Max Mullen

Co-founder @Instacart🥕🛒, startup investor

[Max Mullen @Max]

Some personal news! Recently, I stepped back from the day-to-day at @Instacart to focus on investing full-time. I sat down with my friend @jaltma on Uncapped to talk about building Instacart and my philosophy on early-stage investing — check it out here!

[Jack Altman @jaltma]

For this episode of Uncapped I got to sit down with my close friend @Max, cofounder of Instacart 🥕

We talked about the key moments of Instacart...how it got started, critical wins, tough losses, competitive dynamics, earned insights, going public, and Instacart's future.

Max is also an awesome startup investor, and we talked about what he looks for in founders, consumer investing, and what he's building with Workshop.

He's one of the best people I know, hope you enjoy.

(0:00) Intro
(0:36) The inception of Instacart
(4:55) Finding product market fit
(7:20) Landing Trader Joe’s
(11:04) Big levers for growth
(13:36) Operationally complex businesses
(14:55) Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods
(17:50) COVID and Instacart’s IPO
(20:02) Prioritizing profitability
(23:21) Avoiding temptations
(24:59) The future of Instacart
(25:53) Investing in consumer
(28:21) Irrationally optimistic founders
(29:49) B2B vs consumer founders
(30:35) How to work with investors
(33:38) Building Workshop

[Max Mullen @Max]

Every startup needs this

[immad @immad]

1/ Today, we're launching @Mercury Books.

AI-powered accounting software, for your bookkeeper or you, that categorizes and reconciles your transactions the moment they happen.

[Max Mullen @Max]

@zach_yadegari Ordered

[Max Brodeur-Urbas @MaxBrodeurUrbas]

Introducing Gumball

Model agnostic, proactive, self improving.

All in your company’s private cloud

[Max Mullen @Max]

‘@crosbylegal for X’ is the new ‘Uber for X’

[Max Mullen @Max]

So excited for this OG Instacart team to build the next great commerce marketplace! Congrats @camillevanhorne!

[Camille van Horne @camillevanhorne]

Beyond excited to share that @highstock_x has raised a $30M Series A led by @a16z with participation from @GreylockVC, @AbstractVC, @Daybreak_Fund, and angels.

We are doubling down on our mission of creating value for brands with unproductive inventory. With this raise, we are expanding our team and building on our success in beauty to unlock a new category: apparel.

@omooretweets, @venturetwins and @jeff_jordan are the right partners to take this company to new heights - they've invested in great marketplaces like Instacart (I may be biased :) ), and have studied how AI will scale marketplace models that were previously too labor intensive to be financially viable.

Thank you to our angels: @Max, @lennysan, JJ and John.

Most of all, thank you to our customers and team. We would not be here without you.

Read my reflections on our journey below.

[immad @immad]

1/ The FDIC just approved @Mercury Bank, N.A.'s application for deposit insurance.

One step closer to opening Mercury Bank!. There is still work between here and opening Mercury Bank’s virtual doors, which should happen in 2027.

I started Mercury in 2017 because I wanted to build the bank I wished had existed when I was running my previous companies. Going from a fintech with bank partners to a tech company with an actual bank has been the vision from the beginning.

[Deano🧙‍♂️ @deanbloembergen]

THRILLED to share that https://t.co/KMkfZYJ8mw has raised a $240M Series D and is now valued at $2.3B! 🚀🦄

6 years ago, we set out on a mission to level the playing field for local business owners.

Why?

Because we believe local businesses are sacred. Each one reflects the unique DNA of its owner: their story, their spirit, their craft. They bring life and connection to our neighborhoods.

But they're being crushed by massive corporations with billions to spend on tech, AI, and marketing.

Running a local business is like being David facing an army of Goliaths. Owner exists to change that.

This round was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, joined by Meritech, Redpoint, Headline, & Jack Altman.

We'll use the capital to keep building the only platform local business owners need to succeed.

· · ·

Special shoutout to one of my best friends and cofounder @adamguild. It's an absolute privilege to be building this company with you.

Shoutout to the outstanding Owner team. You deserve all of the credit for getting us here. It is a joy to build alongside each of you.

Special thanks to our investors and earliest supporters - @jaltma , @jasonlk, @alexbard, @zoink, Fidji Simo, Shalini Rao, @atkurland, @Harris_Pollack, Stephen Kerns, @JonnyNemo, @chughesjohnson, @dharmesh, @cory, @jaentwistle, @Joshuabrowder, @seanrad, @scottbelsky, @maxaltman, @Max, @braveben, @alexisohanian, @kippbodnar, @ankurnagpal, @parkerconrad, @justinmateen, @marcuslemonis, @ShaanVP, @thesamparr, @tanay_tandon, and @rauchg.

And finally, to our customers: You're the reason I get up every day excited to build. I feel like a kid in a candy shop. It is a privilege to serve you. ❤️

[Max Mullen @Max]

Every day we get closer and closer to the ChatGPT moment for robotics...

