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How Instacart's CEO Fidji Simo Brought French Style to Silicon Valley | The Circuit with Emily Chang

Emily Chang meets Instacart CEO Fidji Simo in her hometown in the South of France, and learns about her journey from a small fishing village to the C-Suite in Silicon Valley.

Emily ChanghostFidji Simoguest
Nov 22, 202424mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 0:06

    Intro

    1. EC

      [instrumental music]

  2. 0:06 – 1:34

    Meeting Fidji Simo in Sète: roots in a Mediterranean port town

    1. EC

      Bienvenue to the South of France. With its seaside beauty, cobblestone streets, and world famous cuisine. We're traveling along the coast to visit Sète, a charming city that revolves around the rhythms of the port. When you arrive, you're immediately hit with the smells of the sea, and the sights of water jousting. [upbeat music] [crowd cheering] I've come to this Mediterranean harbor to meet a tech CEO who calls this place home.

    2. FS

      Bonjour.

    3. EC

      Bonjour. [lips smacking]

    4. FS

      Welcome to France.

    5. EC

      [laughs]

    6. FS

      The streets of South of France. [laughs]

    7. EC

      [laughs] This place is amazing.

    8. FS

      Amazing.

    9. EC

      I can't believe you grew up here.

    10. FS

      It was very special, and I miss this place a lot.

    11. EC

      Fidji Simo is a tour de force. Raised by fishing boat captains who instilled grit at a young age, Simo catapulted herself out of Sète and into the upper echelons of Silicon Valley. She chartered a fast path from strategy at eBay, to scaling Facebook, to taking the reins of grocery delivery business, Instacart, as CEO. A seemingly perfect union of her tech chops with her foodie upbringing, as if it was meant to be. And rather than putting on the tech industry

  3. 1:34 – 2:14

    Holding onto her identity in Silicon Valley (accent, style, and belonging)

    1. EC

      uniform, Simo has maintained a fabulously French way of being. So did you tell me you tried to get rid of your French accent? Or did I imagine that?

    2. FS

      Oh, yeah.

    3. EC

      Okay.

    4. FS

      Yeah. I remember, like, at Facebook, there were a lot of people, when I moved into the product side, telling me like, "Oh, you need to dress down. You need to wear a hoodie. You need to tie your hair." And I did it for one day, and it felt horrible because it wasn't who I was.

    5. EC

      Decked out head to toe in Dior while introducing me to the local residents. [laughs]

    6. FS

      [laughs] Wow.

    7. EC

      And showing me the town that shaped her. Simo is like a fish in water.

    8. FS

      [laughs]

    9. EC

      Or as the French say, comme un poisson dans l'eau.

  4. 2:14 – 4:22

    Les Halles market and a family legacy in fishing and food

    1. FS

      So I wanna show you this amazing place behind us. Um, it's called Les Halles, and it's gonna be delicious.

    2. EC

      All right. Allez-vous.

    3. FS

      Let's go.

    4. EC

      [laughs]

    5. FS

      [laughs] [upbeat music] I can spend my entire life here-

    6. EC

      I know

    7. FS

      ... and just eat, like [laughs]

    8. EC

      It's making me hungry. I'm like, j'ai tellement faim. [laughs]

    9. FS

      [laughs]

    10. EC

      And so your family has been involved here for generations.

    11. FS

      Yeah, so my family, all the men in my family, uh, whether it's all of... My dad, my grandpa, great-grandpa, all my uncles, uh, were fishermen. And, uh, one of them, my uncle, uh, became a fishmonger after, uh, you know, uh, stopping fishing.

    12. EC

      Yeah.

    13. FS

      And so, uh, we have been very, very deep in, [laughs] in the fishing industry for, uh, many generations.

    14. EC

      So it seems like everyone has a role, right, in the family?

    15. FS

      My grandfather has really instilled in all of us, uh, the, the respect for, like, this idea of feeding the world. And, you know, in our family, food is everything.

    16. EC

      Yeah.

