The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Rajaram: Moritz's Instacart investment was the top VC bet ever
“I think the best venture capital, I, someone asked me what's the best venture capital bets. I talk about a paradoxical one. I think it's Mike Moritz betting on Instacart. Why? Because he lost three hundred and seventy million on web van less than a decade ago.…”
James: Major capabilities beat A/B testing at $30B-$40B transaction scale
“As much as A-B testing and like high velocity optimizations feel like progress, and to some extent they will be, when you're at a business of that scale where we're talking like 30 to forty billion in gross transaction volume, the only thing that really moves …”
James: Instacart had a neglected culture while Thumbtack was an incredible workplace
“Thumbtack, amazing culture, incredible workplace. I would love to have worked there forever, and Instacart, incredible business, but neglected culture, not a pleasant place to work.”
Jason James: DoorDash beat Instacart by capturing suburbs and expanding faster
“So yes, DoorDash did beat Instacart. I mean, why did that happen? I think the main thing is they expanded faster, went, you know, beyond restaurant sooner. I think also their key insight was when the suburbs, they got there first, beat, you know, Uber Eats to …”
Paik: DoorDash and Instacart succeed by price-discriminating consumer laziness
“The genius behind Instacart and DoorDash and other companies like that is that they, Perfectly price discriminate laziness and the value of like a leisure hour.”
Jordan: Instacart lost $20-$25 per order when a16z first invested
“From recollection, they were billing something like 10 or 12 dollars per order when we invested, and they were losing 20, 25 dollars per order on each one”
Jordan: Instacart Lost 75% of Early Users but Held 100% Revenue Retention
“A year out, you know, the number of users declined something like three quarters But the users that stayed spent you know, three or four times more money. So their cohorts were actually on revenue basis were, you know, close to staying at 100%.”
Jordan: Instacart Lost $20 to $25 Per Order When a16z Invested
“When I, from recollection, they were billing something like 10 or 12 dollars per order when we invested and they were losing 20, 25 dollars per order on each one.”
Jordan: Instacart Avoids Owning Grocery Inventory to Preserve Partner Trust
“That channel conflict is something that Instacart has no desire to do. They want to be the go to partner for the for the gross, the physical grocer.”
Jordan: Instacart avoids dark warehouses to prevent channel conflict with grocers
“But at that point you're competing with your customer and, you know, that channel conflict is something that Instacart has no desire to do. They want to be the go to partner for the for the gross, the physical grocer.”
Jordan: Instacart reached significant profitability through process optimizations
“Each of those took, you know, many minutes off of each order, and, you know, time is money, and so, you know, that's just the example of the kind of continuous optimizations they were making, trying to get, take minutes and seconds out of the process, and in d…”
Jordan: Instacart lost 75% of users yearly, but remaining users spent 3-4x
“In the case of Instacart the number of users declined pretty precipitously from, you know, first purchase to, you know, 10 purchase a year out, you know, they, the number of users declined something like three quarters. But the users that stayed spent you know…”
Simo: Instacart will lead food relationship evolution over next decade
“And I really believe that it's a company that's going to be at the center of, as a relationship between people and food. Evolves over the next decade, whether it's through personalization, convenience, nutrition, and there's going to be just so many interestin…”
Simo: Instacart will empower local grocers to compete with Amazon
“And I think it means that we will have helped our retail partners really compete against Amazon and we'll have Given them all of the technology tools so that they remain at the center of local communities and allow local communities to thrive.”
Taggar: Gary Tan Saved Instacart and Wired Money to Coinbase
“I think it was he who accepted Instacart into Y Combinator after the deadline had passed for applications, and similarly with Coinbase early on, I think this is public, but there was a moment where they were having a bit of a liquidity crunch, and Gary just wi…”
Garg: D2C food sector will yield multiple multi-billion dollar companies
“An analogy would be like if you were to judge Instacart a thousand percent on web fan, and some VCs do, but I find that it's important to specialize at least in some areas so that you can look under the hood because people eat in many different ways, and it's …”
Offline retailers will prefer Instacart over Amazon as a partner
“Offline retailers need Instacart to work. Amazon is too much of a threat. Instacart is closer to a partner.”
Nelson: Grouping all AI products together is as flawed as web apps
“I think the problem is largely with thinking about those things as synonymous to each other. It's kind of like saying that everybody who builds a web app is competing in the same category, right? It's kind of like saying that just a software app like MyFitness…”
Kyle Hill: Homogeneous marketplace workers will eventually be replaced by robots
“I look at those and no offense to any of those companies, but you could probably replace those workers with robots.”
James: Instacart's Snap EBT integration reached $1B within a year
“When we launched Snap EBT, which is like food stamps to be able to pay with those on Instacart. It became a billion dollar business line in less than a year and then grew up to be four billion.”
Nayak: Scale AI labeled e-commerce data for Meta, Instacart, and DoorDash
“Like I started the e-commerce team at scale where we were labeling e-commerce data, like from Meta, from Instacart, from DoorDash.”
Uber-Instacart partnership strengthens their position against DoorDash
“I was reading about the deal that they made with, between Uber and Instacart, and I think that's brilliant, like, both of them, right? Like, it positioned them much better in restaurant delivery against players like, you know DoorDash.”
Lerner: Middle zone for marketplace network effect startups is empty
“You've got your Instacart, your Uber, your Lyft. They've kind of, like, gotten to where they need to be. There isn't actually very many people in that middle zone in terms of Marketplace network effects today.”
Sri Batchu: The best executives reject distracting initiatives regardless of impact
“Simplification is a superpower, and it's actually very difficult and a lot of executives, you know, when they're faced with two potentially high-impact initiatives, are often tempted to say, let's do both. Let's figure out how we can do both. The good ones can…”
Kaba: North Star metrics should be derived from qualitative product magic
“Metrics are always a representation of your strategy, right? And so you shouldn't just choose a metric. I talked to founders about is like, let's talk qualitatively about what is the magic of the product? What makes this product really tick? And how do we know…”
Gupta: Instacart lost $20 on every order during its early operations
“When we were losing 20 dollars on every order at Instacart, which we were at the beginning”
Elad Gil: Instacart will retain massive growth post-pandemic
“Instacart, I think even if it snaps back to half of Where it is today, it's still going to be massive acceleration of the business.”
Galston: Chicago is Uber and Instacart's second or third largest market
“If you ask Uber or Instacart, what, you know, their second or third most important market is, it's almost inevitably Chicago.”
David Wu passed on investing in Stitch Fix, Instacart, and Dollar Shave Club
“But from an investor perspective, I would probably say that, you know, the biggest mistakes have to be, you know, my personal portfolio to date. Or anti-portfolio. And three that come to mind are all for different reasons where companies that I passed on that …”
Sri Batchu: Instacart was more complex than Opendoor as a four-sided marketplace
“Instacart was in some ways an even more complicated business than Opendoor because it's a four sided marketplace. We have shoppers, we have buyers, we have advertisers, and we have the retailers that are on the platform as well with various different incentive…”
Batchu: Instacart's growth and consumer team was over 300 people
“Instacart, the growth and consumer team was over 300 people, right?”
Simo Applied Her Core Management Frameworks to Parenting Her Daughter
“I built a lot of my management tools before I got pregnant. And so, in fact, I feel like I have applied a lot of my management tools on my daughter rather than the other way around.”