apoorvamehta

hey - this is apoorva from instacart s12. we'd not have been in YC had it not been for Garry Tan! full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2012/08/18/how-instacart-hacked-yc/

really happy to see this happen. i think this will be great for the community.

Thanks for the feedback. We are working on those issues.

And, trust me, that is our dream as well :)

Hey! This is apoorva from Instacart. Our prices for most stores are the same as the store and we are working on getting other stores to have the same prices as well. Stay tuned :)

nice work. one of the biggest problems with external tracking services (mixpanel/kissmetrics/google analytics) is reconciling the data with what's present in your database. this solves that problem really well. great start

Instacart switched to Zesty for dinner and super happy so far. The restaurant choices are great.

You are right - 8 hours of uninterrupted time is excessive. And, our approach specifically does not ask for that.

If you see the constraints defined in the post - the goal is to have the interview be remote so that the candidate can do this wherever and whenever they want. And, the tests are specifically designed to be not longer than 4 hours long each. Perhaps what wasn't clear is that this is not in a single session.

Interviews can go for as long as a week - really depends on the candidate's schedule.

Our process 'weeds out' candidates as soon as we know that its not a good fit. This in reality saves the candidate ( who may be interviewing at other places as well as working like you mentioned ) as well as our time. The 7 hour number keeps coming up, and seems like a lot, but very few candidates actually spend that much time. And, most of those are actually hired.

We've tried conversations as well, but unfortunately, it is very difficult to objectively measure them into what will make the candidate successful at the company (interested to learn how you do it).

One day for a several year investment seems pretty logical to us.

Fully agreed. We look at code cleanliness as part of the review. And, the algorithmic questions are not problems that you'd normally find online. They are custom problem that we've had to solve at Instacart

yes, we do have people on the ground in Chicago. And, we are looking for more ops focused people to join. Please email us at jobs@instacart.com - Thank you.

Interesting. I'll have to look into PostgreSQL's full text search. Does it support token filters similar to Elasticsearch?

garry - fwiw - the whole team cracked up when they saw the comment.

LA is coming soon. And, we do have a web app in addition to the iPhone & iPad.

Could you please email cs@instacart.com with specifically what you mean (ideally, screenshots). We try to be very explicit about that but maybe we missed something. Thank you.

Agreed. Working on it.

Thanks! Would love to hear your feedback: happycustomers@instacart.com

We plan to have Costco available as we launch other cities wherever it is logistically practical.

"Companies are not people; they do not have emotions; they do not participate in psychosocial guilt/submission demonstrations as a way to signal status transfer"

That is a grossly incorrect statement. Companies are built by people. As a founder of the start up who was involved in this screw up, I can tell you that we were very emotionally involved. And, we did feel the guilt.

Hey Caleb,

CEO at Instacart here. I want to apologize for the way you, and a small number of other early adopters of Instacart Express, were treated.

It's true that we changed the policy for Instacart Express so that orders under $35 were charged a delivery fee. We also did a poor job of notifying our customers of this. We did send an email, but due to a bug a handful of customers, yourself included, never got the email. That sucks, and we're really sorry.

Please rest assured we will refund you any delivery fees AND any subscription fees that you have had to pay as a result of this.

We are in the process of reaching out to everyone who could have been affected with the next steps.

Again, I'm really sorry we screwed this up and we're going to make it right.

Thanks, Apoorva

Makes sense. I appreciate the feedback.

Yes.

We will be adding that soon :)

Yes, we do. Our metrics show that this converts better.

Good point. You can leave notes for the shopper for each individual item on Instacart so the shopper knows what to buy.

You guys missed Instacart :)

http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2012/30-under-30/30-und...

In my opinion, this is a great strategic decision. IPhone users are more likely to be early adopters as well as become paying users (that's if the guys want to start charging for usage). Most YC companies focusing on mobile start with this as well.

exactly why we launched the web version :)

We are going to be adding e-mail sign on shortly.

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.

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