Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#61

Post by lawless123 » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 11:41 AM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #55

biggc wrote: post #27

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Every supermarket in Montrela offers phone orders and home delivery for a fee of less than $5 if your order is big enough ($50+). If you want to, you can even do your shopping in the store, and pay about two bucks to have them deliver to your house if it was in a few km. I just checked, and one of the smaller chains (4 stores) has their own online ordering platform.

San Francisco is an odd place. And so is Silicon Valley and the big brands we all know. Most of what startups there do is to solve local problems of San Frnacisco (and there are MANY!). Taxis suck? -> Uber Hotels super shit and your rent is super high? -> AirBnB Restaurants don't deliver -> various delivery services Wholefood et al doesn't deliver -> various delivery services No laundry in your $5000 rental apt -> la…

>Most of what startups there do is to solve local problems of San Francisco (and there are MANY!).

San Francisco must be a paradise on Earth then? I've never been.

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#62

Post by mcintyre1994 » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 11:46 AM UTC

lawless123 wrote: post #61

ulfw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco is an odd place. And so is Silicon Valley and the big brands we all know. Most of what startups there do is to solve local problems of San Frnacisco (and there are MANY!). Taxis suck? -> Uber Hotels super shit and your rent is super high? -> AirBnB Restaurants don't deliver -> various delivery services Wholefood et al doesn't deliver -> various delivery services No laundry in your $5000 rental apt -> la…

>Most of what startups there do is to solve local problems of San Francisco (and there are MANY!). San Francisco must be a paradise on Earth then? I've never been.

I've heard it called (I think on HN!) an assisted living community for people in their 20s - because all those services are subsidised by VC capital too.

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#63

Post by ghaff » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 1:23 PM UTC

rrdharan wrote: post #60

brokenmasonjars wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of my grocery stores within the 60 minute range offer delivery. I wish they did. I live outside of a major city, in a pretty wealthy area. There is no instacart, no amazon fresh, etc. Uber doesn't even deliver here. It's pretty lame and the population exists to support even just one of these services. Aggravates me a lot..which is an understatement.

Where do you live? Does seem surprising...

You'd be surprised. I live 35 miles west of Boston/Cambridge, and there are none of these delivery services. Last time I looked, Uber was available but it looked very thin--not something I could depend on for a morning appointment. All of these offerings decrease greatly in availability once you get beyond the central Metro areas of certain cities.

Of course, I wouldn't use them much anyway. Assuming the thing being delivered is available locally (which is more the issue), hopping in a car and picking it up isn't a big deal.

[ADDED: Well, I can use Peapod (and have when I had an injury) but didn't particularly care for it.]

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#64

Post by ghaff » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

lawless123 wrote: post #61

ulfw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco is an odd place. And so is Silicon Valley and the big brands we all know. Most of what startups there do is to solve local problems of San Frnacisco (and there are MANY!). Taxis suck? -> Uber Hotels super shit and your rent is super high? -> AirBnB Restaurants don't deliver -> various delivery services Wholefood et al doesn't deliver -> various delivery services No laundry in your $5000 rental apt -> la…

>Most of what startups there do is to solve local problems of San Francisco (and there are MANY!). San Francisco must be a paradise on Earth then? I've never been.

Well, specifically they serve the perceived problems of well-paid tech workers in San Francisco, which isn't actually most of the population. San Francisco has its merits but it most certainly isn't paradise on earth.

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#65

Post by CPLX » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 1:51 PM UTC

omarchowdhury wrote: post #49

whiskyant wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and Safeway with over 1500 stores across the US/Mexico has a market cap $8.1B.

Instacart is building datasets right now on what people purchase. They can simply bypass their physical market place partners of today and become a retailer without the cost of running physical stores. They would only need to take care of fulfillment, and hey, maybe with machine vision there will be a little Instacart robot that delivers your groceries to you direct from the Instacart warehouse: cutting yet another c…

> Instacart is building datasets right now on what people purchase.

