How Fidji Simo Went From A French Fishing Village to Silicon Valley

I'm Emily Chang, and this is the Circuit bien Venu, to the south of France, with its seaside beauty, cobblestone streets, and world famous cuisine. You're traveling with us along the coast to visit set, a small fishing village where Fiji Simo, the CEO of Instacart, grew up. So your family has been involved here for generations.

My grandfather has really instilled in all of us so respect for Lexi's idea of feeding the world, and in our family, li food is everything. It's love, it's how we celebrate, it's the center of everything we do.

Raised by fishingboat captains who instilled a sense of grip at a young age, Simo catapulted herself out of this charming Mediterranean harbor and into the sea suite of Silicon Valley.

She rose through the.

Ranks at Facebook as one of Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenants. Ten years later, she was tapped to become the CEO of grocery delivery company Instacart, a seemingly perfect union of her tech child with her foody upbringing. She's also on the board of Shopify, and more recently joined the new board of Open Ai. Sam Altman got ousted in this bizarre cod now he's back. What aren't you advising them on? What are you advising sam On?

I spent ten years at the company that was under very intense scrutiny, where we did a lot of things right then we also made some mistakes, and so a big part of what I am advising them on is how to handle getting to the level of organizational maturity that they need for the impact that they're having on the world.

After visiting Simoon in France, I caught up with her back in San Francisco to talk about her unlikely path to Silicon Valley CEO, the bet she's making to deliver Instacart's next chapter, food Health, and the future of chat GPT in our kitchens joining me on this edition of the Circuit. Instacart CEO and chair Figcimo.

Thank you so much for doing this. It's great to see you here.

Thank you for coming, and you're going home.

After you know, spending time with you and France, so thank you for having us here today.

Thank you so much for being here. Guys.

I want to start with your initial impressions of Silicon Valley and the gig economy before you started working here. Obviously, your companies like Uber and Instacart and Airbnb and door dash were these sort of larger than life companies promising so much potential for the gig economy. What was your impression of gig work and what these companies were capable of before you started working here.

The thing that was really striking is I had a lot of friends that had joined these companies, and we're telling me that the reason they had joined is very often because in the past they had struggling parents for whom these gig jobs would have been totally life saving. And as I dug it more because I joined the board of insta cut before becoming CEO, as I dug it more into that, it's definitely true that this is an economy that has led a lot of people to

You joined the board of instacart and then six months later became CEO.

Why did it all move so quickly.

I think it was a confluence of events. Just to be clear, when I joined the board, I had absolutely no expectations of becoming CEO. I didn't want to leave Facebook at the time, but I really fell in love with the company. And at the same time, you know, my predecessor, Approva, was really looking to transition and figure out if he could put his company in the hands of someone who could get it to scale, who could get it to be public and really take it to

But certainly a surprise.

Grocery is the biggest commerce sector in the US.

But what did you see in terms of potential beyond groceries.

People really think of instacrat as is like online grocery delivery up and that's certainly a very big part of what we do.

We're on essential service for families.

But what I saw when I joined the board was the potential to really be a grocery technology company. The things that are so special about what we do is we integrate really deeply with fifteen hundred grocers. We provide technology for them both in our marketplace but also powering their own e commerce properties. So I saw the potential to be the technology ally for the entire industry, including not just online but also inside the store, and to me, that's a massive opportunity.

You worked at Facebook for a decade, you reported directly to Mark Zuckerberg. What were some of the lessons from the School of Zuch that shaped your thinking?

Since the school is Zach was one of the best schools, I would say the thing that Zach did incredibly well and I'm really trying to replicate here is always be focused on a very very long term vision, but also have perfect execution in the short term, because you never get to your long term vision if you don't have perfect execution right now and the ability to combine both, like I've yourized in the future, but sweat the details right now is really important and a lot of leaders

That really showed us how to have both.

Mark Zuckerberg has gotten so much criticism for so long faced controversy after controversy.

