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Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

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Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#41

Post by roymurdock »

jjxw wrote: post #29
roymurdock wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume instacart has a liquidity event (IPO) lined up for the near future (next 12 months), and a few late stage and previous investors are laying down a cash runway to get the company there. Notably this round ($200m) was less than their last round 1 year ago ($400m) so it seems growth has slowed and its time for an exit. So its not a bet, its a holdover cash infusion until the IPO, and is not exactly risky given…

From one armchair economist to another I suspect the Federal Reserve will have something to do with what I wouldn't call a "recession" per se, but a slowing of growth through interest rate hikes.

Fed doesn't have much room to play with interest rates currently, and won't until we see a meaningful pickup in productivity, or else they risk further depressing investment into productive assets and rerouting it into speculative assets (high interest rate = high cost of borrowing/lending = high friction = slows economy down).

We would observe a productivity increase through wage growth, as would be expected in a high employment environment (high demand for labor, low supply sets price of labor [wages] high) but I don't see anything from my viewpoint within the embedded and IoT industry that will meaningfully increase productivity in the near future. So more of the same we are experiencing now

Unless you see some new tech that will improve productivity, in which case please do share!

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#42

Post by ggg9990 »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #14

I have never had a good experience with instacart. I’ve ordered from them probably 10-15 times and every single time, without fail, they either forget an item or replace an item with another item that I don’t want. This makes the service unusable, because if I’m cooking dinner that night and want to order instacart, there’s a high likelyhood I’ll be missing something crucial for my recepie, meaning I’ll have to go to…

Why are you excited for Instacart to go out of business? Why not just stop using it?

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#43

Post by vthallam »

As soon as Uber launches UberEverything , Instacart will be bleeding tons of money. I already left Postmates and Seamless for UberEats. Fast, predictable and more options.

If Uber could get more grocery delivery services and keep the onus of packing things on the stores vs delivery boys picking things, it will be more reliable.

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#44

Post by mathattack »

whoisjuan wrote: post #25
spiderPig wrote: post #2

Wow, so they've raised close to $1bn so far! Wonder how many of these delivery services like Doordash, Postmates, Grubhub, Caviar, Uber eats etc will survive the next economic downturn.

UberEats will likely win in the long run... On-demand is just a long-term game of leading and losing money... Uber has the distribution and the money that will allow them to lead and lose for longer than anyone else. How much money can all these companies lose before finding themselves in a dead-end? (no positive cash-flow, no more investors willing to invest, no more local market first mover advantage). People who d…

UberEats will struggle unless they didn’t service issues. They are slaves to the whims of drivers who can cancel orders at any time.

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#45

Post by ascorbic »

askafriend wrote: post #31
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #14

I have never had a good experience with instacart. I’ve ordered from them probably 10-15 times and every single time, without fail, they either forget an item or replace an item with another item that I don’t want. This makes the service unusable, because if I’m cooking dinner that night and want to order instacart, there’s a high likelyhood I’ll be missing something crucial for my recepie, meaning I’ll have to go to…

For me, the worst grocery delivery service is still miles better than going to a store and shopping for groceries. I'm OK with missing items, I'll just get a refund and deal with it. It's still far far better than dealing with a physical grocery store. I'm sure there are millions of others like me.

Don't you have stores that will do the deliveries themselves? That's got to be a better system than using a third party like Instacart.

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#46

Post by hunter23 »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #14

I have never had a good experience with instacart. I’ve ordered from them probably 10-15 times and every single time, without fail, they either forget an item or replace an item with another item that I don’t want. This makes the service unusable, because if I’m cooking dinner that night and want to order instacart, there’s a high likelyhood I’ll be missing something crucial for my recepie, meaning I’ll have to go to…

I agree. I use instacart every few months, but I will NEVER use them to buy groceries for a dinner I'm preparing that day. I've had too many instances where they didn't have the meat I needed, so I had to order out. They are not useful for folks who cook a lot and care about their ingredients.

They really really need real to have real time inventory for users like me. The shopper model worked when they were just starting off because it allowed them to launch in tons of cities without even the groceries approving but now they need to move to a model where they get the grocery store's inventory; the current method is just plain inefficient.

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#47

Post by gruez »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #14

I have never had a good experience with instacart. I’ve ordered from them probably 10-15 times and every single time, without fail, they either forget an item or replace an item with another item that I don’t want. This makes the service unusable, because if I’m cooking dinner that night and want to order instacart, there’s a high likelyhood I’ll be missing something crucial for my recepie, meaning I’ll have to go to…

>The last time I used instacart, there was a box checked called “service fee”

i used it a few months ago, and there was no checkbox (it was mandatory)

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#48

Post by zjaffee »

askafriend wrote: post #31
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #14

I have never had a good experience with instacart. I’ve ordered from them probably 10-15 times and every single time, without fail, they either forget an item or replace an item with another item that I don’t want. This makes the service unusable, because if I’m cooking dinner that night and want to order instacart, there’s a high likelyhood I’ll be missing something crucial for my recepie, meaning I’ll have to go to…

For me, the worst grocery delivery service is still miles better than going to a store and shopping for groceries. I'm OK with missing items, I'll just get a refund and deal with it. It's still far far better than dealing with a physical grocery store. I'm sure there are millions of others like me.

But there are so many services out there, and instacart isn't a particularly good one. There are services like fresh direct/amazon fresh which are based on delivery as a primary concept, and there's the services spun up by the individual grocery stores (which don't have the same crazy fees as instacart, and generally have more accurate listings).

Especially given that wholefoods is now going to deliver direct which was one of the primary uses of instacart (delivery from premium stores), demonstrates that their utility is fading.

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#49

Post by ssewell »

Androider wrote: post #30
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #14

I have never had a good experience with instacart. I’ve ordered from them probably 10-15 times and every single time, without fail, they either forget an item or replace an item with another item that I don’t want. This makes the service unusable, because if I’m cooking dinner that night and want to order instacart, there’s a high likelyhood I’ll be missing something crucial for my recepie, meaning I’ll have to go to…

Exact same experience. Instacart shopper cannot find extremely common items and tries to replace them with 2-3x more expensive options. The whole model of the shopper walking the isles to pick the products is wrong. It's inefficient and a recipe for disappointment, because what you see on their web page is just a guess at what the store has and the shopper can find. I too have used Instacart probably 10 times, but ne…

Amazon Prime Now is already starting this (https://goo.gl/fSF4DR) in select markets. I used this last weekend and the delivery was perfect! You can opt to have an out-of-stock item either left off or replaced with a similar item. They will even send an SMS to request confirmation if they need to use a substitute product, giving you an opportunity to provide more feedback.

Re: Instacart has raised another $200M at a $4.2B valuation

#50

Post by ggg9990 »

jotm wrote: post #21
jimmy1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former restaurateur, I would like to tell you, contrary to popular opinion, during the last major economic downturn in 2008 (2009 for me since I was in a southern state, and the downturn hit us a bit later than most), spending money out to eat actually went up . The theory goes a little something like this -- people actually spend more money on themselves to cheer themselves up when life gets shittier. So folks,…

Surprisingly, most poor people order takeaways the most around here, as well.

It’s because low paid work is the hardest, physically and mentally, so poor people don’t have the energy to cook, and with McDonalds available, they don’t really need to when you can get a dinner for $2.
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