Why do people say things like this as if Silicon Valley is the only place that's heard of collecting data on customers. You are aware that's what those supermarket savings cards with the barcodes do right?

I guarantee you that Instacart has like the 178th best database of what supermarket customers purchase at best.

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#66

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #44

biggc wrote: post #27

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Every supermarket in Montrela offers phone orders and home delivery for a fee of less than $5 if your order is big enough ($50+). If you want to, you can even do your shopping in the store, and pay about two bucks to have them deliver to your house if it was in a few km. I just checked, and one of the smaller chains (4 stores) has their own online ordering platform.

All my nearby stores offer this, I still use Instacart. It lets me shop from any store, their QC is amazing, and living in a small apartment I need to make 2 or 3 $35 trips (instead of one big $150 trip) and that becomes free on Instacart (saving me close to 5hrs per week of drudgery).

I really don't see that as sustainable for them. The fifteen percent they mention on $35 is not very much to work with. I understand buying market share but all of these services seem to follow the same route, incredible lead in pricing and then trying to find out how to raise it without driving everyone to another solution.

grocery stores usually can pull this off as they tend to have pharmacies they want you to use and other services

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#67

Post by JBReefer » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

matthewowen wrote: post #17

gkoberger wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Grocery shopping is extremely inefficient and has to be done weekly by almost everyone in the world. It's not a small problem that they're solving, so large amounts of cash (and a high valuation) makes sense.

Because it's a terrible way to solve it and this company doesn't seem to be executing particularly well on it. I actually agree that online grocery shopping should be great. It's mystifying to me that it isn't: if you go to the UK, the experience is fantastic: order direct from the grocery store, easy to order, cheap and efficient delivery. I don't really understand why US chains can't do the same thing.

We do, it's a very successful service called Peapod that you haven't heard of because it's not used by people in SV.

It's exactly what you're describing, but doesn't have a hugely PR engine because it's a profitable arm of an existing store that doesn't require a 10x exit.

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#68

Post by M_Grey » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

lawless123 wrote: post #61

ulfw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco is an odd place. And so is Silicon Valley and the big brands we all know. Most of what startups there do is to solve local problems of San Frnacisco (and there are MANY!). Taxis suck? -> Uber Hotels super shit and your rent is super high? -> AirBnB Restaurants don't deliver -> various delivery services Wholefood et al doesn't deliver -> various delivery services No laundry in your $5000 rental apt -> la…

>Most of what startups there do is to solve local problems of San Francisco (and there are MANY!). San Francisco must be a paradise on Earth then? I've never been.

More like a bubble waiting to messily burst, or in the most extreme, the place we'll fondly remember after the earthquake.

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#69

Post by M_Grey » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 2:02 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #63

rrdharan wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you live? Does seem surprising...

You'd be surprised. I live 35 miles west of Boston/Cambridge, and there are none of these delivery services. Last time I looked, Uber was available but it looked very thin--not something I could depend on for a morning appointment. All of these offerings decrease greatly in availability once you get beyond the central Metro areas of certain cities. Of course, I wouldn't use them much anyway. Assuming the thing being…

IIRC Roche Brothers now has a similar delivery service in that area now. I'm not sure if there are others, but I wouldn't be shocked.

Re: Instacart in Talks to Raise $400M at $3B Valuation

#70

Post by martinald » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

siliconc0w wrote: post #31

My theory is that the inability of US chains to figure out online ordering is really some anti-competitive agreement to force customers to go into the store because the chains live and die by high-margin impulse buys. Wholefoods just opened a brand new chain called '365' that has all sorts of sophisticated nonsense like a programmatic tea-bot and yet there is no online ordering. Even the made to order stuff is driven…

Yes, it's pretty crazy.

Tesco had this in the UK since 1996(!), with a CD-ROM ordering system that synced new products over dialup in batches.

Now all (apart from Lidl and Aldi, I imagine their margins are too low) offer online shopping and have done for a long time.

Really can't understand why the US stores don't do this and instead have allowed Instacart, which has little/no proper supply chain knowledge, to build a $3bn business in it's place. Very odd.