    17. FS

      It's just our love. It's how we celebrate. It's at the center of everything we do.

    18. EC

      Bonjour. Bonjour. Enchante. Comment vous appelez-vous? Jean Philippe. Jean Philippe. Je suis Emily.

    19. FS

      [laughs]

    20. EC

      Enchante, Emily. Merci beaucoup. What's fresh today? Everything. [laughs] Tous les poissons.

    21. FS

      [laughs]

    22. EC

      So what was it like for you being raised in a fishing village?

    23. FS

      I think it was incredibly special because there is a craft and a respect that fishermen have. It's interesting, like, you know, in Silicon Valley, the people who are most respected are, like, tech people.

    24. EC

      [laughs]

    25. FS

      Whereas here, the people who are most respected are the people who feed the town. So in a way, becoming CEO of Instacart is kind of bridging these two things for me, where I love tech, but I always had a passion for feeding people. And so it's a really special thing to be able to bridge the two. Tonton, can we order a tielle from you? [laughs]

    26. EC

      Yes. I can't wait to try it. Yeah.

    27. FS

      [laughs]

  5. 4:22 – 5:11

    Tielle and the pride of Sète: food as craft, community, and ritual

    1. FS

      Au revoir. Okay, so this is called the tielle.

    2. EC

      Okay.

    3. FS

      It's, like, something that, um, the Sétois are very proud of.

    4. EC

      I've been wondering, what is it about this octopus pie?

    5. FS

      The fisherman goes out at sea, gets the octopus itself, then his wife chops it up, and makes the tielle, and then delivers that to my uncle so that it's purely fresh. And as you can tell, everything is a family affair. You eat it kind of like, you know, a pizza.

    6. EC

      Pizza?

    7. FS

      Yeah.

    8. EC

      Mm. Mm.

    9. FS

      Mm.

    10. EC

      Mm.

    11. FS

      Told you I mean, every time we come back to town, the first thing we do is we run and get one of those [laughs]

    12. EC

      [laughs]

    13. FS

      Because that's the taste we grew up with.

  6. 5:11 – 5:54

    French relationship to time: enjoying small moments (lunch, home, work)

    1. EC

      Run, don't walk. Oh my goodness. What do you think the Americans are missing from French culture? Like, in America, it seems we just live to work, and the French just live.

    2. FS

      The French really understand, like, how to enjoy the little moments, not just the big moments. Like, you know, when I arrived in the US, I, I was surprised to hear so many people be like, "We're gonna work so much, and then we're gonna have fun for the two weeks of vacation."

    3. EC

      [laughs]

    4. FS

      And I was just like, "Oh no, that's, like, kinda sad." Whereas the French, they stop at every lunch, and the lunch is important.

    5. EC

      Mm-hmm.

    6. FS

      And we eat, and we break bread, and that's what I try to recreate both at work and in my home, of like really making the little moments special.

  7. 5:54 – 7:32

    Work ethic from the sea and early lessons about technology

    1. EC

      What was the conversation like at the kitchen table?

    2. FS

      It was always so striking that the days that my father had was, you know, pretty intense.

    3. EC

      Mm-hmm.

    4. FS

      Like, you know, when you, again, wake up at 2:00 AM in the morning and go, like, until 6:00 PM in an environment that's incredibly dangerous just to feed people. Like, you know, I was always kind of fascinated by what he was doing, and the dedication. And so I obviously picked a very different path than becoming a fisherman myself. As an aside, I'm terribly seasick.

    5. EC

      [laughs]

    6. FS

      Which is not a good quality to have in my family. [laughs]

    7. EC

      I know, I was wondering, why didn't you join the family business?

    8. FS

      But I kept, you know, the work ethic. I kept the values that my father, my grandfather really instilled in me around, like, how you lead a team, how you lead a crew, and, um, and yeah, just the idea that anything is possible if you work hard enough for it.

    9. EC

      What is your earliest memory of technology?

