Fidji Simo

fast and breaking things like Facebook. We don't want to break anything, but we're very much at the beginning of a long journey and we think that the vision for the company is incredibly exciting and we're just getting started with this big digital transformation we're seeing in the industry. Do you have your own motto? Like your own sort of mantra that's too I really really like in particular, one is grows up Pie. We like the food funds, but is that we make everyone better, like the entire

industry better. And the other ones I really like is pretty dull on the table, because I think it's really important to have like transparency and like tell it like it is, so it's a good value to to follow. Hi everyone, I'm Emily Chang, and welcome to this edition of the Bloomberg Studio One point Oh Podcast. Today's Guest was one of Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenants who decided to end her ten year career at Facebook to take the top job at a rising power player in a totally

different industry, instat Cart. Her goal to become the tech platform for the grocery business and take on Amazon. But with Uber, Door, Dash and more competing for gig shoppers and customers, will Fiji Seemos strategy give Instacart the edge on the retail front lines. Joining me now on this edition of Bloomberg Studio one point Oh insta Cart CEO vig Seemog, It's so great to be with you here in person, so great to be What is your re

right now on how the pandemic has changed the grocery industry. Well, I think it has massively accelerated to move towards online grocery and this transformation is very much here to stay. But the thing that's really interesting is that now that we look forward to the next kind of decade of growth, we still see massive opportunity. Where right now the industry is still under ten percent penetrated online, we think it's going to go towards thirty percent, maybe in the next

five to ten years. You know, when I arrived at CEO, that was this interesting narratives that if people go back to Stolles, Instacot loses, and that can be the case because our goal is to really be aligned with our retail partners, and our retail partners just want to address customer needs whatever customers are. Was that its online, was that it's install My son was very impressed, but I told him I was interviewing the video of insta car. He also said, you should tell them to stock up

because they're replacing a lot of things. Talk to us about the food shortages and how bad it is right now. Yeah, we've certainly seen a lot of um issues with supply chain obviously, and we're working handing and with all grocers to really address that. We have the best replacement technology in the industry so that when something's missing, we can really replace it with something appropriate. There's concerned that the war in Ukraine will drive up food prices even more.

This is on top of rising inflation. Ukraine is a big producer of weed, a big producer of seed oils. What are you expecting, so we have seen inflation definitely heat uh, you know, on on instacles The model on instacles is that grocers sets the price and so we reflect that price back to the customer. And we have certain missing and increase in food prices. We are tracking that closely. We think that customers are for now kind of adapting by adjusting their baskets and really focusing on

essentral items. You grew up in France. What's it like watching this happen to another European kind tree. It's you know, absolutely hot breaking. I think, you know, uh, it shows a little surreal that to realize that this can be happening, you know, in this day and age. Um. But you know, we are trying to support our employees that have that have families over their friends over there are and and do a part to uh, to help people to this crisis.

I know you're kind of a newcomer to the grocery business, but not to food culture. You were raised in a small town in France, in a fishing village, and I believe three generations of fisherman in your family. Well, uh, you know, I wasn't destined to end depth in Soulian Valley. Clearly, I grew up in a very big when Buckcher's Sicilian family where food was always at the center of everything we did. And so, you know, it's kind of going back to my roots to to go back into into

a food business. I'm curious of growing up that way and you know, sort of walking around, you know, with your with your grandfather through the fishing village. Did it in still the sort of builder mentality, absolutely, I mean, my grandfather always told me, you know, I can't forgive anything.

The one thing I wouldn't forgive if you're lazy. And so the work ethic was like deeply, deeply ingrained in my family, and they always made me feel like everything was possible if you worked hard at it and you brought your heart and soul into it. You were the first one in your family to graduate from high school. I just want to finger on that for a moment.

That's incredible. You know. The fishing industry was interesting in that they take enormous pride in what they do, and so that reminds me a lot of what I've seen with grocers, uh in the industry right now, reaching every customer at the door like that, reminding me of the pride that I saw in my family for a job well done, and you know, making sure that the food was perfect and fresh. Uh and and so these are things that you know, I take to heart and I want I want my job to be excellent. So how

did you get to Silicon Valley? So I got to selic Ado about fifteen years. I started my career at eBay, and then I moved to Facebook and spent ten years on Facebook. There were a lot of people who took bets on me, even though I didn't look on paper that I was a perfect person for the job. But I had enormous grid and I worked very hard and uh and I think that that really helped h you know, call the path and U and here we are. You rose up through the ranks, working in almost every corner

