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.

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

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, 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.

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

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

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