Co-founder @Instacart🥕🛒, startup investor
San Francisco
Joined July 2007
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Some personal news! Recently, I stepped back from the day-to-day at @Instacart to focus on investing full-time. I sat down with my friend @jaltma on Uncapped to talk about building Instacart and my philosophy on early-stage investing — check it out here!
For this episode of Uncapped I got to sit down with my close friend @Max, cofounder of Instacart 🥕
We talked about the key moments of Instacart...how it got started, critical wins, tough losses, competitive dynamics, earned insights, going public, and Instacart's future.
Max is also an awesome startup investor, and we talked about what he looks for in founders, consumer investing, and what he's building with Workshop.
He's one of the best people I know, hope you enjoy.
(0:00) Intro
(0:36) The inception of Instacart
(4:55) Finding product market fit
(7:20) Landing Trader Joe’s
(11:04) Big levers for growth
(13:36) Operationally complex businesses
(14:55) Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods
(17:50) COVID and Instacart’s IPO
(20:02) Prioritizing profitability
(23:21) Avoiding temptations
(24:59) The future of Instacart
(25:53) Investing in consumer
(28:21) Irrationally optimistic founders
(29:49) B2B vs consumer founders
(30:35) How to work with investors
(33:38) Building Workshop
Max Mullen retweeted
I had the chance to see this in person last week, and what was most amazing wasn't just the capability as of last Tuesday but the rate of improvement week over week. The Dyna team is on an exponential.
We are releasing Dyna-2.1, the first Physical Agent that achieves reliable super long-horizon whole-body autonomy. It combines our brand-new semi-humanoid hardware with an agentic system built around Dyna-2 to handle ultra-long real-world workflows.
Here is an uncut footage of Dyna-2.1 completing an entire hour-long laundry room workflow, just like a human does.
Every startup needs this
1/ Today, we're launching @Mercury Books.
AI-powered accounting software, for your bookkeeper or you, that categorizes and reconciles your transactions the moment they happen.
Max Mullen retweeted
Introducing Gumball
Model agnostic, proactive, self improving.
All in your company’s private cloud
So excited for this OG Instacart team to build the next great commerce marketplace! Congrats @camillevanhorne!
Beyond excited to share that @highstock_x has raised a $30M Series A led by @a16z with participation from @GreylockVC, @AbstractVC, @Daybreak_Fund, and angels.
We are doubling down on our mission of creating value for brands with unproductive inventory. With this raise, we are expanding our team and building on our success in beauty to unlock a new category: apparel.
@omooretweets, @venturetwins and @jeff_jordan are the right partners to take this company to new heights - they've invested in great marketplaces like Instacart (I may be biased :) ), and have studied how AI will scale marketplace models that were previously too labor intensive to be financially viable.
Thank you to our angels: @Max, @lennysan, JJ and John.
Most of all, thank you to our customers and team. We would not be here without you.
Read my reflections on our journey below.
There's a new version of this post
Max Mullen retweeted
1/ The FDIC just approved @Mercury Bank, N.A.'s application for deposit insurance.
One step closer to opening Mercury Bank!. There is still work between here and opening Mercury Bank’s virtual doors, which should happen in 2027.
I started Mercury in 2017 because I wanted to build the bank I wished had existed when I was running my previous companies. Going from a fintech with bank partners to a tech company with an actual bank has been the vision from the beginning.
Max Mullen retweeted
THRILLED to share that Owner.com has raised a $240M Series D and is now valued at $2.3B! 🚀🦄
6 years ago, we set out on a mission to level the playing field for local business owners.
Why?
Because we believe local businesses are sacred. Each one reflects the unique DNA of its owner: their story, their spirit, their craft. They bring life and connection to our neighborhoods.
But they're being crushed by massive corporations with billions to spend on tech, AI, and marketing.
Running a local business is like being David facing an army of Goliaths. Owner exists to change that.
This round was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, joined by Meritech, Redpoint, Headline, & Jack Altman.
