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]

Welcome to the $1B revenue club @mercury

[immad @immad]

Excited to announce @Mercury crossing $1bn/yr in revenue and 450k customers.

Just getting started! https://t.co/gqSlNgDwHf

[Max Mullen @Max]

the launch of a new paradigm for personal computing...congrats @zainmfj! pls ship mine first!

[Zain Javaid @zainmfj]

Introducing Core, The Personal Al Computer

The most powerful technology humanity has built should belong to you

Order today: https://t.co/tlNxSu5B5C

[Max Mullen @Max]

@immad Next year, they’ve been laying the groundwork this year (new Siri + Gemini agent mode)

[Brett Berson @brettberson]

I had the chance to see this in person last week, and what was most amazing wasn't just the capability as of last Tuesday but the rate of improvement week over week. The Dyna team is on an exponential.

[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 💐 💐 💐