take weekends off for a month
As a result, most telehealth companies end up requiring patients to pay directly via credit card - making these services unaffordable for many people, arguably those who may need them the most.
Secondly, we looked at how telehealth could help combat obesity, which is the root cause of so many serious conditions. By 2030, more than half of all adults in the US will be considered obese. This is a national epidemic.
so proud to have been on the team that took
@Instacart
• from -$16/order to the profitability party in eight months
• from Amazon-Whole Foods to partnerships with every major retailer in six months
• from COVID to onboarding 400k shoppers in six weeks
pure grit and execution