Jeremy Stanley, VP of Data Science at Instacart, compares Google Maps API predictions to Instacart's internal predictive models for delivery travel time in Manhattan.
“If you just take the predictions out of Google Maps API, you'll be able to explain about 25% of the variance. If you look at the models that we built internally that use a lot more of our historical data, we can get up to about 50% of the variance explained.”
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More from Jeremy Stanley
PredictionDidn’t hold up
Instacart projects reaching profitability and positive cash flow by late 2017
“And in the next 12 months, we're gonna be a profitable company, cash flow positive.”
Jeremy StanleySep 30, 2016▶ 4:50Making On-Demand Delivery Profitable // Jeremy Stanley, Instacart (Data Driven NYC / FirstMark)
Insight
Startups should not hire data scientists before reaching an MVP
“Basically my advice is not to start a startup with a data scientist. You know, focus on getting to MVP, getting some traction, generating some real data, make good decisions early on, and then hire data scientists as you scale.”
Jeremy StanleySep 30, 2016▶ 22:26Making On-Demand Delivery Profitable // Jeremy Stanley, Instacart (Data Driven NYC / FirstMark)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Instacart achieved profitable unit economics in summer 2016
“We've achieved profitable unit economics, it happened in the summer”
Jeremy StanleySep 30, 2016▶ 4:17Making On-Demand Delivery Profitable // Jeremy Stanley, Instacart (Data Driven NYC / FirstMark)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Instacart grew revenue by 500 percent between early 2015 and late 2016
“Since the beginning of last year, we've grown revenue 500%.”
Jeremy StanleySep 30, 2016▶ 4:39Making On-Demand Delivery Profitable // Jeremy Stanley, Instacart (Data Driven NYC / FirstMark)
Insight
Unifying objectives into one function beats coarse optimization constraints
“Oftentimes you start out with a system like this, and because it's such a huge space to explore, you put in a lot of really coarse constraints up front. You know, don't do this if x, right? Most of those constraints are reasonable, but bad 10% of the time, and…”
Jeremy StanleySep 30, 2016▶ 13:30Making On-Demand Delivery Profitable // Jeremy Stanley, Instacart (Data Driven NYC / FirstMark)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Ninety percent of Instacart customers are repeat buyers
“90% of our customers are repeat customers.”
Jeremy StanleySep 30, 2016▶ 4:48Making On-Demand Delivery Profitable // Jeremy Stanley, Instacart (Data Driven NYC / FirstMark)
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