20VC: Instacart CEO Fidji Simo on Why You Need Sponsors Not Mentors, Where Management Skills Align with Good Parenting & The First 100 Days as CEO at Instacart; The Challenges, The Surprises and The Next Chapter

Fidji Simo is the CEO @ Instacart, the company that allows you to order whatever you want from local stores, delivering it straight to your door. Fidji joined the Instacart board 10 months ago and just 3 months ago, Fidji joined Instacart full time as CEO. Prior to Instacart, Fidji spent an incredible 10 years at Facebook in numerous different roles including Head of Facebook App and before that Vice President of Games, Video and Monetisation. If this was not enough, Fidji earlier this year announced her co-founding of Metrodora, an integrated medical ecosystem with the vision of advancing women’s health. In Today’s Episode with Fidji Simo You Will Learn: 1.) How Fidji made her way from a small coastal fishing town in France to leading the Facebook App and becoming one of the most powerful CEOs in tech with her new role at Instacart? 2.) The Rise @ Facebook: How did Fidji rise in the ranks at Facebook so much faster than anyone else? What were the biggest inflection points in her rise? What bets did she make that others did not see? How did they play out? Did any of the bets go wrong? What did Fidji learn about management style when the bet went wrong? 3.) Problem Solving and Decision-Making: What framework does Fidji use to have the most effective problem-solving and decision-making process? How does Fidji built such tight trust and honesty with her team members? In what way can leaders make people feel safe to take big bets but also not lose accountability if it does not work out? 4.) The Move To Instacart: Why did Fidji decide that CEO of Instacart was the right next move for her? What was Fidji's hypothesis of how the first 100 days would go? What has been a surprise in the first 100 days? How do the best leaders onboard into new CEO roles? How does the role of CEO change when moving from private to public company? Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Fidji Simo Fidji’s Favourite Book: The Night Circus

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  Welcome back. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so excited for our episode today. For many years, I'd heard about the most incredible stories on today's guests, and their ascent in Facebook, being faster than anyone had ever seen. And so with that, I'm so thrilled to welcome Fiji Sumo, CEO at Instacart, the company that allows you to order whatever you want from local stores, delivering it straight to your door. Fidji joined the Instacart board 10 months ago, and joined three months ago as full-time CEO. And prior to Instacart, Fidji spent an incredible 10 years at Facebook in numerous different roles, including Head of Facebook App, and before that, Vice President of Games, Video and Monetization. And if this wasn't enough, Fidji also earlier this year announced her co-founding of Metadora, an integrated medical ecosystem with the vision of advancing women's health.

• 0:43Harry Stebbings?

  I'd also want to say a huge thank you to my dear, dear friend Julien Cordon-Yer at Facebook Workplace for the intro, and then also to Mike Moritz, Jeff Jordan, and Dan Rose for some fantastic question suggestions today. I really did so appreciate that. But before we dive into the show today, Mercury is building full-scale banking for startups, applying in under 10 minutes from anywhere for FDIC insured bank accounts, physical and virtual debit cards, domestic and international wires, and integrations with Gusto, Stripe, QuickBooks, Plaid, basically every other tool your startup uses. They also offer unusual features like API access, custom team management, and their newly-launched Mercury Treasury, a cash management product for high-growth startups. They'll even help you build your startup with Mercury Raise, a program to connect you to Silicon Valley's top investors.

• 1:28Harry Stebbings?

  Head over to mercury.com/signup to apply today. And speaking of crucial infrastructure for your business with Mercury, do you want to spend less time vying for tech talent and more time building world-class products? Well, that's when my friends at Terminal come in. Terminal helps fast-growing tech companies rapidly scale engineering teams, so you can focus on innovating. They do this by providing you with a pipeline, pre-vetted global remote talent, currently 90,000 and growing, and a remote management platform that handles all localized admin, legal, and HR support, so you don't take on the legal risks and operational headaches. To date, Terminal has hired hundreds of developers based in Canada and Latin America that are fully remote, full-time employees at high-growth companies like Gusto, Chime, Earnin,

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  To learn more about how you can scale your engineering talent today, go to terminal.io. And last but by no means least, I have to say I just love using AngelList's fund admin platform to manage my investments. The team and the platform at AngelList takes care of all my back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders. Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups via AngelList, all online and all in one place. And with the recently announced Rolling Funds, you can easily find and invest in these top managers on angellist.com/rolling. But that's quite enough from me, so now I'm very, very excited to hand over to the one and only Fidji Sumo, CEO at Instacart.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:55Harry Stebbings?

