

What Instacart taught us - lalwanivikas
http://blog.garrytan.com/what-instacart-taught-us-dont-be-a-dreamer-be-a-creator

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tlb
Instacart started with food that internet early adopters wanted, even though
it was operationally difficult.

Other services started with items that were easiest to catalog and inventory.
Safeway (for example) started with a full selection of Oscar Mayer luncheon
meats and Kraft processed cheese food, but no microbrews or good cheeses (I
remember searching for Brie and getting no results) even though they have such
things in stores around Palo Alto.

Instacart took the better path: first please early adopters, then please
everyone at scale.

~~~
mtdewcmu
I imagine Safeway didn't want to take on the risk of trying to solve tricky
problems, e.g., with inventory tracking. It might have legitimately made more
sense for them to be conservative, since they had an existing business to
manage. If internet groceries had turned out to be easy, they'd have a piece.
Observing what Safeway didn't try could have been a key piece of Instacart's
success.

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coralreef
Dang, I hate to be "that guy", but surely there's a better, more useful lesson
we can learn here.

"Don't be a dreamer, be a creator", AKA "get shit done", "hack the world",
etc. is pretty par for the course.

Mr. Garry Tan tell us more about how Instacart executed, how they got to those
first steps of signing suppliers. Any such tidbit would be valuable and useful
to us entrepreneurs!

~~~
patio11
Since it has essentially the marketplace problem (two separate audiences,
neither of which has any incentive to participate without the other), you can
use the classic marketplace solution. Assert the existence of one side of the
marketplace. Work like a dog on acquiring the second. Use your possession of
the second to bring the first on a bit more legitimately.

They're not selling anything which doesn't already exist, in readily
accessible quantity, in their target markets. Thus, handwaving away the
problem of lacking supplier relationships is easy. You just go to them like a
normal consumer, pull stuff off the shelf, and pay with your credit card. Then
you pack it personally or with a team of underemployed people, and deliver it
in a similar fashion.

This "doesn't scale" but carries little execution risk, and lets you focus on
the (first) really hard problem, which is "How do I sell $100k of groceries
every single day?" After you're selling $100k of groceries every single day,
doors open magically. Those particular doors don't help you bring on more
customers, though, so don't focus on opening them prior to having customers.

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paul
It's easy to think of reasons why something won't work. The best entrepreneurs
just do it anyway. I'm still impressed that Instacart is taking on Google,
Amazon and others, and succeeding!

~~~
iamwil
So how do you tell the difference? Because before someone's successful,
a-best-entrepreneur-that-would-do-it-anyway and a delusional one look the
same.

~~~
paul
Short answer: you can't (at least not immediately). Longer answer is that a
good entrepreneur executes and exposes themselves to the harsh feedback of the
market, while a delusional dreamer talks a lot and avoids contact with
reality.

For more on this line of thinking:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7842282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7842282)

~~~
iamwil
Thanks. I've been thinking a lot about how a variety of my own weaknesses
manifest themselves to produce this effect. A while back, I've found this can
happen when you don't even realize it, because sometimes, writing code 'feels
more productive', when in fact, it's better to get harsh feedback on something
you haven't yet built.

~~~
zainali
prototype! There's so many tools out there now that it's so easy to create a
prototype that is just images and need 0 lines of code. Flinto is a great tool
for this and how I pitch a lot of my ideas to friends/strangers with very
little effort production side.

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chollida1
> YC S12 company Instacart is well on its way to being one of the iconic
> companies of our times.

I'd normally dismiss talk like this, but given who said it, I'll give them the
benefit of the doubt.

Can anyone shed some light on how Instacart has become just as "iconic" as
companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft?

~~~
opendais
It is basically Uber for Delivery. So, if it can pull it off, it'd be a rival
for Amazon's ecommerce crown.

I think that is what he was getting at. It has the potential.

~~~
mbesto
> _It is basically Uber for Delivery._

I think you're confusing Uber with...umm Uber. This is exactly why Uber is
evaluated at $17bil (or whatever number they're saying today) because it's
ability to handle the software logistics of delivery... _any_ delivery,
regardless of whether it's a package, person or food.

It's also why we're seeing a plethora of restaurant delivery start-ups (Door
Dash, Sprig, etc come to mind) as VCs race to capture the market.

~~~
opendais
When Uber enters the ecommerce market let me know?

Also that "rush" might be due to Uber in your mind but it isn't really a
"rush".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrubHub](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrubHub)

GrubHub and a bunch of others were at it 5+ years before Uber existed.

~~~
mbesto
And what's your explanation for Uber's $17bil evaluation in a $11bil taxi
market?

~~~
opendais
1) People irrationally believing in Uber's ability to expand.

2) There was a reason a large number of potential investors dropped out at
around the 10bil market.

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ostrichpepper2
I'm surprised by the press that Instacart is getting. Peapod has been doing
something similar since 1996 and I'm sure others have, too. What makes
Instacart different or "iconic"?

~~~
tptacek
Same day delivery from multiple, name-brand stores. Peapod ships food in giant
trucks from central warehouses. Instacart sends drivers in cars to Whole Foods
to get apples, and then those drivers come to our office --- 1-2 hours after
we order.

We use Peapod somewhat regularly at home. Instacart is very different.

~~~
ostrichpepper2
I see. Thanks. I'm a former Peapod user and that is very different indeed.

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TheMakeA
It sounds like Apoorva was rejected several times in the same time frame
before anyone actually bothered to look at his product, and now it's an iconic
YC company.

The key lesson for entrepreneurs is: Even if you actually build it, investors
and accelerators (YC included) are still likely to be wrong and/or not care
about it. Shockingly wrong.

(It also sounds like Garry deserves a significant chunk of that 7% for
uncovering that diamond)

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hemaljshah
This is the classic case of turning from wantrepreneur into entrepreneur.
People get scared and frightened over how 'crowded' markets are based on how
many people claim they are moving into the space or are thinking about doing
'x' but fail to realize how few people actually do something about it.

Every entrepreneur should take one valuable lesson from this: execution is
everything.

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brent_noorda
Instacart is a lesson of how to do it right. Here's a lesson of how to do it
wrong:

A partner and I started a grocery delivery business at about the same time as
Instacart must have been formulating their plans, based on most of the same
principles (same-day delivery using multiple local stores as inventory).
Within months we had the inventory pictures (including cheaper stealth access
to Trader Joes and the like), the pricing, the app and web code, the analysis
of east-coast success stories, the shopper tools, the the payment model that
would scale even among non-wealthy communities and provide good paying jobs
and cheaper groceries to the customer (whereas instacart went with higher
prices).

What we DID NOT have was the experience of delivering even a single item to a
single paying customer, because we weren't going to ship until we had all our
ducks in a perfect little row. And so we never shipped. D'oh!

~~~
iartcds
So what happened? What made you quit? Also what was your business plan if you
were planning on selling the groceries cheaper?

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mtdewcmu
I'm not sure what lesson one can draw that could be replicated. I guess,
nothing succeeds like success?

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inthewoods
I agree that the best entrepreneurs just do it - Garry is dead on with that.
And Instacart is clearly doing a bunch of things well. That being said, I
don't understand why people are excited about Instacart - but I'm ready to be
proven wrong!

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nemrow
I butt heads with folks every day over the importance of validation before
building begins. I have always been a believer in BUILDING first. The only way
to really validate the product is to the put it in REAL hands and see how it
does. Well said Gary!

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mkal_tsr
So if you want to accomplish something you have to do it, and if you have a
financial stake in a company you'll over market it ("iconic companies of our
time") ... nothing new here.

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free2rhyme214
This is excellent advice Gary.

