00:40:45 · John Coogan, Apoorva Mehta, Jordi Hays
[00:40:45] S1: Overnight success. Yeah. [00:40:48] S3: Yeah. You guys, it feels great. Feels great. Yeah. Long time coming. And yeah, I just feel just a big sense of gratitude, honestly. There've been thousands of people who worked on this for a decade and a half. And, you know, when when we started the company, I'll be honest, most people didn't think we would be able to pull it off. You know? This is... Instacart is a business in the in the lowest margin category of retail. [00:41:21] S0: Alright? And then you're like, let's add really complex last mile logistics to that already low margin category. And Sounds like kind of an impossible... [00:41:32] S1: It was one of these companies like Spotify where mp3.com had failed and Napster had failed and .com. I'm sure venture capitalists when you walked in in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen were saying, oh, I've heard of web van. Grocery delivery doesn't work on the Internet. The economics are all upside down. This won't work. I'm passing. Was that the experience? [00:41:55] S3: Oh, my God. That happened so many times. I had a VC who literally sort of stepped out of the meeting while I was pitching. Right? [00:42:03] S1: Classy. Hey, at least he didn't fall asleep. We've heard that [00:42:08] S0: happen Was to an excuse or did he just kinda get up and like slowly like... [00:42:12] S1: He said he said mad boring. Mad boring. Mad boring. Mad boring. No. [00:42:17] S3: You didn't come back? You didn't come I'm still waiting. [00:42:20] S0: I'm still waiting. He
00:42:20 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Apoorva Mehta
[00:42:20] S0: I'm still waiting. He [00:42:22] S1: might have bought $500 in the public markets at some point, got back in. [00:42:28] S0: Well, if you ever see him announce as a guest on the show, he's still in business, let us know. We'll ask. Hey, what what did what did you actually do back then? What what what Well, was so [00:42:39] S1: surprise. From the top rope. [00:42:42] S0: When did you when did you when was the moment where you're like, okay, think this is gonna really work? Because when you're get... When when you're in that, you know, obviously, you had conviction in the idea, otherwise, you wouldn't have been building it or raising it. But when you get a bunch of smart people that are constantly telling you, like, sorry, like, you know, this has been tried before and, you know, it can kind of hurt your confidence. But what was the moment where you felt like it was clicking? [00:43:05] S3: You know, to be honest, I I don't think I ever lost conviction, you know? Sick. I always had conviction from day one. There [00:43:12] S1: was no... Founder. [00:43:17] S3: I I remember... I mean, this was... Know, there were lots of ups and downs. Right? Like, you know, you obviously had VCs, you know, we we had VCs walking out on us. But, like, look, like, you know, Jeff Bezos went on stage and he was like, look, it's just unlikely that a model like this is the is the right solution. Yeah. And a couple years later, he bought Whole Foods. [00:43:39] S0: Yeah.
00:43:39 · Jordi Hays, Apoorva Mehta, John Coogan
[00:43:39] S0: Yeah. [00:43:40] S3: And, you know, everyone's like, okay, this company is done. Right? Whole Foods the largest partner that we had. Right? Like like, I don't know if it was majority, but like a lot of our sales, like like 50, 60% of our were were Whole Foods. Right? Yeah. And yeah, and then the company survived it. Alright? The company not only survived it, thrived it. And we we had... COVID happened. Alright? All of our competitors went down. Amazon shut down. Target shut down. You know, so many other companies I can't even remember shut down. Right? The team found a way to to not only, you know, stay stay stay online but actually sort of, double and triple our growth during that time, right? And then it survived post COVID as well, right? Like I mean, I like which was like, wow, like the all the growth, right? Like it was not COVID led at this point. It was just you know, purely organic growth that we were seeing, right? [00:44:41] S0: Yeah. [00:44:42] S3: And, you know, most recently, Chris Rogers, who's our current CEO, just, you know, you know, did an earnings announcement and this was the best quarter they've had as public company. Yeah. Growth is back, profitability is incredible. I mean, you know, honestly, this is just... It makes me so proud of the thousands of people who sort of, you know, could have easily said that like, look, this is, you know, the conventional wisdom, this is not going to work. Right? But they said no, this time is different, and actually made it happen. [00:45:15] S1: Yeah.
00:45:15 · John Coogan, Apoorva Mehta, Jordi Hays
[00:45:15] S1: Yeah. [00:45:16] S3: And, you know, big, big kudos to the team. [00:45:18] S1: It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. People were... [00:45:20] S0: I love when I love when love when a business like seemingly breaks logic [00:45:25] S1: Mhmm. [00:45:25] S0: But then establishes like some new sort of ground ground truth. Yeah. And it feels like feels like you guys... [00:45:33] S1: Yeah. The funniest part of the roller coaster is at the end when people try to kind of stuff you in the SaaS pocalypse narrative. I mean, I think DoorDash took like the brunt of it, but still it was like... Everyone's like, okay, that's not a great example. There's a bunch [00:45:46] S0: of Yeah. [00:45:46] S1: Legitimate discussions we can have about vibe coding your own SaaS, but the multisided marketplace is maybe a little bit further out on the agentic apocalypse curve, I think. But...
00:45:46 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:45:46] S1: Legitimate discussions we can have about vibe coding your own SaaS, but the multisided marketplace is maybe a little bit further out on the agentic apocalypse curve, I think. But... [00:45:56] S0: Yeah. It is so crazy to think back in 2012 if you could, you know, tell your younger self, you're gonna start this company in 2012. By 2026, you're gonna sell it for $17,000,000,000 and you're gonna be like, wow. So it was just up and to the right the whole way. Of course, it was in the fullness of time. I'm very curious how... What what is your what is your point of view on on agents? Whenever whenever like AI agent founders like start talking about how much time they're gonna save consumers, I always kind of chuckle a little bit because you guys, you know, the the Instacarts, the DoorDash, you know, these other marketplaces have like spent a decade like shaving off seconds like, you know, milliseconds every single day, making this process like slightly more convenient every single day. And the compounding effect is that it's, like, extremely fast and easy to get what you want now and seemingly very difficult for agents to, like, actually meaningfully, like, improve that experience. And so it still makes to integrate with them. That's right. But, yeah, what what's what's been your view? Well,
00:47:04 · Apoorva Mehta, Jordi Hays
[00:47:04] S3: I mean, like, if you think about what, you know, what Instacart does. Right? Instacart gives people time. Right? Instead of having to schlep your your groceries, you know, get... You know, find parking, find like, you know, wait at the checkout, right? It just makes that activity, which everyone has to do on a weekly basis, you know, you know, it just makes that, you know, a few taps on your phone, right? So it saves, you know, time, saves like hours for everyone every single week, right? And so now you think about what the agentic opportunity here is, right? Is that like, okay, now the agents can save you those taps, right? And, you know... But yeah, you [00:47:46] S0: already saved them like 99% of the time. Right? Right. And so it's like it's it's not that compelling. Like, if you were to pitch this for a VC, it's like, you're not giving me a 10 x improvement. Like, you guys, original the original pitch was like, if you're saving someone hours, like, that is like a 10 x improvement. Right? But saving somebody like 10 times...