Success in Startups: Lessons from Instacart Founder at Startup School NY 2014

Timestamped Summary

• 💰
  00:00

  Instacart receives $44M funding and expands to NYC, while a speaker learns about the startup industry through meetups, conversations, and books.
• 💼
  03:18

  👉🌉: Amazon employee quits job to pursue entrepreneurship in San Francisco, faces challenges with failed product ideas.
• 🚫
  05:43

  💼 Building a social network for lawyers without understanding their needs led to failure, highlighting the importance of solving a problem you truly care about when starting a company.
• 🛒
  07:47

  Instacart was created to solve grocery shopping inefficiency, quickly became profitable, and received a response from YC alumni for a late application.
• 🚀
  10:36

  After multiple rejections, a founder got into Y Combinator by sending a six pack of beer, and learned to be resilient and take advantage of YC dinners for progress updates.
• 🛒
  14:18

  Instacart's early success was due to YC founders as main customers, a banana mishap, unscalable beginnings, and securing investors despite past failures.
• 🛍️
  18:42

  Instacart 📈 rapidly expanded to 10 US cities by adding Trader Joe's and other stores to their catalog, solving a difficult problem of providing same-day delivery without infrastructure.
• 💼
  22:00

  Persistence is key to success on the exciting but challenging journey of a founder.