After delivering the beer, Garry Tan invited me to meet the YC partners, which led to my acceptance into Y Combinator.

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

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

During my time at Y Combinator, I faced chaos, including a shopper threatening to quit due to an overwhelming order for 202 liter bottles of soda.

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

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.

One of the first orders was from Dan, another YC founder, who ordered bananas but refused to accept them at delivery, leaving my shopper confused.

I started coding the first version of Instacart in the spring of 2012 and committed to not visiting a grocery store until it was ready.