What did you learn from that?

Well, I learned that, you know, when you have such large impact on the world, it comes with a lot of responsibility, and you need to get really ahead of that and understand what your responsibility is and be proactive about explaining to the world what you're doing, why you're doing it, and really invest in making sure people understand what you're doing. And that's something that Facebook ended up doing, but it kind of and I wish we had done it sooner.

You became CEO at the top of the tech bubble, we were in the middle of a pandemic. Instacart was worth thirty eight billion dollars. How did you have to reframe your expectations and your employees expectations of what this company could be.

It's interesting because on the one hand we had this like giant valuation, but on the other hand, when I joined, we were declining, like gross transaction volume declining double digits because it was post pandemic. We had grown, you know, four x, and people were wondering if we were going to sustain that or if we were going to decline back to prior levels. And we were kind of the

And that's exactly what we did.

Then the bubble pops. Did you see that coming? Like, were you kind of preparing for that possibility?

I wish I could tell you yes, but no, I think the thing that I was prepared for was that we needed to build a sustainable company. And so my philosophy is that you need to have a great company under any macro ecrodomic environment. And that's exactly what we did. We set the foundation to thrive under any macroeconomic condition.

You're technically not a founder of instacart. How is that an advantage and how is that a disadvantage? Can you still run the company in founder mode?

Well, I'm very convinced that we need to have see

How I judge myself, what's your relationship with a poor of today?

How involved is he?

Like, do you ever have disagreements and how do you work through those?

Yes, So it was on the board for quite a period of time and then stepped down from the board. So now it's a little bit different because I can't really share with them private information but the company, so we do talk at a very high level, and you know, given our well in knowess the company is always good advice, but it's less involved by definition.

You did take instacart public, you push through. How big of a milestone was that for you? I mean this is when companies weren't going public yet.

Yeah, being one of the first one, not the first one was a little you know, stress in using But I would say the IPO was just a moment in time. Employees that worked really hard for that milestone. So I wanted to celebrate that, but also not to lose sight of the fact that the real goal is realizing this long term vision, becoming a generational company. The IPO is a means to an end, it's not the end in itself.

It's been a year since the IPO. Instacart's now valued at nine ish billion dollars. Wall Street's still skeptical. They's skeptic of the growth potential. It doesn't compare to some of the bigger gig economy players.

What's your response to that.

Yeah, I think we are still misunderstood, and for the first year as a public company, that's not uncommon. But I see my job as making sure that the market understands how incredibly hard and complex grocery is. And I think a big part of why there is a bit of overhang on the stock is because people believe that this is such a big market. We have a very clear category leadership position, but that's going to be a

We've been at it for twelve years.

And so even if we have new entrants coming into the market, they are not able to do that at the scale and at the level of quality that we're doing. And I think the market is going to end up realizing that while there will be intensified competition, we have a very deep competitive advantage.

Is it frustrating when the market is not where you think it should be.

You know, I tend to not focus on that.

My philosophy is that when you focus on the obstacles, they grow bigger. I tried to focus on the destination instead. And so the thing that I really want is to first build this incredible company, and then I think the market takes care of itself once it becomes obvious. And I think we're still at a time where, you know, the new bets that I've put in place are just starting to work. We talked about Keeper, we talked about restaurants.

What were you right about and what were you wrong about?

Great question.

I think I assumed when I joined and it would be much easier to move the market online because grocery is a trillion dollar category but only thirteen percent penetrated online, and that's lower than any other category of commerce. And I think I was a bit naive in thinking like, oh, of course, it's such a good service. We can accelerate on an adoption much faster. And that has been harder

You have millions of data points on how people shop, what sort of general trends are you seeing, what's working, what's not working, what do people want?

