Video & transcript: Apoorva Metha, founder & former CEO, Instacart

Over the next year, the Instacart team turned the company around. We went from losing $15 an order to making $3 an order. Without raising additional capital we built a cash buffer that was good for another year plus. We accomplished more in that 12-month period than I ever thought possible.

One of the highest-valued private technology companies, grocery delivery service Instacart, announced last month that it has cut its valuation 40%, from $38 billion to $24 billion. To be more specific, the 409A share price (or value of a share of common stock) went down in its most recent third party analysis, such that the company is now valued at... See more

Apps like Instacart itself will become key marketing platforms. Instacart is fully aware of this, and is moving quickly to become an ad platform. The top Instacart result becomes the new endcap placement. How long before the algorithm’s out-of-stock replacement suggestion becomes the most hotly contested spot?

Contextual advertising will become a noticeable part of the online grocery experience, too, giving brands a chance to introduce themselves and their products, and giving online grocers another revenue stream. Instacart has been building out an advertising business, and I’d be shocked if Amazon didn’t eventually introduce advertising to its grocery ... See more

This is obvious, perhaps, but there’s plenty that online grocers can do to improve product discovery in their stores, from photography to personalized recommendations. The beauty of Amazon or Instacart knowing everything you’ve purchased means it also knows what you haven’t yet purchased.

Hundreds of food retailers now partner with e-commerce fulfillment companies like Instacart and Shipt to manage the logistics of their delivery and pickup services. But in offloading those operations to third parties, grocers have also outsourced much of the customer experience. They're also ceding control of valuable data about online shopping beh... See more

And so that's been key to the working, but the economics were awful when we invested. And so the leap of faith there wasn't people would want groceries delivered to their homes. The leap of faith was he can make the economics work.

“Instacart is trying to build an empire and ___ is trying to arm the rebels.”