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Comment by apoorvamehta | Hacker News Reader

For anyone comparing us to Webvan - we are different. I've shared why that's the case several times before (google instacart). But, I think pictures speak louder than words:

Instacart: http://imgur.com/2tWWh Webvan: http://minus.com/l2Mq5zUpwCP6E

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That you are no-one and they are a big company,mature and well organized? This is what I got as a person how know nothing about both. And I am not sure that is a point for you.

C'mon that's just not fair.

The point is, in case you truly didn't get it, is that these guys are a scrappy start-up (which, we hope, isn't burning money into a fiery pit of despair), and Webvan is a too-big-for-its-britches lumbering incumbent.

Good luck guys - Instacart seems like it's got amazing potential and I hope you guys do wonderfully.

It is totally fair. People (especially in the valley) tend to think small is better/more efficient than big. But what are the statistics on actual failure rates?

Start-ups that 'succeed' (buyouts, etc) for their founders can still fail before making any real difference in the actual marketplace.

Nothing against Instacart, but that first picture must become like the second before history will call them 'successful'

I think the point of the image is more that starting small makes them less likely to fail SPECTACULARLY. There is zero chance that Instacart will lose $830 million before it sees traction, which is what happened to Webvan. If Webvan had just been a small grocery startup, nobody would have cared if it failed.

Also, "historically notable" is a pretty high bar you're setting.

Finally, I'm sure Instacart hopes to reach that kind of scale eventually. But they don't want to start there because again, that's how you fail spectacularly and lose tons of money without giving people something they want.

I think (judging purely from the pictures) his point is that they attempted to integrate the whole supply chain instead of sourcing from local stores and delivering.

The difference is that Instacart is software.

I think this is best translated as: Back in the day you couldn't get this kind of business off the ground without a huge fulfillment center, a huge server farm and a huge fleet of trucks. Today all you need is a notebook.

And for those who aren't aware, WebVan attempted to do roughly the same thing over 10 years ago in the dotcom boom and was a poster child of the famous crash.

Of the hundreds of explanations about how you are different to WebVan, you really think this is the best one?

pclark, I don't think this is the best one. But, like i said, I've talked about this at length several times but it doesn't stop people from comparing the two companies. I thought a picture showing the contrast would help.

any plans for expanding into Berkeley?

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