  Fidji, this is such a joy to do. I've wanted to do this one ever since we saw the announcement. I'd heard so many great things from JC, so thank you so much for joining me today.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me, Harry.

• 3:05Harry Stebbings?

  The pleasure is all mine, but our little birdie tells me that we should start a lot further back, actually, because you're from Seix in France, daughter of a fisherman. I heard this actually on your episode with Boss. So what did those early years look like and how did you make your way to the valley?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you know, when you're a daughter, granddaughter, great granddaughter of fishermen, you're not necessarily predestined to enter the Silicon Valley. But my father took me out at sea when I was pretty young and I was so horribly seasick that I realised that I would need to find another line of business and a family business really quickly. And so, you know, I love my hometown. It's a love place. And you grew up in this very rambunctious French Sicilian family where everything we do revolves around food and a large table filled with wonderful things to eat. So, you know, grew up with deep family values and it kind of feels a little bit like going full circle

• 4:04Speaker 02

  to work at Instacart and work on something food related.

• 4:08Harry Stebbings?

  I absolutely love that and I agree with you in terms of growing up with huge plates of food around me. That's why I look more like Augustus Gloop when I was younger. But I do have to ask, I think my parents shape you in phenomenal ways. When you look back to the up-

• 4:20Harry Stebbings?

  How do you think that shaped the type of operator you are today?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Oh, I I so agree with you that it shapes everything. So, you know, I grew up my entire childhood seeing my dad wake up at two A M and come back at eight P M and do the most, one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. My grandfather was a fisherman at age five and never went to school. And so this sense of deep, deep work ethic was ingrained in me at a very young age. I mean, my my grandfather would always say, you're gonna pretty much have any flaws and I will still love you, but you cannot be lazy. And, you know, that's the thing that, you know, my whole education revolved around. But at the same time, the thing that was also very inspiring was the fact that my family believed that if you

• 5:07Speaker 02

  work hard, all of the doors are open to you. They never made me feel like I had limitations because we didn't grow up with a lot of means. They made me feel like, you know, everything was possible and that it was in my hands. And that mentality, I think, was the greatest riches that they could have offered me.

• 5:24Harry Stebbings?

  Have you ever had burnout, given the mindset that you have towards that? Have you ever had that time when you are just burning the midnight oil every night? And has it ever been challenging?

• 5:33Speaker 02

  So I am always burning the midnight oil and it is challenging. I think, you know, the the thing that compensates for that is just I have always picked jobs that I loved. And I think if I was working that hard on something that I was less passionate about, I would burn out. But the fact that I have always dedicated all of that passion towards something I really wanna see happen in the world, I think that kind of gives me the fuel I need. And, you know, since I became a mom, I also really wanna make sure that, like, the way in which I work is compatible with being very present for my daughter. That has created a very healthy pressure to be less in front of the computer all the time

• 6:17Speaker 02

  and also just be present for her, obviously.

• 6:20Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, did having children change your management style? It makes a lot of people more patient, more understanding. How did it change your management style, do you think?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  You know, I think it's funny because I think I built a lot of my management tools before I got pregnant. And so, in fact, I feel like I have applied a lot of my management tools on my daughter rather than the other way around. But I think there are a lot of things that apply, you know, it's really trying to find the magic in people and shining a light on it, you know, that when people ask me what's the most important thing in your life, that's always my answer. And I see that with my daughter, I just look at her and the way I see education is fundamentally helping her find what's magical about her and making sure it shines as bright as possible. And the way I manage teams is the same, I really focus on what makes each individual

• 7:13Speaker 02

  in my team just magical and unique and I just wanna make sure I shine the brightest light on that.