of the business. You became one of Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenants in product. What did you learn there about what to do and what not to do as a leader? Yeah? You know, watching Marc operate for ten years was kind of one of the best CEO schools you can You can never imagine because the thing it does incredibly well is that things had he Sing's long term, and he tries to balance out the execution in the short term

with a very long term view. I also learned that, you know, you need to be proactive and there's risks in your business and we've seen that with Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg maybe one of the most scrutinized, most criticized founders ever. Facebook now matter is one of the most criticized companies ever. Is that warranted? I think the scrutinies warranted because they have such, you know, tremendous impact on the world. However, when people talk about Facebook, they expect very easy answers

to very complex problems. Was that its content, motivation was that its policy and I trust these problems do not have easy answers. They require a lot of nuance, a lot of understanding. I imagine Mark tried really hard to get you to stay. Well. I really wasn't expecting to leave Facebook last year, and I joined the board of Instacle to really to learn more about a different industry and and take my skills and applies them somewhere else. And I kind of fell in love with the company.

I fell in love with the opportunity and um and you know, for Mark, obviously, you know we had a long conversation about the so well the courst of many weeks, but ultimately understood that I wanted to spread my wings. How did a Porva Matta, the founder of insta cart, approach you? And when did CEO become the ask I sinkle Prova to his credit, Uh, and that's really hard

for a founder to do. Started to realize that, you know, given my my skill set, and might be better position to go execute on that vision um than you would. And and so you know, during this conversation it became clear that you know, my vision was actually quite different from his, but he was excited to see what could have happened with mine. You're listening to Bloomberg Studio at one point with insta Carts, Fiji Sema up next taking

on Amazon? How will instacart compete with the e commerce juggernaut that's just decided to double down on grocery stay with us. Some of the big moves you made right away. You started building out your executive team. You brought in women executives, You added strong women to the board. You brought in Carolyn Everson, your former colleague at Facebook. Um, that didn't work out. Why didn't it work out? That didn't quite work out? When some things are not working

out and it's pretty obvious or not. The best thing you can do is kind of you know, move, move quickly. And so the fact that Karen and I had a tenure relationship made it easier to have the kind of held conversation and like, hey, this isn't what what we wanted on either side. Uh, And I think it's actually created a very big opportunity. Were now the team in charge of relationship with retailers reports directly to and that has allowed me to go much much deeper into that

which is so critical for this business. Instacot is now a major player in the grocery industry seventy stores, but you want to go bigger. Layout the vision for us. So when I when I arrived at the company, it was so obvious to me that um, Instacott wasn't just

an online grocery delivery company. I see, the company is really the operating system for grocery where we can work with our retailers who have you know, all of the experts is craft and care of retail and marries out with our technology and fulfillment assets to really help them embrace us. Is digital transformation. Amazon is shutting down a lot of its physical stores it's four Star stores, but it's doubling down on grocery with Whole Foods, and it's

Amazon Go stores. You want to take on Amazon, how well, we want to help our grocers of all of the technologies in need in order to compete with Amazon. To your pin into, Amazon is investing very heavily in grocery

and they have a ton of technological abilities. And that was a big part of why in my first week in the job, I decided to acquire a caper and which is a smart card technology, because I want all of the grocers we work who is to have the same edge that Amazon has, and so I see I see it as my responsibility to build all of the technologies that they need to compete with Amazon so that we can be busy and for for them. Then there's Uber and door Dash and Go Puff and Go outside

of the United States, and the list goes on. How does instacar stand out from all of these different players that are competing for a piece of that pie. These players fundamentally compete with our grocers. They want to attack the market by being first body retailer owning their ornamentory. And so that's another approach at all approaches really building

technology and fulsom and to help all grocers. The second thing is that these players are very focused on one particular piece of the market, which is quick commerce and what that's really important. And we've certainly seen our own convenience business double in the last six months. We actually address all of the needs that consumers have. We are not just quick commerce. Were also the weekly shop. Were also your monthly bulk stock up, and that's what we

tailers want now. Inevitably, after I interview you or dark Houser shop here, uber Tony Shoe at door Dash, I will get feedback on social media from shoppers and drivers who are not happy. Um. One instac cart shopper posted a picture of an order show they delivered fifty one items, got paid seven dollars and not tip. Is that representative? No, that's very much not representative. And I think you know, fundamentally,

shoppers care about their earnings. They really want flexible earnings whenever they want to, and so our job is to make sure that they have more access to work. So what is representative? What is a normal wage for a delivery like that? We're very much in line with kind of industry average for these kinds of jobs, and so that's something that we always try to kind of nudge the consumer of like, hey, your shopper did a really good job, can you can you keep a little more?

