$1.5 billion in 2020 as COVID-19
made in-person shopping a safety
hazard. Venture capital investors
including Andreessen Horowitz and
Sequoia Capital have poured more
than $2.8 billion into the company,
privately valuing it at $39 billion and
turning it into the third most valu-
able U.S. startup, according to
PitchBook. Now the company is
preparing for an IPO.
But despite the buzz and eye-
popping valuation, Instacart has had
a messy 2021. Simo’s tenure got off
to a chaotic start: The former head of
Facebook’s flagship app was named
Instacart’s CEO in July, replacing
founder Apoorva Mehta. At the same
time, Mehta was quietly pitching
DoorDash on buying his company.
The gambit failed, and when it be-
came public knowledge, it called the
company’s prospects into question.
Meanwhile, consumers were shaking
off their pandemic anxiety and re-
turning to the grocery store, cooling
Instacart’s impressive growth streak.
Simo, once Facebook’s most
senior female product executive, has
an ambitious strategy for getting the
company back on track. At its heart
is a plan to expand Instacart’s busi-
ness model, layering a Facebook-like
social and ad platform over the com-
pany’s core grocery delivery service,
and creating new tech products for
retailers and other partners.
Now she just needs to build her
vision—and convince stakeholders
ranging from partner grocers to skep-
tical would-be investors that this is
the path to a thriving post-pandemic
business.
Instacart and its competitors “of-
fer a really high-cost solution—and
it’s not even proven that there’s
massive demand for it in the U.S.,
other than in the middle of a global
health crisis,” says Sucharita Kodali,
an e-commerce analyst for Forrester.
“These companies all think that
they’re going to be the next Amazon.
But really, they’re all positioned to be
the next Groupon.”
Simo, 35, is not an obvious pick
to lead the company through the
fraught months ahead. To begin
with, she doesn’t have the retail
background one might expect from
the head of what is, essentially, an
e-commerce business.
She’s also not Silicon Valley’s
default gender. In fact, Simo appears
to be one of the few female CEOs
whom the most powerful venture
investors seem to trust to replace a
male founder, and to take a unicorn
startup public. Women ran only8.5% of all venture-backed compa-
nies that filed for IPOs between 2016
and 2020, according to PitchBook.
“We hate losing great leaders—but
seeing her go on to be CEO? That’s
pretty awesome,” says Facebook chief
operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Simo wears her outsider status
proudly—and she’s used to wielding
it to her advantage. Now Instacart’s
board members, at least, are betting
that she can do so again.
“She’s got a really strong under-
standing of product innovation, a
very disciplined business acumen,
and people want to work for her,”
says Daniel Sundheim, an Instacart
board member and founder of hedge
fund D1 Capital Partners. “I deal
with plenty of CEOs—and I think
she has the potential to be one of the
best CEOs of our generation.”MAYBE A GIRL from a
French fishing harbor
who grew up dreaming
of California was always
destined to be slightly out of place.-2000200JAN. 2018 MARCH 2020 AUG. 20214006008001,000%WALMART
GROCERIESSHIPTPEAPODINSTACARTFRESHDIRECT705%CHANGE IN GROCERY DELIVERY
SALES SINCE JANUARY 2018
NOTE: AMAZON IS NOT INCLUDED BECAUSE IT DOESN’T BREAK OUT
GROCERY TRANSACTIONS SOURCE: BLOOMBERG SECOND MEASURE
An Instacart shopper
fills a grocery order
at a Harris Teeter in
Washington, D.C., on
April 6, 2020.