We'll use the capital to keep building the only platform local business owners need to succeed.
· · ·
Special shoutout to one of my best friends and cofounder @adamguild. It's an absolute privilege to be building this company with you.
Shoutout to the outstanding Owner team. You deserve all of the credit for getting us here. It is a joy to build alongside each of you.
Special thanks to our investors and earliest supporters - @jaltma , @jasonlk, @alexbard, @zoink, Fidji Simo, Shalini Rao, @atkurland, @Harris_Pollack, Stephen Kerns, @JonnyNemo, @chughesjohnson, @dharmesh, @cory, @jaentwistle, @Joshuabrowder, @seanrad, @scottbelsky, @maxaltman, @Max, @braveben, @alexisohanian, @kippbodnar, @ankurnagpal, @parkerconrad, @justinmateen, @marcuslemonis, @ShaanVP, @thesamparr, @tanay_tandon, and @rauchg.
And finally, to our customers: You're the reason I get up every day excited to build. I feel like a kid in a candy shop. It is a privilege to serve you. ❤️
Every day we get closer and closer to the ChatGPT moment for robotics...
Today we are introducing Dyna-2, a world-action model pre-trained on one million hours of human video. At this scale, for the first time, we discovered several new scaling laws:
• world-action models exhibit scaling law on human data across four orders of magnitude, from 1000 to 1,000,000 hours,
• this human data scaling law implied a scaling law on never seen robot data,
• both data and objective matter; world modeling and scaling on video data are essential for cross-embodiment scaling transfer to emerge
🧵
Willow is a daily driver for me, and crushes the competition 🎤
Finally a benchmark for long horizon learning…
Introducing Horizon from @0rinlabs: the first long-horizon learning benchmark made from real agent logs
- SOTA is 21% on the hardest section
- 7-35M tokens of real agent history per task
- Models are hardly getting better on the hardest tasks
- Humans can score 100%
(1/7)
Max Mullen retweeted
Every generation inherits a new medium.
Ours is taking shape.
Introducing @_nellofficial.
Built in San Francisco. Backed by Danny Rimer and @IndexVentures, alongside @antonosika, @gokulr, @rauchg, Jason Citron, @joshm, @lennysan, @mati, @Max, @saradu, @soleio, @Thom_Wolf, and several others.
More soon. – at San Francisco, CA
These guys are the reason we could scale ops through some of the craziest growth periods I've ever seen. I couldn’t be more excited to back @champ_hq. Check them out if you want to automate the most complex processes in your business
This is really cool
Introducing the Printing Press, a CLI-factory and a CLI-library. Built with @trevin. 🏭🖨📚
Most APIs suck for agents. Most MCPs suck for agents. Most official CLIs suck for agents. They waste tokens and time. @steipete started making his own because of this.
📚 A Library of agent-native CLIs you install today (Linear, ESPN, Flight GOAT (Google Flights + Kayak nonstop), Contact Goat (LinkedIn + Happenstance + Deepline more) +30+ more)
🏭 A factory that prints new ones for any service - just type /printing-press
CLIs are fast, local, SQLite-backed. Work in Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Hermes.
🌐 printingpress.dev
In 2012, @shiftb , @apoorva_mehta and I shared a vision for the future: that we could make grocery shopping effortless.
Almost everyone thought the idea was crazy. They said it had been tried before and failed — that we’d be squashed by the biggest ecommerce companies in the world. But we knew they were wrong. We saw a future others didn't and had the courage to try to build it.
Today, @Instacart helps millions of households get their groceries delivered each week. With the strength of our business, a clear vision, and a world-class leadership team in place, I’m moving into an advisory role at Instacart with complete confidence in the company’s future.
To all of our partners, shoppers and customers: thank you for putting your trust in us.
To the Instacart team, past and present: thank you for rolling up your sleeves alongside me to build an epic company!