• 7:18Harry Stebbings?

  I do wanna go back, you know, we've got many mutual friends, I wanna go back before we start on Instagram, to the incredible journey with Facebook, you know, heard from J C, heard from Dan Rose, started as a junior marketing employee and they said it was the most meteoric rise of anyone in the whole of Facebook. Walk me through the role progression there. How did it happen and is question, like, how did you rise so fast?

• 7:39Speaker 02

  You know, I was working at T V for three years and then I applied to Facebook and, you know, the thing that's, that's actually a good illustration of what I was telling you earlier is I didn't have the skill set on paper to even apply for the job I applied to, I was like, it's a job available at the time was marketing communications, I had never done that in my life. And I realized I would probably not get the job as a result, which would have been, you know, it's a rational thing for a hiring manager to do. And so I spent my entire Thanksgiving weekend inventing a new product called Facebook Stores, which is very close to a product that we've launched recently called Facebook Shops. And I built all of the marketing materials around it, I recorded a webinar with my horrible

• 8:22Speaker 02

  French accent, I prepped all of the brochures, all of that, and I just sent that to the hiring manager saying like, hey, you may not be convinced that I can do the job on paper, but, you know, I put in all this work, so please consider me. And, you know, she did and to this day she kinda laughs that, you know, I definitely would not have gotten the job without. And so it's kind of the philosophy of always going the extra mile and always putting all the chances on your side for something that you really, really want and, you know, deeply believe in. So that was kind of the beginning of my journey at Facebook. And then, you know, I'm very big on learning. And so when I was in marketing communications,

• 9:03Speaker 02

  I was exposed to a lot of product managers and realized I was really interested in what they were doing. So I spent a lot of time kind of learning from them, doing parts of their job on my spare time so that, you know, obviously they would love me, but at the same time I would learn kind of a little bit faster to the point where they then suggested that I should really just move over to product. And again, I didn't have any of the skillset on paper, but I had proven that I could do the job. And so that's how I moved into product. And then I think, you know, I was put in charge of monetizing mobile kind of right after the IPO, when no one thought that Facebook could monetize mobile. And again, like, I did not have any of the right experience on paper, but the fact that I

• 9:47Speaker 02

  I kind of figured this out helped me put my career on a different trajectory. And obviously, figuring this out with a large team of people who should get a lot of the credit for that as well. But I think that helped accelerate a lot of my journey and then ended up building the Facebook app.

• 10:02Harry Stebbings?

  In terms of like inflection moments, what do you think it was? Do you think it was moving to product? Was it taking over the monetization? Was it, what were like core moments to you that stand out as like, that was a moment that changed my trajectory within Facebook?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  I think, you know, figuring out how to monetize mobile and really having that takeoff was a very big moment because it was, you know, it was critical for the company to figure that out. So again, like, I was by no means the only one doing that, but I think the fact that I played a key role really did help my career. The other moment I'll tell you is, you know, I set up a lot of our video and entertainment initiatives. And in particular, I was very involved in launching Facebook Live and then launching Facebook Watch. And I think a lot of my career took off around moments where I made bets. That other people didn't think were obvious bets and, you know, entering video many, many

• 10:58Speaker 02

  years after YouTube was kind of one of these bets where people were like, I don't think that makes sense. And proved that we could do it and do something interesting. And I'll always be grateful to Mark for letting me make these bets and supporting me in these bets like very heavily. And I think that also accelerated a lot of my, my career.

• 11:17Harry Stebbings?

