INSTACART and THE TALE of TWENTY FAILURES
Instacart is an online grocery-delivery service. It was founded in 2012 in San Francisco and has grown today to over 300 full-time employees and millions of dollars in revenue. (Forbes, LA Times) Instacart has been vastly successful over its nearly five-year lifespan, and is still growing. But how did Instacart do it? Does the founder, Apoorva Mehta, have the golden touch? Hardly. In fact, before starting Instacart, the former Amazon supply chain engineer and University of Waterloo graduate (with a degree in electrical engineering) had tried and failed to start an estimated twenty businesses, ranging from advertising networks to a social media platform for lawyers. (LA Times)
When interviewed about his past failures, Mr. Mehta said, “Going through all these failures, releasing feature after feature, I realized it wasn’t that I couldn’t find a product that worked, I just didn’t care about the product.” This is where he learned that the key to a successful startup was to find something he cared about to work on. Out of that realization sprang Instacart. While the idea for ordering groceries online for delivery was not new (LA Times), Mr. Mehta decided that the previous attempt, Webvan, failed because of poor timing rather than a poor concept. Fast forward to 2017, and Instacart has become a large, successful company. And all of that because one man refused to give up and chose to learn from his mistakes!
This is a really cool concept. What I found most interesting was how many businesses the founder attempted to start before this one. This just goes to show that perseverance really does matter. If he would have just given up part way through, he wound never have had the success with Instacart.
This is actually really nice to see. So many times we hear about the golden idea, or an entrepreneur who has a steel resolve, and often it feels like there is no way we could ever live up to something like that. It’s always good to take a step back and realize that failure isn’t the end, but just part of the process.
It is interesting to note that a similar company (Webvan) had already been attempted and failed. This points to the fact that entrepreneurs need to pay attention to their environment, and launch when the time is right. Webvan was clearly a good idea, it was just the wrong time to launch. Apoorva Mehta took advantage of the time and started Instacart when he saw potential.