    10. FS

      I remember my grandfather telling me this story of the fact that he was one of the best fishermen in the Mediterranean Sea, had developed all of these techniques to know where to find fish. And when this new machine arrived, all of a sudden he was like, "Am I gonna lose my edge? Basically it's gonna show all of the other fishermen where the fish is." But instead of fearing technology, he thought of it as, like, "Okay, now that this machine is coming, how do I become the best master of this new technology, of this new technique, so that I use it to my advantage?"

    11. EC

      When you were little, how far away did the wider world seem?

    12. FS

      Oh, extremely far. I mean, we have this joke in Sete that if you go to the town next door, you need a passport. [laughs]

    13. EC

      [laughs]

  8. 7:32 – 8:15

    High school in Sète, firsts in her family, and dreaming of California

    1. EC

      We walk off our octopus pies and wander deeper into the alleys of Sete, where Simo tells me she's the first in her family to graduate high school.

    2. FS

      This is our high school.

    3. EC

      Does this bring back memories?

    4. FS

      Oh, so many. [laughs] Yes, I spent a lot of time here, and that's even where I met my husband.

    5. EC

      You met your husband here.

    6. FS

      Yep, first day of high school.

    7. EC

      What sort of inspired you? I mean, I know you said you watched a lot of American television.

    8. FS

      [laughs] I was watching The O.C..

    9. EC

      [laughs]

    10. FS

      And I can tell you, the first time I moved to California, I had the soundtrack of The O.C. in my ears. You know, "California, here we come"?

    11. EC

      California, here we come.

    12. FS

      Yeah.

    13. EC

      Yeah.

    14. FS

      I'm glad, I'm glad you did the song and I didn't, because no one wanted to hear that from me.

    15. EC

      [laughs]

  9. 8:15 – 8:45

    From elite school to eBay: choosing tech for impact and constant change

    1. EC

      You went to one of, if not the most, elite business school in France, and then you got an internship at eBay.

    2. FS

      Yep.

    3. EC

      What was the path?

    4. FS

      I worked super, super hard. I mean, I, I literally didn't sleep for two years [laughs] to get into the best possible school. A lot of people were going into finance at the time, but technology was so appealing to me because of this idea of being able to impact people's lives, and, uh, be in an industry that's constantly changing, where you constantly have to adapt, and that's how I decided to go to eBay.

  10. 8:45 – 9:53

    Breaking into Facebook and taking career-defining risks

    1. EC

      When did you first hear about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg?

    2. FS

      You know, so I was at eBay, and everybody was start- starting to talk about these, like, companies that were starting to take off. The first time I applied at Facebook, they actually told me, "Absolutely not. We do not need strategy people. We have Mark Zuckerberg [laughs] to do strategy." I spent an entire weekend, uh, basically creating a new product from scratch and marketing it, and I sent that to, uh, the recruiters, and the team was pretty impressed that I, you know, out of the blue, had created entire product, and that's how I got in.

    3. EC

      I mean, you became one of the most powerful people at Facebook. Did that also require not sleeping for several years? [laughs]

    4. FS

      [laughs]

    5. EC

      Like, how did you do that?

    6. FS

      I think it required taking risks. Um, and, you know, the thing that really accelerated my career at Facebook was Mark asking me to lead the team that was in charge of monetizing mobile at a time where no one thought we could monetize mobile. [laughs] And, you know, at the time it was a huge risk because, like, if I failed, like, that would have had a very big impact on the company, but if you succeed, it also changes the trajectory of your career. And I kinda did that over and over again.

  11. 9:53 – 10:50

    Business lessons from fishing: strategy, supply-demand timing, and trust

    1. EC

      Unlike other tech leaders who grew up taking computers apart or learning to code, Simo was watching her family take big swings out at sea. We're getting a glimpse of the hustle as the boats race back with their bounty for the day. So there's a lot of strategy involved in when to come in, right?

    2. FS

      Tons of strategy, yes. So you might have fewer fish but be here sooner. Maybe you catch more fish, but then you arrive later, and you might get a lower price. So it's really supply and demand of, like, volume and price. Tons of strategy involved to all that.