What if they don't, though, right, I mean that you're leaving it up to the customer. We actually and some customers think well you should build this enteor price. We make it very transparent to the shopper before they accept an order, what the order is going to look like, how much we're going to pay them, and how much like the consumer is paying them, and so they can decide whether they take an order or whether they refuse it. And that's the kind of flexibility that or shoppers really

value and the kind of transparency that they want. Are you seeing a labor shortage right now? And what are you doing to combat that? It's different in different places. Or demographic of shoppers is completely different from food delivery and a right sharing where seven women and half of them are moms. And that's because a lot of the Java Instagram is very different than just being in the

car with strangers. It's about like going to the store, doing a good job of customer service, of really picking the right products for the consumer, and we are seeing that being very appealing to women. The instant delivery space or you know, fifteen minute delivery space, is that something that you want to double down on. It's something that we absolutely want to offer because again, we really think

that our customers want the full range of option. Fifting met delivery is not going to be relevant for everything. I mean, it's going to be very relevant on Thursday night when I'm craving chocolate ice cream and I it's really an emergency when that happens, like cooking over me.

You've made some strategic acquisitions, as you've mentioned, what about in the rapid delivery space, Joker Gorilla, No, we haven't, and the main reason is because all of these players are doing very much first party grocery, so that means the ornamentory uh, and so it's not it's not something that's interesting to us because our approach is really build the infrastructure so that our grocers can do uh, certainly minute delivery or fifty minute delivery, whereas uh, these players

are doing it kind of on their own bypassing the grocers. Do you think retailers trust you? Do they trust instat cart So you know, when I when I took on the job, I was surprised by the strength of our retailer relationships, but there was always this kind of lingering questions that retailer has had for me, which was, you know, what are your long term intentions? Are you planning on

becoming a retailer at some point? And I had to kind of address that head on and explain to them in great detail why you would make no sense for us to really go in that direction, and why we were going to be able to build a much bigger company if we just focused on what we're good at. Many of your shoppers are women, as you say, as a woman's CEO, are you taking a different strategy and a different approach to shoppers that you think might help

restore trust with them. I've spent a lot of time with shoppers ever since I got started, because I really wanted to understand their needs and what they were expecting from us as a company. And you know, I do a lot of these like one on one conversation and so what I learned is that us these shoppers take enormous pride in their work, but they really want flexibility and what we want to do in our approaches mary the flexibility that they crave with the protections that we

think they also very much deserve. And these two things don't have to be at ult Have you ever shopped yourself or follow the shopper around? Yes, uh and and it's really hard. Let me tell you a lot of shoppers were asking for life support from our care agents on the phone while they are doing another because when something goes wrong, they're trying to get this older delivered to the customer in the best possible way. Initially we

were just doing chat support. Now we've launched a fund support to be able to support them during that time. What products are you making on international expansion where grocery delivery competition is only escalating, so we want to be your global company at some point. We think that's the service we provide is very much universal. At the same time, the North American market is so big and still so end up in it traded that we still want to

focus on that for the fallcy world future. This is Bloomberg Studio at one point, oh with instat Cart CEO fij SMO. She rose through the ranks in the tech industry as an outsider. Her advice on how to turn differences into superpowers. That's next, and this is Bloomberg Studio at one point. Oh, there's a lot of speculation about Insta Carts IPO and when that will happen, When will

that happen, How far out is it. I'm not I'm not going to give your timing, Emily, you know, do I want the company to become a public company at some point, of course, but I really want to make sure that the company that we do take public is a company that's reflective of this new Bold division. You started a women's healthcare startup last year. What about healthcare? Is that something that could somehow be adjacent to insta

carts business? You know, I see more actually already in the health business, Like we fundamentally are at the center of people's diets. Just to give you a couple of examples, We've rolled out a the ability for people to buy grosser using EBQ snap, you know, the nutrition Assistance program, and that has been incredibly impactful and it allows millions of people across the US to get access to food in a way that they wouldn't have been able to