  This is a question that you made such bold bets and they turned out to work, but if they didn't, it would have been challenging. And so I guess my question to you is that as a manager and a leader today, how do you create an environment of safety where people can try ambitious bets and not be fearful of failure and repercussions?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is such a critical question and I'll be honest, Harry, I didn't always get it right. You know, I mean, when we were building Facebook Watch, that was kind of the first time where I had worked on a product and I really, like, it wasn't working initially and I did not see a path. And I was like, oh my God, like my formula is just not working and the road is gonna stop here. And I was pretty stressed, I was passing on the stress to my team. And thank God I had built incredible relationship with my team to the point that one of the people on my team like sent, sent me aside after a meeting and she was like, Fiji, I've seen you at your best, this is not your best and figuring out Facebook Watch is going to require your best.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  And I was like, just three sentences and I was like, okay, got it. And, you know, immediately clicked that fundamentally you are not going to crack a hard problem on a series of bad days, you're gonna crack a hard problem when you're absolutely at your best as a leader and therefore you are inspiring people to be at their best. And I completely recalibrated at that point. I was like, oh wow, it's really important that I don't focus just on is the work getting done, is like, are we making progress fast enough? But I really focus on, am I creating the conditions by which like the team is gonna thrive? And a lot of how I did that was just by.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Showing the teams that, you know, I was there no matter what. I would back them up no matter what. And like, a lot of the pressure was on me, not on them. And of course, I wanted them to feel accountable for the success and failure of this project. But I really mostly wanted them to be at their best and to come up with the best ideas and create that environment for them.

• 13:25Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, when you think about trying these new projects, it could be, you know, video, it could be, you know, whatever new project we want to try. How do you think about how long to give something? It's always the hardest thing, which is like, you have enough data when? You always probably leave it too long. How do you think about that?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  I think you need to be inflexible on the destination and the goal and the user need you're trying to achieve. And very flexible on how to get there. And I think the combination of these two things means that you need to have a very clear north star of, and be very sure that the user need that you're solving is worth solving. But then be completely comfortable iterating on the right way to solve that user need. And so, you know, on a lot of the products that I launched, we went through, you know, four, five iterations of the product before we got the user need right. And therefore, I'm like very comfortable pivoting and iterating,

• 14:23Speaker 02

  but definitely attached to solving the user need unless we have data from the market that reveals that this user need is not worth solving. But that's rare. Usually, like, at the start of the project, you need the real conviction that there is something to solve there.

• 14:38Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned kind of solving the user need. It was funny, I spoke to many of our mutual friends before, which, by the way, the fan club for Fiji is like enormous. It's so wonderful to hear, by the way. But I'm thinking of Ravi in particular. And Ravi said that you are incredible at breaking down complex issues to their core and deciding the right course of action. How do you think about your problem solving and decision making today with that in mind?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  You know, it's one of these things that when you do it naturally, it's really hard to to explain it. But I think I try to really simplify the problem down to a bunch of isolated components that we can go solve. So, you know, if you're talking about, okay, Facebook Watch, for example, is not working. It's like, okay, is the user need wrong? Is like the user need right? But our assumption on like the particular assumption we had for the product wrong? Or is our execution actually flawed? And I think once you start breaking things that way, you start understanding where the breakdown is. Is it execution? Is it strategy? Is it your understanding of the consumer?

• 15:48Speaker 02

  And so you will find me in most of the discussions with my team, not really like saying a very, very strong opinion, but instead asking a lot of these leading questions that helps them refine their own understanding of really where things are breaking. And so that's kind of the method, tease apart what's going on.

• 16:09Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, is it challenging for you now, you know, having been very involved in in every aspect of products to now like bluntly leading an organization where your hands aren't that involved in everything because you can't be as the leader? Is it difficult being like overview, not really in the weeds?

• 16:28Speaker 02

  I think it's just a different set of challenges. And I learned that it's certainly the case as a CEO, obviously. But even at Facebook, when I was leading the Facebook app, you know, it's fundamentally twenty five companies like wrapped into one. And so you have to really create a framework by which you're going to operate something so complex. And in my mind, two things that I have to do is hire people that are incredible and that I would work for and I trust and therefore can delegate to without worrying about it. And second is create a strategy and a framework and a set of like, you know, context that I can distribute and communicate to my organization so that they are clearly on what they have to do and think.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  And make a lot of decisions autonomously. And I think that's fundamentally, like when you boil it down, that is fundamentally what a leader has to do. And a lot of times I find that when I end up having to dig into the details, it really means that this, one of these two things has broken down. Either I haven't really communicated the strategy in a way that empowers the team to make good decisions, or I just don't have the right people in it. And it just, it always boils down to these two things.

