As Instacart grew, we faced the challenge of making operations scalable while managing diverse customer orders and crowdsourced shoppers.

Instacart launched without any grocery store partnerships by purchasing items from Trader Joe's, photographing them, and listing them online. This creative approach allowed them to start quickly without waiting for corporate approvals.

Companies like Instacart and DoorDash found success in markets that larger tech firms like Google were not interested in pursuing.

I noticed my friends were using Instacart without any persuasion, which was a new experience for me compared to my previous products.

In the early days of Instacart, I personally fulfilled orders myself, even without a car, leading to deliveries arriving in Uber black cars.

In the early days of Instacart, most customers were Y Combinator founders, making it easy to gather feedback and iterate quickly on the product.

Despite missing the Y Combinator application deadline, I believed that if the partners experienced Instacart, they would accept me.

We faced existential crises, especially when we realized there was no retention in our early model, leading us to question if there was even a viable business model for grocery delivery.

Instacart allows you to order groceries and have them delivered to your door within one hour, without holding any inventory or using warehouses.