get access to otherwise. You've been very public and courageous about sharing your own health issues, health issues which affect mostly only women. Were you always that courageous or did that take time to get comfortable? That's very a lot of time, you know, I think, Um, I think I felt like I had a responsibility to do that because um, it's such a taboo, like health is just such a taboo in the workplace, and so I felt like I

really needed to speak up. And especially when I started doing it kind of at the time inside Facebook, I got so much feedback from women saying, oh my god, we never thought that a woman in this position was struggling with those challenges. What's your advice to founders? Eos? Are really anyone who is struggling, worried about being discriminated against, worried about being judged. A lot of what makes you different can be your superpower. I spent a lot of

time trying to shoot it in. I even took accent reduction classes at Stanfold, and as you can tell, it didn't work. And so you know, after a while, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna stop trying desperately to shoot in and I'm gonna like spend a lot more time thinking about what do I bring to the tables that's different. And I come from a very different background than most people in Slicon Valley. I have a

different perspective. Even my health issues have made me a much better leader because, like I developed much more empathy for my teams. My biggest advice is, like, think about what makes you different and turn it to your advantage. Knowing your superpower is perfect for a segue into um, this is like a little rapid fire. What is the secret power that you have that people don't know about?

I think I am able to connect the dots between a lot of different ideas, uh in a way that helps me set a vision that's that's more compelling than just to some of the parts. Who are your most powerful mentors? You know, I don't like the world mentors. I like the world sponsor. I think mentors are people who like sit down with you and give you advice of a nice cup of coffee, and that's nice. But sponsors other people who puts our reputation on the table

to open doors for you. UM. And so I would say Mark Zuckerberg has been obviously one of these people. Do you still talk to him? I mean, when do you call him? What kind of counsel do you seek from him? Well, I think it's uh, you know, in the tough times when I'm realizing that the CEO job is obviously very hard and lonely, and realizing how much I learned from him about that, you know, opinion him and telling him like, hey, am I doing this right?

Is this normal? Speaking of advice, best advice for someone in their twenties, always give everything your best advice for women in particular about how to survive and thrive in the tech industry. Surround yourself with people who see the magic in him. People would know what makes you unique and reflect that back to you, and sometimes believe in you in times where you don't believe in yourself. Did

you ever find it hard yourself? You know, it's interesting because in hindsight, when you look at all of the hoops I had to jump through, of course it was hard, But in the in the moment, I kind of never thought about it as like he being hard. I always say, you know, you need to be very inflexible in the destination, but very flexible on the journey. And so in my mind I was kind of clearing kind of one branch after the other to get to the end state and

trying to be flexible on how to get there. Uh, And I think that actually helps me because if you focus so much on the obstacles, that's all you can see. And and so it was there, you know, was our bias, was our discrimination around me? Of course, like we all know it exists, and ideally, you know, we're going to make it easier over time to have like fewer obstacles along the way and leave women up as as we all is. Last TV show you bened succession. It's so good.

I know you have a daughter and a husband who cooks very good French pastries. What is your take on work life integration or whatever you want to call it. I love the world integration. To me, it's like, how do I take all of the different parts of my life and makes them better than if they were separates. I hosted my management team for a big offsite last week, and my daughter is always in the middle metaverse or real world real world? Still, so do you believe in

the metaverse vision that Marcus laid out? I personally don't love spending a ton of time in the I am incredibly motion sick, which would have been a very big problem if I had still Facebook to build the metaverse. But I think I think it's a it's a very big, bold vision, and I think he's right to go in that direction. You feel like you have to think about

what insta car It's metaverse play would be. Yet, you know, for now, we have a lot of real life potatoes and tomatoes to deliver, so and I think people would be a little disappointed if they bite into it and there's nothing coming out. You spent the bulk of your career a company that hyper scaled so fast, sometimes maybe even too fast. What are your top guiding principles for

scaling instat carts business. Some number one thing is people like you know, if you if you hire great people and uh you you know, you empower them, good things happen. The second one is vision. I think if everybody is a line behind a long term vision, optimizes for the long run. Uh And really believe in this idea that as we grow, everyone else is going to grow, and we will make the entire industry and ecosystem better. Um,

I think we will scale in the right way. Fuji Sima, CEO of insta Cart, thank you so much for joining us. It's been so her full to have you. Thank you so much for having me. Bloombrook Studio One pointo was produced and edited by Lauren Ellis and Matt Soto, with special help from Tiffany Perez I'm Emily chating, your host and executive producer,