• 17:41Harry Stebbings?

  I need your help, Pijin. This is why I love doing this show, because I basically just get advice from the best people in the business. But it's like, you know, I'm hiring now for a specific role. And people are like, you've got to have five years plus of experience in this role. And then, you know, listening to you with your first role and getting into Facebook, it's like, you're probably the biggest rock star in that role that they've ever had, and you had no experience. And you've mentioned before having not had experience in the other roles. And should I look for the experienced, being a rep or whatever that is? Or should I actually be flexible and willing to take a flyer on someone talented and ambitious?

• 18:13Speaker 02

  So my strong bias is the latter, but you understand why, right? I mean, my career was made out of people making bets on me despite me having like very limited experience on these things. But I think, you know, I find that people who are curious and who are hungry can figure pretty much anything out. It's hard to make a bet on someone who doesn't have the experience if they're not a deep, deep learner. So you want to check that they have this propensity to constantly learn. But if they have that and they have the grit, it can overcome a lot of experience. I mean, that doesn't apply to everything. I don't know who you're hiring.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  You're hiring a deep physicist or AI expert, like, you know, you might want to, you might want to check a little bit about their background. But I think for the types of role you're probably talking about, I would recommend to go for the hungry people.

• 19:05Harry Stebbings?

  I'm hiring for Chief of Staff. So if you would like determine whether they're a deep thinker and insanely curious, how would you test that if you were me?

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's, you know, it's funny you mentioned Chief of Staff, like, because my Chief of Staff is incredible. And she exactly fits the thing that I just told you. Like she had not been a chief of staff before she like she didn't come from a project management background, didn't come from consulting. But she was insanely curious and she was a deep problem solver. And so the way I looked for that is just by asking her a lot of questions on how she would solve a problem. And you can get a lot of signals on that because you have a lot of people who like focus very much on the issues in getting to the solutions, the things they don't know.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Some people were like, okay, well, these are all the things that I don't understand. This is how I'm gonna figure them out and this is how I'm gonna get to the other side. And you want the latter people. And so a lot of it is that. It's also during an interview process, and again, I'm biased because I do that a lot. But I find that people who have done a lot of prep when they come to see you, it's usually a very good sign. My chief of staff had come to the interview, having read everything about me, having already having a point of view on the things that I needed to change, the types of like challenges I would have. And, you know, that totally convinced me way more than years of experience at McKinsey. I thought that was brilliant.

• 20:38Harry Stebbings?

  Great. I'm gonna hire your chief of staff.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Well, that turned out like really wrong.

• 20:46Harry Stebbings?

  Trust me, I think she's on to a way. I think that's an amazing role. I do have to ask you, we mentioned problem solving, we mentioned support there in chiefs of staff. Mentors is a big part of a lot of leaders' lives. And it was J C and Dan Rose, actually, who said, who are your closest mentors? And what have been some of the biggest takeaways from those relations?

• 21:04Speaker 02

  So, you know, I'll challenge you on this a bit. I don't think mentors are that critical. I think sponsors are. And there's a very big difference there. I mean, mentors are the kind of people who sit down with you, have coffee, give you some really, really great advice and kind of walk away. Sponsors are people who may not even have advice for you, but put their butt on the line for you and open doors for you and are there at the moments of your career when you need them the most. And that's a very, very different thing. And I call it that especially because I think many women in particular have been told that they need a mentor. Like that's the thing they need and they go around looking for a mentor.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  And, and I always say, no, you really need to build advocates around you and people who are going to be opening doors, not just giving you advice and patting themselves on the back for doing that. And so in my case, you know, I would tell you, Will Caskett, who's currently leading WhatsApp, he used to be my manager for many years. And if I ever called him my mentor, he would totally cringe and, and kill me. But he certainly was my sponsor. And what that meant and what that looked like is that it just created an environment by which I could just make bet after bet. And he gave me the confidence that I didn't have at the time.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And just by seeing myself through his eyes, I built up the confidence I needed to get to the next step of my career always. I think that's just so much more important. So when I think about what I need to do for people around me, I think about it much more in terms of sponsorship than in terms of mentorship.