Building Instacart has been the privilege of a lifetime and I'm incredibly energized to use my experience to help the next generation of founders as an early stage investor. 🥕
Congrats! @crosbylegal is successful because @ryanjdaniels and @jsarihan created a culture of intensity and urgency that delivers for customers better than anyone else can
📣 Update: we raised our $60m Series B from @Lux_Capital, @IndexVentures and @01Advisors, with participation from @sequoia, @eladgil and @BainCapVC .
When we came out of stealth 283 days ago, we had negotiated contracts worth $30m for our clients. As of last month, that number is over $1 billion.
We work with the most ambitious companies in the world, including @tryramp, @clay and @RogoAI. Today, we want you to hear from some of them directly.
Contracts are the rails of commerce. @crosbylegal is a hybrid AI law firm that gets them signed 80% faster. We’re announcing our Series B to keep scaling the dream law firm.
Great deal! Mercury is such a wonderful product on both the personal and business side!
1/ Mercury Personal is now free (normally $240/yr) for active Mercury Business users**
Personal comes with:
* Free wires
* 3.25% APY
* Mercury Invest for s&p and t-bills funds
* Joint accounts and auto transfer rules
* All in the same powerful app you love
So proud of you Jack! You show up for people in a way that’s rare — @benchmark and the founders you back are so lucky to have you
I’m really excited to share that I’m joining Benchmark.
The past two years as a full time investor have been the most rewarding of my career. I really love venture capital, which is not something I ever imagined I’d say when I was kid, but here we are.
I love new ideas and being part of a team with a mission. I love getting to be there for people who are struggling towards goals they really care about. I love learning from people who are better CEOs than I ever was. I love the texture of the work, the competition, and the way the job lets you invest in relationships.
I love it so much that I’ve even turned into a little venture nerd with a podcast who goes around harassing great investors and founders, trying to learn as much as I can as fast as possible. I’ve certainly learned what I care most about, and what kind of investor I want to be.
What I’ve realized is that I love investing at the Series A, when there’s enough going on that an investor can be useful but not so much that you can’t have an impact. I think there are many amazing ways to practice venture, it’s just the way that most speaks to me. And as I came to realize that, I started to think about how to best set myself up to do that craft as well as possible. It became clear to me there is nowhere better for this than Benchmark; the way they’re structured, their principles, their overall approach to investing, and their track record all create an environment that I believe will let me do my best work as an investor and help founders the most I possibly can.
As I’ve gotten to know the team at Benchmark I’ve come to admire so much about each of them. Peter is truly playing his own game. A lot of what he says sounds like poetry at first, but as the ideas roll around in your head for a while you realize how much depth they have. I first heard about Eric many years ago from my friend Saji at Benchling while I was building Lattice, who described him as the most amazing board member and attributed him with a lot of the company’s success. That’s the kind of partner I want to be one day. Chetan is brilliant and truly thinks for himself; I’ve realized over time what a courageous guy he is. And then there’s my friend Ev, whose skills complement mine and who I just love to be around. I can’t wait to have him as a partner in crime.
When given the chance to work with this group I just knew I had to go.
One of my motivating north stars with Alt Capital was to build a firm and be a partner that I most would have wanted as an entrepreneur. Although I haven’t gotten everywhere I want to be yet, I’m proud of the work so far. And now I’m excited to build on that work at Benchmark, where I hope to increase my rate of learning and get armed with the power of a partnership so I can help founders reach their dreams even more.
Thank you to the companies who’ve let me invest with them at Alt Cap. I’m keeping all my board seats and supporting everyone just the same as before.
Thank you to the LPs who’ve backed me as well. I am so excited about the portfolio we have and am grateful I can stick with all those companies.
And finally thank you to my teammates, Bala, Vivek, and Nate. Bala took a bet on me and started investing with me before it was remotely obvious, and we’ve been able to grow so much figuring it out together as investors. I credit Nate with helping Alt start feeling like a firm. He joined us from First Round over a year ago and made everything run smoothly. And while Vivek joined just a little while ago, even in the short time we’ve worked together he’s had a meaningful impact on how we think and invest. They’re all joining Benchmark with me.
So pumped for this chapter.