I think people value convenience enormously, so number one reason why people come to instacart is convenience, and our entire goal is to help families get life done, and they are coming to instacott to save time. We are continuously adding new services like restaurants so that they can save more time, and that is something that's working really well. We have twenty five million people who have used this

You're hoping to be the premier technology provider for all groceries and grocery store so that I might be able to order directly from safewire, Albertson's or wherever.

How do you make this bigger?

First off, this is already very big. It's worth remembering that the entire grocery industry is a trillion dollar market, and our technologies don't just apply online, they apply inside the store. So thirteen percent of the market is online, eighty seven percent is in the store, and with skateboard cards, we have the technologies to tackle that eighty seven percent.

And then beyond that. I actually believe.

That all the technologies that we've built for retailers are technologies that can expand to the entire food supply chain. They can expend to distributors, they can expend tos to farmers, and you could imagine that if the entire food system was technology enabled, was running with artificial intelligence, we would have a food system that would be much less wasteful, much more optimized, and everybody would benefit.

You mentioned Caper.

You bought Caper, maker of these AI powered smart carts, saw this really cute video of you shopping with a smart cart with your daughter.

How many people are actually using this?

So right now we have hundreds of colts deployed and in the next several months we're going two thousands of courts, but were really already in deployment with a lot of retailers as at Koger wakefern Schnarks, like lots of different ones even Aldi internationally, And really the feedback we're hearing is that consumers absolutely love the experience, not just because they can skip checkout, which is great, but because there's a screen on keeper cards that follows you around the

Also only really nice to know how much you're spending before you actually go to check out.

There are so many times I'm like, ouch.

Maybe I would have put a few things back.

And you know, that's a great point.

And initially I was worried that if we showed the totals, that would just reduce your spend, and that's not the case because there's a lot of people who are on a budget and when they see their total, they're actually maximizing getting to their budget. Whereas if they have to go through a normal checkout, they never want to be embarrassed to have to put items back and so they end up buying a lot less to avoid the embarrassment

There are now giants in this business, Amazon, Walmart. How can instacart compete? Where will you win and where will they So?

First off, both Amazon and Walmart partners on our marketplace, so we also sell them and we also help them gain access to incremental customers. But I would say, you know, the weak customers shop is very different when you look at instagrat on average, instagoult customer shops at five retailers and instacolt plus members shop at twice the number of retailers as non instacout members, and that means selection is critical.

You have a partnership with Uber, how's that going.

It's been a fantastic partnership with them. We have been able to really enter restaurant delivery overnight and help families not just get groceries for the week, but also dinner for tonight.

How much revenue is it driving, how much business is it driving?

Well, well, not sharing that quite yet, but I would say it has exceeded our expectations. And when you look at the numbers, we are driving penetration of restaurants among our grocery user base faster than the restaurant delivery platforms are driving penetration of grocery amongst.

Our user based.

So we're really pleased with the results we're attracting new customers to instagrat order frequencies up and our membership became twice as valuable over night.

So very excited about it.

Could there be consolidation in the future, Could Uber buy Instacart.

Well, you know, we don't.

We don't comment on any of any rumor or speculation in general. But what I'll tell you is we're very excited about our independent paths. We have a really great strategy and a lot of long term initiatives that are working, and so we're very community to that path.

Now.

Bigger picture, groceries are so expensive.

Everyone is feeling it. What's happening here? Why is everyone hurting so much?

I think there's been, as you know, just an increase in prices over throughout the supply chain that ends up hurting the end customer. The role that we play is really trying to get savings for customers wherever they exist. So we integrate with retailer's loyalty system. We help them optimize their prices with our algorithms called eversight. We digitize the circulars, you know, the weekly circulars with coupons. We

That's that, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but using instacar, my understanding is it makes everything more expensive. It still seems like a luxury and not a necessity. Why do you think people will continue to pay a premium when they're already paying a lot?

Well, first off, like when you look at the delivery issues that you get to pay off your seep to have the service. A lot of people tell us that when you start factoring in the cost of gas to go to the grocery store, the loss of time for people who may be packing two jobs in one day, and all of these factors, it's actually a.