• 22:42Harry Stebbings?

  Why do you think he believed in you so much when you didn't believe in yourself?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Ah, that's a good question. I haven't asked him that. I think he probably, he saw that I was always, always learning and always growing. And I think in his mind, that was also a trait that like predicts, you know, that you're going to be able to tackle a lot of challenges. And the other thing is, you know, I fundamentally believe that you need to build really win-win relationship with your manager. And so the relationship we had was that one where he was making me successful for sure, but I was also really invested in making him successful. And I felt deeply invested in this career and I was the one giving him the most feedback,

• 23:29Speaker 02

  just to make sure that he would get to his next step. And I think this is kind of our approach on relationships. I don't, I fundamentally don't believe in hierarchy. I think it's a, it's a nice thing to have in order to be able to make decisions. But I really feel like, you know. I serve my team and similarly when I have a manager, I I just feel like I'm also responsible for their career and helping them get to the next level. And so I've been creating this deep partnership with people, I think helps and really creates goodwill.

• 23:59Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, speaking of serving the team, you know, you had the incredibly exciting move to be CEO of Instacart. You could have been CEO, but not me, at pretty much any company. Why did you choose this and why Instacart for you?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know, I joined the board in January and I had no intention of leaving Facebook at the time. But I kind of fell in love with the business and a big part of it is because first I love complex marketplaces. And Instacart is that's the intersection of, you know, retailers, CPG, consumers, shoppers. So it's an incredibly complex business and that makes it so interesting to me. But much more importantly, I just love the mission. And you know, when you spend ten years at Facebook, you don't do that if you're not someone who's deeply mission driven. So I knew that my next company would have to be something where the mission is absolutely critical.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  And the mission of Instacart is just to help people get access to food and spend more time enjoying it with the people they love. I can't imagine a more fun mission to work on, you know. And especially, you know, when you grow up in a French-Italian family where where food is how we show love, how we show care. So it was kind of a mission that was deeply with me. And I I really believe that it's a company that's gonna be at the the centre of as a relationship between people and food evolves over the next decade. Whether it's through personalisation, convenience, nutrition. And there's gonna be just so many interesting opportunities to continue to serve this mission.

• 25:34Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, you were at Facebook for, you know, many, many years. Were you nervous about making the move? I mean, you you get quite comfortable in a role and in a company. It's a massive step. Were you nervous?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  I was super nervous. I mean, of course, I agonised about the decision. I mean, it was both a big career decision, but it was also a very emotional. Because like as an immigrant, you know, I moved to the US and when you spend ten years at Facebook, especially a company where, you know, the lines between personal and professional are very blurry because we all follow each other on Facebook, like these people became family, you know? And so a lot of what I was debating was not just leaving a mission that I care deeply about, leaving a career I care deeply about, but it was also leaving a set of people that I had invested so much in and had so much loyalty to. And that's a very, very hard thing to do.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  And the reason I did it is really because I thought the, you know, the people on the Instacart side were also amazing and I thought the mission was fantastic. But it was, it was not an easy decision, Harry.

• 26:39Harry Stebbings?

  When you thought about like what the first thirty days would be like, what did you think it would be like? And then like what's the same as what you thought and what's different?

• 26:47Speaker 02

  I think, you know, I thought about the fact that my number one priority again was building relationships. And that meant building relationship with the teams and making them feel good about me coming in because it is a big change for a company, especially a founder led company to have a CEO come in. So I wanted them to really get to know me and understand, you know, the type of leader that I was and also get to know them. Similarly, I really wanted to get to all of our retail partners because they are critical to our business. And, you know, a lot of these businesses is based on trust and relationships. And I wanted to get to have this conversation and build these relationships. And so I would say it has looked actually fairly similar to what I expected

• 27:32Speaker 02

  with a positive surprise of seeing the level of dedication that Instacart employees have to the mission is just absolutely beyond. And the relationships that we have with our retail partners are just also very, very deep. And that's actually a kind of a big difference from my prior role, which was a lot more internally focused. This role is a lot more externally focused. And it's been very rewarding to build relationship, not just within the company, but also with our partners and realize that our success is not just our. Company's success, but all of our partners' success as well.

