Perspectives on company building from a tech executive turned investor turned founder
Earlier in my career, I worked as a management consultant doing organizational (re)design projects for retailers and CPG companies. We always told the companies we worked with: Unsurprisingly (and frustratingly) the practical constraints often neutered commercial design principles and overwhelmed good first principles design. I now find myself pulling out that toolkit as we build [ ] The post…
As public markets and tech stocks rebound to exuberant highs, I have had an influx of calls from founders scratching their heads. These founders of companies born during the ZIRP era are sometimes confused as once-enthusiastic investors seem to have vanished. The text messages are fewer and farther between, and the engagement level of board [ ] The post Framework for Understanding Your Investors:…
I promised myself never again. Never again would I call a code-yellow. Code-yellows suck, drain team morale, and they leave a lingering distaste amongst all those involved. Yet, during my 8-years at Instacart, they were our most effective and consistent weapon in ensuring we made meaningful progress on our hairiest problems. Yet, within the first [ ] The post Time for a Code-Yellow?: A Blunt…
Young entrepreneurs often ask me how to land their first enterprise customers. They have usually gained traction with SMBs and want to build on that by moving up market to enterprise accounts which often have more scale and better unit economics. While every situation is unique, I’ll share some insights from my time at Instacart [ ] The post The Snowball: Getting Your First Enterprise Customers…
“Can we go for a walk? I think we have a huge opportunity to offer SaaS tools to participants of our marketplace instead of monetizing customers.” Representative quote from a founder I work with evaluating a change in strategy Building a new company, I find myself faced with opportunities to revisit and modify Beacon’s [ ] The post Chasing Squirrels: Avoiding Strategy Drift appeared first on…
Many attribute Instacart s success in a brutally competitive environment to solid strategy, great timing, or, most frequently luck. Partnering with grocers instead of competing with them (strategy), catching the mobile wave (timing), leveraging Amazon buying Whole Foods to drive market adoptions (strategy + luck), and capitalizing on consumer demand during COVID lockdowns (luck) are [ ] The post…
At Instacart, we neglected to codify our values for several years.It wasn t until about ~3 years in that we realized the importance of this exercise. We were too busy trying to serve customers, figure out a business model, ship product, and hire amazing people to really reflect on values. When we finally sat down to [ ] The post Building a Company Downstream from (Personal) Values appeared first…
At Instacart, I had the privilege of being part of $2.4 billion in equity capital financings over eight years. We raised money in various market environments – sometimes with great metrics and many times with terrible performance but a great story. We worked with firms across venture capital, growth equity, crossover funds and asset managers [ ] The post Picking the Right Capital Partners (pt. 2)…
Many think raising capital is like filling up a car with gas. I ve often heard, all money is green or it doesn t matter where you get your gas; it s all the same. That couldn t be further from the truth. Picking the right capital partners is critically important. When I was deciding whom to partner with [ ] The post Picking the Right Capital Partners (pt. 1) appeared first on Captain, Crew, &…
Recently, after a board meeting and a series of investor discussions, I found myself pushed to be more ambitious. This feedback prompted me to reflect on my journey at Instacart and to think about what I have seen in terms of timing a big swing. “Leaders are paid to make a few big decisions right.” [ ] The post Timing the Big Swing appeared first on Captain, Crew, & Capital .