Really really good deal.

And you know, we are at the point where forty five percent of fur orders are picked by shoppers that already at the store. Within the middle of the store, so that means you have someone picking your orders by the time it would take you to get to the front door. That's extreme convenience, and so what we're seeing is people are willing to pay for this time saving

And that wasn't the case four years ago.

Four years ago, You're absolutely right, it used to be a luxury, but with all of the things that we've put in place, we actually mirror US population much more closely now, and we hear from people that are more in the lower income buckets how critical instacut is because these people might need money, but they are also time starved, and if we can help them save time, that saves them money.

High level.

Do you see consolidation coming in the grocery business and what would that do to prices?

I think the US grocery landscape is interesting because customers really.

Love their local grocer.

So you are seeing some consolidation happen with the big guys, but there are still a lot of space for regional players could favorites, and that's why you know, selection matters so much.

The rother markets.

You know, Europe is a good example where there's like two to three big players and that's it. In the US, if you don't have the full selection of fifteen hundred grosses, you can't really self customer needs.

More broadly, gigwork for so many people has provide an extra income flexibility.

But there are still a.

Lot of complaints and I'm just going to read some to you.

You know, this is a really hard job. There's people that are complaining.

Sometimes the item requested isn't there, they don't get enough orders, people don't tip, they're going to strangers homes. They're complaining about customer service, and then in the end they say they don't make that much money. How do you respond to all that? How do you address all of that?

So that will always be complaints, but we really look at the numbers to figure out if you're doing a good job, and then we can always improved. You know, being a shopper is a tough job. You are in the store trying to figure out how to find twenty plus items going on a customer chat and helping the customers figure out if something is missing.

On the shelves.

So are truths and our technology are things that we always invest in so that the jobs becomes as easy as possible. And what we hear from more shoppers is that the ones who decide to be shoppers on instacot are very different than the ones who peak restaurant delivery.

Or right sharing.

There are people who are more customer service oriented, who want to spend more time in the store interacting with customers.

So there is also a lot of self selection happening.

I know you've been a shopper yourself, and you go back every so often to see what the experience is like.

You're also a mom. More shopping falls to moms.

What are the things that aren't perfect yet or that you want to get better personally?

Like, what are the things where you're like, oh.

I think we have made a ton of progress on like making the up just much more easy to use. I think the number one thing they want is access more earning opportunities.

They want more.

Orders, they want more taks to complete, and so there are some things that we're looking at, like if they are already at the store, other things that they can do while they wait for an order inside the store, and so things like that that really help them earn while they're waiting for an order.

That's the biggest thing that we keep hearing about.

From the financial perspective.

You know, back in the day, there was this vision that you could make a living doing gig work, and that sounded amazing, but now it seems like it's really more just side hustle money or supplemental income at best.

What do you think.

I think we have a very small number of shoppers who really want to do that full time, but nine out of ten or work shoppers actually have other sources of income. And the majority of work shoppers shop less than ten hours a week with Instagram. So the average use case really is supplemental income.

And that's why the flexibility is so critical.

These people are not looking for a nine to five jobs. They are looking for something that fits within their complex lives and that they can do on the go in a very modular way.

These workers don't have the same protections that you or I do.

Should they.

I think there's a lot of protections they should have, and in fact, when you look at the systems that are put in place in a lot of regions, including Prop twenty two in California. It's a way to balance the need for flexibility, which is absolutely critical, with also

Instac Cart spend spending time at the White House time in DC.

What are you advocating for.

The main thing that we are very focused on is food access, and we have done a lot of work with that, in particular by bringing the SNAP programs through the Systems Program online and we are the first platform that has allowed SNAP in all fifty states. This other has required a lot of collaboration with the White House on really modernizing this program to bring it online, doing that with other programs in the future, and making sure that we can maximize food access.

How do you think about the global food system?

