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.
why aren't all 10 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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: 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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”