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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

#51

Post by gruez »

ggg9990 wrote: post #42
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?

maybe

>Blatant tip stealing.

[...]

>Plus they mark up everything you buy, and obfuscate this

?

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

#52

Post by radiorental »

jimmy1 wrote: post #12
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.

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,…

It's call the Lipstick Effect, aka Lipstick Recession Indicator.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lipstick-effect.asp

And just as a somewhat tangential but related story to the phenomenon, British soldiers distributed lipstick tp the liberated but gravely ill women of the Bergen-Belsen concetration camp in WWII, it lifted their moral just enough in some cases to help save their lives.

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

#53

Post by jasonbarone »

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…

Similar experience, I hate to say it. Instacart's support has been pretty poor as well. If your delivery person gets an item wrong or delivers expired goods, good luck trying to get a refund because you'll be presented with a "you can return it yourself". Something go wrong with an alcoholic order? It's even worse because alcohol sales are non-refundable. I've had orders where the delivery person brought the wrong item and Instacart just ghosted me on my support emails and tweets until eventually they said my order was done too long ago to resolve.

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

#54

Post by bearcobra »

jedberg wrote: post #5

From an outsiders perspective this looks like a bad investment. But I'm an outsider, so I know I don't have all the information. I would love to get an insiders perspective on why this is a good investment. My two main concerns: 1) Amazon and Whole Foods: Are they not a concern? 2) Economic downturn: Will people still order groceries at a premium?

>2) Economic downturn: Will people still order groceries at a premium?

My wife and I have found that online ordering saves us money. Delivery from one of the local stores (Save-on-foods) costs $8-15. Instead of grabbing random items off the shelves because we're hungry or the store put up an enticing display of sugary cereal, we plan out our meals for the week and only buy what we need. That easily offsets the cost of delivery, while also giving us extra leisure time and saving on gas/vehicle wear & tear.

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

#55

Post by gruez »

roymurdock wrote: post #16
jedberg wrote: post #5

From an outsiders perspective this looks like a bad investment. But I'm an outsider, so I know I don't have all the information. I would love to get an insiders perspective on why this is a good investment. My two main concerns: 1) Amazon and Whole Foods: Are they not a concern? 2) Economic downturn: Will people still order groceries at a premium?

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…

>I have yet to see anyone put forth and truly plausible triggers for another large global recession - there are no debt and enforcement chains I can see that would drag the system under again

that's not an indication of anything. has there been anyone who were able to predict the last few recessions with reasonable accuracy?

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

#56

Post by octernion »

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…

as an engineer at instacart, it's very disheartening for me to see the top-rated comment on HN is "I can’t wait for instacart to go out of business."

even if we did not provide value to you (which i apologize for -- it is a priority of ours to improve the replacement experience in particular as it is very frustrating to customers), i am not sure why that implies that we do not provide a valuable service for others and why you would wish ill on us.

perhaps it is because you think of us as an overall unscrupulous company ("shady fees", "mark up everything you buy"), which i would contest -- we strive for transparency when possible (see [1] for screenshots around how we describe the pricing of our service). but the larger point remains -- why do you think that there can only be one victor here, and that is has to be amazon? (or "amazing" as you put it).

right now, amazon is very explicitly coming for the grocery industry -- an $800+ billion industry that is almost 100% offline -- and we are attempting to be one of the (hopefully many) independent companies that enables it online. grocery companies have built amazing fulfillment pipelines and relationships with both farms & customers that we are building a front-end and logistics system for.

anyways, i do not speak for instacart as a company, just for myself as an employee who usually enjoys HN.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/j47ls

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

#57

Post by deegles »

kcorbitt wrote: post #28
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 suspect the fact that Amazon is so good at food delivery is exactly why Instacart has been able to raise at such a high valuation. Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods, their Amazon Go store, and generally competent execution of grocery delivery has put the fear of $DIETY into all the incumbent grocery chains. They realize that they're late to the game and don't have the internal talent to develop an effective and conv…

I feel like even Amazon doesn’t have enough internal talent to execute on all the projects they want. Grocery stores don’t stand a chance.

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

#58

Post by subpixel »

Imagine that Netflix launched as a courier service that would take your order and then go to the video store and try to get it and bring it to you. That seems kind of crazy even with the knowledge (in hindsight) that videos would later be digitized and Netflix would be in a position to move from middleman to market-maker.

But I just don't see any opportunity for Instacart to get out of the middleman role. Maybe they can make a lot of money helping grocery conglomerates try to spend their way out of a technology deficit vis-a-vis Amazon. But if that were true they would they need hundreds of millions of VC dollars?

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

#59

Post by maxerickson »

jimmy1 wrote: post #34
jotm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not surprising to me, it all ties back to the reality that it is more expensive to be poor than not. If you are poor, you most likely don't have the ability to keep a kitchen stocked with cooking essentials (spices are expensive), pots, pans, the increased water and heating cost to run a dishwasher and oven. Never mind the fact that most people living paycheck to paycheck are going from job to job and are physic…

The energy and other utilities for 1 meal will be like $0.30.

So that barely registers compared to time and ingredients.

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

#60

Post by trashcan »

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 really like how Favor includes the receipt from the restaurant with your order. So it's crystal clear how much extra you are paying.
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