Mehta: Startup success is mostly luck and narrow market timing windows
Apoorva Mehta · Instacart: Apoorva Mehta · Apr 10, 2017 · at 31:43
Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta reflects on the role of intelligence and hard work versus luck in the success of high-growth technology startups.
0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.1s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 possible. Anything before that, it's too early. Anything after that, it's way too late, and there's too much competition. And so the timing, being there at the right place in the right time is everything.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Apoorva Mehta
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 …”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”