• 28:07Harry Stebbings?

  Speaking of that external focus, before we move into the quickfire, you know, obviously Instagram's a private company now. There's always a potential for it to be a public company in the future. How does the role change when one becomes a public market CEO, do you think?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Well, I hope it doesn't change much because fundamentally, I think the decisions that I'm making now, our decisions that I'm making so that we set the company up well for the next decade. And that's what I want to continue doing once we're public. You know, I think that's actually very important to not let the markets dictate, you know, what your decisions are and have a short-term focus. I really want to continue and create it's a long-term focus and build this business to be a long-term epic company. And I think, you know, I went through this transition at Facebook when we went IPO. And I had a great role model in Mark where, you know, his decision-making wasn't affected by being public.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  He was really all about how do we serve people best and how do we serve our mission best. And so in my mind, I really, I think we are going to have obviously a level of rigor that's increased as we go public. But fundamentally, on the core of the job, I hope that we actually make decisions in a very similar way.

• 29:20Harry Stebbings?

  I totally agree. And I think, I'm sure it will happen that way in terms of the decision-making framework. I do want to dive into my favorite, which is a quickfire round. So I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  That sounds great.

• 29:33Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so it's summer, we need some books to read. What's the favorite book and why?

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Boom, The Night Circus from Erin Morgensen because I love fantasy and circuses.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  That's why I was on the board of Cirque du Soleil. I have kind of a like obsession with circuses. And so, yeah.

• 29:52Harry Stebbings?

  I didn't know that. Well, answer another quickfire question. What was the biggest or coolest thing? What's the biggest takeaway from being on the board of Cirque du Soleil? That's cool.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Oh, so many. I think it was you always need to put creativity at the centre of everything you do. And seeing a company where creativity is the business inspired me so much for so many other businesses.

• 30:15Harry Stebbings?

  I got this from Mike Vernal. He asked, what are your thoughts on Nutella and what's it good with?

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Well, in addition to circuses, I might also have a mild obsession with Nutella. And by mild, I mean I might eat several jars a week. And so it's, you know, Nutella, I would say, like, best on bread every morning, just keep it simple. But also you can reheat it and drop it on a bowl of strawberries or bananas, and that's also delicious. And I can tell you, I mentioned that on social media the first day I took the CEO job at Instacart, and Nutella reached out to me, telling me that they wanted to send me a surprise. And they sent me this ginormous box of Nutella. And I was like, I made the right call, like, I'm in the right job. We're good.

• 31:10Harry Stebbings?

  I saw the tweet and I was like, oh yeah, that's gonna do well for Nutella. I want to ask, what piece of advice do you often give but find hard to follow yourself?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Ooh, take time to recharge. I did believe that we make better decisions when we have time to step back from the problem and actually go do something creative. And I try very hard. I paint and I sculpt in my spare time. So I spend a lot of time on my weekends with my daughter sculpting magic ones. And that's a way for me to recharge. But it's, it's sometimes very hard to step back from the problem and stop working. So I'm not yet great at it.

• 31:47Harry Stebbings?

  I totally get you. I'm terrible at it, by the way. But what do you know now that you wish you'd known at the start of your time with that first role with Facebook?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Hmm, that's a good one. I think the big thing is really realize that your difference and your unicity is something to be celebrated and might be an advantage instead of trying to conform to the norm. You know, when I moved to product, I had plenty of people telling me, "Oh, engineers are never gonna respect you if you have that much makeup and if you have your high heels and your horrible French accent. So you kinda need to, you know, look like Silicon Valley PM." And I tried it for a day and no one recognized me and I fell

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Horrible and I realized, you know, fundamentally, a lot of what makes me mean, including the horrible French accent, including too much makeup, including all these things. You know, that's how I'm going to have the confidence to show up and be fully myself and embrace where I am. And therefore, like, do my best work. And so I wish I had agonized a lot less over what what made me different.