So many people in the world don't have access to enough They don't have enough food, they don't have access to quality food, let alone have access to instacart. How does that shape your thinking and your strategy.

It's a very big part for strategy because we think fundamentally the food system is completely suboptimized, it creates a lot of waste.

Therefore, it also creates the opposite.

Sometimes to avoid waste, you end up not having products on the shelf, and everyone loses when that's the case.

And we think we can be that player.

We think that we have built the technologies for retailers, for brands, and now we can extend them to the rest of the food system. That's a big opportunity for the company, but also a big problem to solve.

You're offering instagrat benefits for people on food stamps through the US Department of Health and Human Services. You're expanding these food as medicine initiatives.

How does this play out how does this work.

Food as medicine is a great example.

We as a country are spending about a trillion dollars on healthcare costs for diect really disease. A trillion is the same amount as the entire country spends on food. That's pretty crazy when you think about it. That means that there's a lot of money that's very poorly spent and would be better spent helping people buy nutritious food.

So that's why we took on the very.

Big initiative of partnering with government, parnering with nonprofits, parnering with our systems to really be the rails by which this can happen. It's pretty crazy that today it is easier for a doctor to prescribe medication than it is to prescribe food, when we know food is such a big driver of the condition. So again, we can solve that to technology by making it as easy to do one versus the other, and instagrat can fulfill that.

Speaking of food as medicine, you co founded a health clinic and research institute.

This is personal for you.

I mean you've been very public about your own struggles with health.

Yeah. Absolutely, I think you know.

The plague of chronic illness in the US and worldwide is a very very important problem, and while not in particular in the US tackling it the right way, there's not enough focus on preventative care. There's not enough focus on the things that work, like diet, and while not making it easy for people to actually adopt a better diets, that end up changing their habits.

So that's really what we're trying to solve.

You also do many other things outside of your own instacart.

You're on a new board of open Ai. Who approached too. How did that happen?

I was serving on the board of Shopify with Brett Taylor, with the chairman of open Ai, so he's so many action there and approached me to join the board of open Ai. And it's been just a real privilege and huge responsibility to be part of that journey.

You joined during a very critical time. Sam Martman got ousted in this bizarre coon Now he's back. What are you advising them on? What are you advising Salmon?

Well?

I spent ten years at the company that was under very intense scrutiny, where we did a lot of things right, and we also made some mistakes. And so a big part of, you know, what I am advising the man is how to handle getting to the level of organizational maturity that they need for the impact that they're having

They are having but also well have in the future.

How about them personally? Like, what's your impression of him as a leader?

Is an incredible visionary and I think we're talking about founder mode earlier. Like the reason I was excited to join, even though you know it's a board that requires quite a bit of work, is because I love seeing founders in action, and I love seeing someone who has an incredibly long television who is really motivated by doing good for the world and really helping him because there's going

Think it's going to be an easy journey.

But I think having someone that's a helm has so much dedication to the mission is really critical.

I think people look at him and see kind of an enigma, and even he said you shouldn't trust me, you know, how do we make sense of that?

Well?

First off, I think that kind of sounds familiar, right, Like all of these very powerful people, we always feel like they're enigmas. We always feel like they are quite a bit of power, and therefore we want to understand more about them. The same thing kind of happens tomorrow, and I think with Sam, I think it's not just

You know, that's from your earliers of Facebook.

When there's this explosion in technology or an explosion of a platform, there's so many different companies now trying to do this. There's talent moving all over the place. Like, what should we make of all these people living open ai are getting reported.

On leaving open ai? Why shouldn't we be worried?

I think, you know, every time that all this like new big technology changes, you see talent moving around. And the thing that I think we need to look at is like, look at the talents that's currently at open Air, and it's just absolutely incredible talents, like just the smartest people I've worked with, and they are really committed to the mission and really committed to achieving the mission in a really, really safe way. And so we need to judge,

Do you think AI will be good or bad for the world.