[Dyna Robotics @DynaRobotics]

Today we are introducing Dyna-2, a world-action model pre-trained on one million hours of human video. At this scale, for the first time, we discovered several new scaling laws:

• world-action models exhibit scaling law on human data across four orders of magnitude, from 1000 to 1,000,000 hours,
• this human data scaling law implied a scaling law on never seen robot data,
• both data and objective matter; world modeling and scaling on video data are essential for cross-embodiment scaling transfer to emerge

🧵

[Max Mullen @Max]

@bradkowalk the search bar of every PM's dreams

[Max Mullen @Max]

@0xjohnkim @paraformtalent such a special company!

[Max Mullen @Max]

Willow is a daily driver for me, and crushes the competition 🎤

[Willow @WillowVoiceAI]

Introducing Willow Frontier Mini and Willow Frontier Pro.

Frontier Mini gives everyone free, unlimited dictation.

Frontier Pro is our most accurate model yet, built for power users and teams who want the fastest and best dictation experience.

[Max Mullen @Max]

@ryanjdaniels @lluismanrique @crosbylegal @gumloop @Instacart top 3 best companies of all time 🍌

[Max Mullen @Max]

Finally a benchmark for long horizon learning…

[Bryan @bryan_houlton]

Introducing Horizon from @0rinlabs: the first long-horizon learning benchmark made from real agent logs

- SOTA is 21% on the hardest section
- 7-35M tokens of real agent history per task
- Models are hardly getting better on the hardest tasks
- Humans can score 100%

(1/7)

[Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss @ericw]

Every generation inherits a new medium.

Ours is taking shape.

Introducing @_nellofficial.

Built in San Francisco. Backed by Danny Rimer and @IndexVentures, alongside @antonosika, @gokulr, @rauchg, Jason Citron, @joshm, @lennysan, @mati, @Max, @saradu, @soleio, @Thom_Wolf, and several others.

More soon.

[Max Mullen @Max]

@brettberson @grosen 💐 💐 💐

[Max Mullen @Max]

These guys are the reason we could scale ops through some of the craziest growth periods I've ever seen. I couldn’t be more excited to back @champ_hq. Check them out if you want to automate the most complex processes in your business

[Jagannath Putrevu @jputrevu]

🚀 After a year of quiet building, I’m excited to officially announce @champ_hq out of stealth. We're also announcing our $8.5M Seed round led by @Redpoint with participation from @defyvc , @Max , @svangel, and a great group of angels. Watch the quick launch video below

[Max Mullen @Max]

This is really cool

[Matt Van Horn @mvanhorn]

Introducing the Printing Press, a CLI-factory and a CLI-library. Built with @trevin. 🏭🖨📚

Most APIs suck for agents. Most MCPs suck for agents. Most official CLIs suck for agents. They waste tokens and time. @steipete started making his own because of this.

�� A Library of agent-native CLIs you install today (Linear, ESPN, Flight GOAT (Google Flights + Kayak nonstop), Contact Goat (LinkedIn + Happenstance + Deepline more) +30+ more)
🏭 A factory that prints new ones for any service - just type /printing-press <product name>

CLIs are fast, local, SQLite-backed. Work in Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Hermes.

🌐 https://t.co/GjnN9E9yTH

[Max Mullen @Max]

In 2012, @shiftb , @apoorva_mehta and I shared a vision for the future: that we could make grocery shopping effortless.

Almost everyone thought the idea was crazy. They said it had been tried before and failed — that we’d be squashed by the biggest ecommerce companies in the world. But we knew they were wrong. We saw a future others didn't and had the courage to try to build it.

Today, @Instacart helps millions of households get their groceries delivered each week. With the strength of our business, a clear vision, and a world-class leadership team in place, I’m moving into an advisory role at Instacart with complete confidence in the company’s future.

To all of our partners, shoppers and customers: thank you for putting your trust in us.

To the Instacart team, past and present: thank you for rolling up your sleeves alongside me to build an epic company!

Building Instacart has been the privilege of a lifetime and I'm incredibly energized to use my experience to help the next generation of founders as an early stage investor. 🥕

[Max Mullen @Max]

Congrats! @crosbylegal is successful because @ryanjdaniels and @jsarihan created a culture of intensity and urgency that delivers for customers better than anyone else can

[Ryan Daniels @ryanjdaniels]

📣 Update: we raised our $60m Series B from @Lux_Capital, @IndexVentures and @01Advisors, with participation from @sequoia, @eladgil and @BainCapVC .

When we came out of stealth 283 days ago, we had negotiated contracts worth $30m for our clients. As of last month, that number is over $1 billion.

We work with the most ambitious companies in the world, including @tryramp, @clay and @RogoAI. Today, we want you to hear from some of them directly.

Contracts are the rails of commerce. @crosbylegal is a hybrid AI law firm that gets them signed 80% faster. We’re announcing our Series B to keep scaling the dream law firm.