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.

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

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.

I realized that none of the YC partners had experienced Instacart, so I made a last-ditch effort by sending a six-pack of beer to Garry Tan.

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

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.

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

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