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Apoorva Mehta

Co-founder & CEO, Cloud Health Systems · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestorengineer@apoorva_mehta ↗LinkedIn ↗apoorvamehta.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Apoorva Mehta is the founder and former longtime CEO of grocery delivery company Instacart, which he launched in 2012 after working as an Amazon supply-chain engineer. After stepping down from Instacart's board around its 2023 public listing, he founded and now leads the health-tech startup Cloud Health Systems.

10statements → 5claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.9/5average certainty → 1.8/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 1 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 1 opinion · 4 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Apoorva argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Mehta: Instacart launched its first catalog by scraping Safeway.com
“The first version of the app, I found that there was this website called Safeway.com and there was just a grocery store and I saw that they had all their inventory available online. And so I just scraped it and I was like, great. I have all the items that I am…”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 14:56 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Apoorva Mehta on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Apoorva Mehta said on How I Built This that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Mehta: Competing with Amazon required partnering with retailers rather than underpricing them
“I realized in order to sort of really compete with them, I would have to do something that's meaningfully different, and it couldn't be something that was just, it was like cheaper or anything like that, because Amazon has gobs and gobs of money, so it wasn't …”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 17:52 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Insight
Mehta: Startup success is mostly luck and narrow market timing windows
“Oh, I think luck is majority of it. I mean, you know, there's just so many elements of luck, so many times when luck plays a part, but I think it's specifically true in startups, because in startups, what you have is this moment in time when a company is possi…”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 31:43 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Opinion
Mehta: You cannot make a material difference working at a large company
“What would be fulfilling for me is to make a material difference in this world, and I wouldn't be able to do that working in a bigger company.”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 3:03 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Assertion Supported
Mehta: Instacart launched its first catalog by scraping Safeway.com
“The first version of the app, I found that there was this website called Safeway.com and there was just a grocery store and I saw that they had all their inventory available online. And so I just scraped it and I was like, great. I have all the items that I am…”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 14:56 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Insight
Mehta: Grocery delivery customers love receiving phone calls about out-of-stock substitutions
“Initially we tried with not calling the customers, and we said, hey, customers will probably find this pretty intrusive, but then we realized that, no, actually, customers love it when, you know, when our shoppers call the customers, because they feel so speci…”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 21:16 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Assertion Supported
Mehta: Instacart got into Y Combinator after sending Garry Tan beer
“I opened the app, I ordered a six pack of beer, and I addressed it for the Y Combinator headquarters. And half an hour later, I get a call from Gary Tan, and he's like, what is this? And I was like, oh, this is Instacart. And I guess the beer must have been pr…”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 23:41 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Insight
Mehta: Tech founders should be in Silicon Valley like actors in Hollywood
“To me, it was like, if you're an acting, you're probably a good idea for you to be in Hollywood.”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 5:18 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Assertion Supported
Mehta: Raised $1M for a lawyer social network startup
“In fact, I even raised about a million dollars in financing, but I realized very quickly that, that as soon as I went home after work, I stopped thinking about work.”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 8:33 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mehta: Early Instacart shoppers used gift cards to buy customer groceries
“In the early days of Instacart, one of the ways that shoppers would check out at the grocery store when they would, they had bought the groceries for someone else is by using gift cards. So, you know, you would have to trust them.”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 20:05 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Mehta: Instacart has around 3,000 employees and over 12,000 contractors
“We have around 3000 employees at Instacart, and we have over 12,000 contractors.”
Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 ▶ 30:54 Instacart: Apoorva Mehta

The other half of the tape: Apoorva Mehta's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on How I Built This. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Guy Raz 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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0112021episodes it came up in
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2021 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Instacart: Apoorva Mehta Apr 10, 2017 22m
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