2017 Instacart Employee Retreat

8 min readAug 8, 2017

Each year Instacart holds an all-hands meet-up for the entire company. Team members from offices around the country join the local team at the San Francisco headquarters to hear from customers, shoppers, partners, and industry leaders. This post is part of a series exploring Life At Instacart.

The Kickoff

Bright and early, employees from across the country arrive at Instacart’s San Francisco headquarters.

Opening Remarks

Instacart employees from across the nation put new faces to well-known names and caught up with old friends. The morning kicked off with opening remarks. Five years into an adventure that started with wanting to solve a problem, CEO Apoorva Mehta provided perspective on Instacart’s impact.

“What this group of just 300 people have done in the last five years has sent a giant ripple through the $800-billion grocery industry. By continuing to push the boundaries, by being untethered by conventional wisdom, by doing the pioneering work you all have done, we have become the company that powers America’s groceries.” –Apoorva Mehta, CEO

Ravi Gupta, Instacart COO, then took the mic to provide insights on where Instacart is headed and the opportunity we have to continue innovating the grocery industry.

“We have two goals: We’re going to unite the grocery industry, and we’re going to get as much of that $800 billion market as possible. That means we have to do everything we do better and faster.” –Ravi Gupta, COO

The question ‘how will we get there?’ was the focus of Nilam Ganenthiran’s opening remarks.

“What we need to do is to keep solving for the customer. As long as we do that, the customer is going to keep choosing us first, and retailers are going to want to keep working with us over our competitors.” –Nilam Ganenthiran, CBO

The Shopping Spree

This year, Instacart employees were given the opportunity to compete and earn money for a worthy cause — Feeding America — by participating in the first annual Shopping Spree. Employees logged hours in local grocery stores, hand-picking orders for customers to earn Shopping Spree points and raise donation funds, while getting the Instacart shopper experience first-hand.

“Those of you who participated in Shopping Spree did 663 deliveries last month. We’re donating all the earnings from these deliveries to Feeding America. That means you generated $8,000 to help feed people who are hungry all over this country.” –Walker Dieckmann, General Manager

Choose Your Own Adventure

To make the most of being in the same place together, Instacart Cofounder Max Mullen invited employees to attend break-out sessions on topics of their choosing. Groups split off for interactive sessions on a variety of topics including company culture, growth, logistics, and how Instacart uses data science.

The Afternoon

Following lunch and time to reconnect, Chris Cox, Facebook Chief Product Officer, joined the team to share lessons from his time helping to expand the world’s largest social network during its formative years.

“Anyone who is working on something that is not directly related to the problem right in front of you, stop what you’re doing and take responsibility for changing your role.”

“Being vulnerable is so important, especially when you’re a leader. When you’re running a meeting, if you start by laying down the honest truth, everybody else can suddenly meet you where you are. In your meetings, in your one-on-ones, try to be three times more disarming and honest. Just try it. I bet you’ll find that your relationships are better.”
–Chris Cox, Chief Product Officer, Facebook

Hearing From Customers

Instacart customers stopped by to share the reasons they depend on Instacart to help them get back something truly valuable: time.

“Developing my role in People Ops requires wearing many hats. There’s no easier way to keep the office stocked with groceries, especially taking into consideration everyone’s dietary restrictions.”
“I’ve been using Instacart for two years. During that time my company has gone from 15 to 50 employees.”
–Ashley, Instacart customer

Hearing From Shoppers

Shoppers are critical to the success of Instacart. Some of the most dedicated Instacart shoppers in the Bay Area stopped by headquarters to share their experiences hand-picking and delivering groceries.

“I had one customer who asked me to bring presents to her mother on her 93rd birthday — they were overseas and couldn’t be there.”
“They chose Instacart because they knew someone would personally bring her an order that they hand picked. I brought her a tiramisu, and a bouquet of flowers, and celebrated with her.”
–Sheen, Instacart shopper

Hearing From Partners

Working with the best retail partners across the nation, and giving customers access to the stores they know and trust in their own community, is the lifeblood of the Instacart platform. Andrew Nadin, CMO, and Bob Hardester, CIO, of beloved Midwest food retailer Schnucks, joined remotely to share some thoughts on why Instacart is the right partner to offer their customers home-delivery.

“Honestly, I was skeptical of the data you shared before we launched Instacart — but almost every prediction you made was correct.”
“You’ve got a level of experience and insight that is going to be really useful, not just for new partnerships, but for existing ones as well. I think you can really build on those foundations.”
–Andrew Nadin, CMO Schnucks

Instacart also works with leading CPG companies. Arnold Ventura, VP of Business Development at Califia Farms joined to talk about their experience working with Instacart as an advertiser.

“E-commerce and online grocery is a platform where younger brands like us have a chance to gain a relatively large share of the market.”
–Arnold Ventura, VP Business Development, Califia Farms

As the day of presentations and panels came to a close, Box CEO, Aaron Levie, joined Apoorva for a conversation about the importance of understanding and reinforcing Instacart’s value proposition.

“Once you know your value propositions, it’s all about making sure that every single thing you do reinforces those propositions. We don’t have time to do anything that doesn’t intersect with one of those.”
“Anything that’s not reinforcing what makes us unique is neutralized by the market.” –Aaron Levie, CEO of Box