Single Partner Dependency Risk

Max Mullen shares a story about a near-death moment at Instacart when they lost half their business overnight.

"Earlier in the company, when we had raised a lot less money, there was a time where we were growing very fast and then because of a retail relationship went sour, we lost almost half of our business overnight. That was really difficult because all the metrics in the company were set up for hockey stick growth, and then suddenly to go completely down in the opposite direction immediately was really hard.

Luckily for us, we had raised enough money that that wasn't going to mean we weren't going to be able to make payroll or something like that. I feel very fortunate that we have been able to be good at fundraising as a company, to time the markets well, and now having raised over $1 billion to have a war chest of money that we can use to invest in our business, build new products, and handle anything that comes our way."