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

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

On June 2nd, 2012, I placed my first order on Instacart, and by then, the business was already profitable.

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

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.

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

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.

Instacart faced skepticism about competing with Amazon, but it turned out that Amazon struggled with specific challenges like selecting the right produce.

DoorDash founders initially handled all deliveries themselves to ensure customer satisfaction and build relationships with users and restaurants.