• 32:58Harry Stebbings?

  I think the French accent is great, by the way. The English accent makes me sound much smaller to an American audience, so I think the French is very cool.

• 33:06Harry Stebbings?

  The penultimate one, you can have a billboard anywhere in the world and it can say anything that you want it to say. Where do you have it and what does it say?

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Well, if you know anything about me, Harry, you know that I wouldn't have a billboard, I would have a digital ad. Very clearly, but I'll answer your question. I think you would say three million women in the US are suffering from neuroimmune diseases and no one seems to care. Time to fund research and time to find a cure. And I think that's because I care a lot about healthcare and I care a lot about the fact that women's health is massively behind. Especially, you know, health outside of reproductive health. And I think that's a problem that has been ignored for too long. I'm working on it in my ample spare time. With more to come at the end of the year, but definitely something that's near and dear to my heart.

• 33:58Harry Stebbings?

  Well, I think that's like the most meaningful billboard I've ever had on the show. Most of them are terrible. That's a great one. But it helps it. She does like, great. Okay, final one. What have the next five years held for you and for Instacart? Paint that picture.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  So I think I want to invent the future of food alongside our retail partners. And I think the future of food looks like people being inspired by what they eat. People having personalized diets that are really improving their health. And really discovering amazing products that are adapted to their personalized diets. Because we will have created a platform by which new food products can emerge and reach the audience. I think it means that you can have all of these food products delivered, you know, very fast to your front door, wherever you are. And I think it means that we will have

• 34:53Speaker 02

  helped our retail partners really compete against Amazon and will have given them all of the technology tools so that they remain at the centre of local communities and allow local communities to thrive.

• 35:05Harry Stebbings?

  Fiji, as I said at the beginning, it was so wonderful for me to reach out to so many different people and hear just the most incredible praise and plaudits. So thank you so much for joining me today and I so appreciate the time.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Thank you, Harry. It was lovely.

• 35:20Harry Stebbings?

  Fiji is just one of the most brilliant, authentic, humble and genuine leaders. I was so thrilled to have her on the show today there. If you'd like to see more from us, you can on the twenty minute vc dot com. But before we leave you today, Mercury is building full stack banking for startups, applying in under 10 minutes from anywhere for FDIC insured bank accounts, physical and virtual debit cards, domestic and international wires, and integrations with Gusto, Stripe, QuickBooks, Plaid, basically every other tool your startup uses. They also offer unusual features like API access, custom team management, and their newly launched Mercury Treasury, a cash management product for high-growth startups. They'll even help you build your startup with Mercury Raise, a program to connect you to Silicon Valley's top investors. Head over to mercury dot com forward slash

• 36:03Harry Stebbings?

  sign up to apply today. And speaking of crucial infrastructure for your business with Mercury, do you want to spend less time vying for tech talent and more time building world-class products? Well, that's where my friends at Terminal come in. Terminal helps fast-growing tech companies rapidly scale engineering teams so you can focus on innovating. They do this by providing you with a pipeline, pre-vetted global remote talent, currently 90,000 and growing, and a remote management platform that handles all localised admin, legal and HR support, so you don't take on the legal risks and operational headaches. To date, Terminal has hired hundreds of developers based in Canada and Latin America that are fully remote, full-time employees at high-growth companies like Gusto, Chime, Earnin and Hims. To learn more about how you can scale your engineering talent today,

• 36:45Harry Stebbings?

  go to terminal dot io. And last but by no means least, I have to say, I just love using Angelus Fund admin platform to manage my Investments. The team and the platform at Angel List takes care of all my back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders. Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups via Angel List, all online and all in one place. And with the recently announced Rolling Funds, you can easily find and invest in these top managers on angellist.com/rolling. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you an incredible set of episodes this week with Anka Nagpul and some very special news on Wednesday.