I think it's up to us to make it good. I think it will be absolutely fantastic for the world, but I also think that there will be a lot of risks that we need to actively mitigate. I do not believe that this is something that happens to us. I believe that this is something we get to drive, and I believe in our ability to maximize the good and minimize the bad.

People have been using chat schipit to generate recipes. What's the potential for AI in the full world.

There's so much potential, And as I've talked to you about, I think in SET, I see technology not for technology's sake. I love technology for like the concrete thing that it enables, and I think with AI, it's the same in the food world. To me, it has to solve the problem of families wondering what to put on the table and

There are so few female taxeos, even fewer French female text see are going very niche, but really it seems that the community is getting even smaller. Does it ever feel to you like we're going backwards?

It's such a tough topic.

I think I don't feel it that way because again, as I told you earlier, I don't tend to focus on the obstacles.

I tend to focus on the destination.

And I think what we're seeing is many more female leaders, and to their credit, some male leaders as well, really lifting women up.

You know.

Like a good example is like my board is not majority women, and it's not that I decided that was the number one party. It just happens that a lot of women are in my network, and they are all fantastic and that's why, you know, my end up on my board, and so I think there's some hope that you know, the women that are in power now are actually doing the right things to make sure that they are role models for the next generation.

And they leave these women.

Up well, and what do you know, You have more women in power and they elevate more women.

That's how it happenedsolutely. How would you describe your leadership style? Are you tough as nails? Do you access over the details? Are you a big picture thinker? Like what's your vibe?

That's a great question. I definitely obsessed with all the details. My team would tell you that whenever they send me period documents, there's like at least one hundred comments in the details. And I think that's important because I think if you're not in the details as a CEO, you lose the grasp of all the things that are going to make your business tick. And I think customers notice

So I think that's one saying.

And then on the toughest nails, the thing I try to do is stretch them because I really see the magic in my team and I want them to fulfill the around potential, which can sometimes feel extremely hard. But also I support them in taking risk in doing that. So I think it is when I talk to them, they say that it's certainly not a work in the park work for me, but they know I have their back, and that's I think that's the right balance to strike because.

They more of a kill them with kindness.

I just not kill them but be kind. Yeah.

Absolutely, I mean to me, it's that's about kindness, of course kindness, but to me, it's about like having the back and supporting them to take risks because the best careers are built on mistaking, are built on stretching yourself. I believe you're more fulfilled when every year you're a new version of yourself. And so I want to show them that I set the bar very high for them because I see the magic that they could get to, and I'm here to support them when it gets hard to get there.

What about honesty.

I think we will Heerd is the one who said honesty is kind.

Honesty is kind absolutely. I mean we have this value at instagrat. That's pretty it all on the table. And I believe you cannot make good decisions, you cannot help people if you're not absolutely direct with people. And I totally agree. You know, sugar cutting things has never helped anyone. It's much better to deliver it straight and then you know, people get to do what they want with that.

What's your advice to the next Fiji, Simo.

I think it's it's the thing I said earlier. Focus on the destination.

What you put your attention on grows, and if you focus on the obstacles, the obstacles will grow. If you focus on the destination, the destination will get easier through which I.

Think that needs to be on a T shirt. Thanks on the destination, watch the obstacles. We'll new swag.

Next time.

You We're awesome.

Thanks so much for listening to this edition of the Circuit. Catch the full episode on Bloomberg Originals and travel with us to Simo's hometown of set in France.

It is absolutely stunning and.

You can see how I handle holding a massive fishhead.

I'm Emily Chang.

Follow me on x and Instagram at Emily Chang TV. You can watch new episodes of the Circuit on Bloomberg Television or streaming on the Bloomberg app or YouTube, and let us know what you think by leaving a review. Those extra reviews really make a difference. I'm your host and executive producer. Our showrunner is Lauren Ellis. Our producer is Zeduina o'teira. Our editor is Alison Casey.