    3. EC

      Sounds like there's a good business lesson in there.

    4. FS

      Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The one thing I love about the fishing industry is that the crew needs to really trust the captain. Like, at sea, if you don't trust your team, you don't trust your captain, it's a matter of life and death. This is my dad.

    5. EC

      Yeah.

    6. FS

      He's been, he's been a fisherman for 35 years, and we are allowed... This is usually a very private place. We're allowed here because he's with us, so he's giving us behind the scene access.

    7. EC

      Oh. Merci beaucoup.

    8. FS

      [laughs]

  12. 10:50 – 12:19

    From traditional fish auctions to Instacart’s view of technology as support, not disruption

    1. EC

      Merci beaucoup. C'est incroyable. [laughs] After the fish are prepped, the Port Ballet moves to an auction, where fishmongers like Simo's uncle set prices for the catch of the day, then sell at local markets and across the country.

    2. FS

      The reason it's called The Cry is a screaming place is because in the past there was someone screaming prices. But, um, for like now I'd say more than a decade, they are doing it electronically so that they can have this auction run both with people inside the room, as well, as well as with people who are bidding remotely.

    3. EC

      Picking out your own perfect personal fish at the market seems like the opposite of what Instacart is. How do you square that?

    4. FS

      I think you need a healthy mix. I mean, you can marry something that is, like, fundamentally an ancestral, like, type of work with technology to help fishermen be more efficient, to help them do their job better. And so many times technology's seen as disruption. I don't wanna disrupt, I want to help the people who are, like, caring for, you know, their particular craft right now really be the people still allowed to continue doing their craft even better through technology in the future.

    5. EC

      [Instrumental music] That's not the typical thing you'd hear from a tech CEO, especially one in charge of a San Francisco based company that wants to disrupt the grocery business.

  13. 12:19 – 13:45

    Instacart’s origin story and Fidji’s CEO transition to reshape the company

    1. SP

      I have dreaded going to the grocery store. Then you have to wait in line to check out, and then lug your groceries back to your apartment, only to realize that you've forgotten something at the store.

    2. EC

      That's Apoorva Mehta, the founder of Instacart, and a former supply chain engineer at Amazon. He launched the startup back in 2012 and caught the attention of venture capitalists by shipping a six-pack of beer straight to their door. It's a simple premise. Order groceries through an app, a shopper fills the order, and then delivers directly to you. The idea was well-timed, riding the wave of gig economy companies that were booming in Silicon Valley. Then the pandemic hit. Online grocery delivery surged, and Instacart became an essential service. But when lockdown ended, the company needed to redefine itself. Simo joined the board in 2021. Six months later she left Facebook to become Instacart's new CEO. I met up with her back in San Francisco to see how she's setting the company on a new course. You're technically not a founder of Instacart. How is that an advantage, and how is that a disadvantage?

    3. FS

      The advantage is that I come with a lot of experience, having seen scale at a larger company. The disadvantage is that you don't have all of the credibility that a founder has from having created the company. You need to rebuild that.

    4. EC

      Mm-hmm.

    5. FS

      And that takes a little bit of time. I didn't get that from day one, but I'm getting it by showing that all of the new bets that I've put in place are now working.

  14. 13:45 – 16:04

    From delivery app to grocery technology company: partners, scale, and post-bubble reset

    1. EC

      Grocery is the biggest commerce sector in the US, but what did you see in terms of potential beyond groceries?

    2. FS

      Yeah, so people really think of Instacart as this, like, online grocery delivery app. 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 1500 grocers. We provide technology for them both on our marketplace, but also powering their own e-commerce properties.

    3. EC

      You became CEO at the top of the tech bubble. We were in the middle of a pandemic, and Instacart was worth $38 billion. How did you have to reframe your expectations and your employees' expectations of what this company could be?

    4. FS

      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 and people were wondering if we were gonna sustain that or if we were gonna decline back to prior levels. And we were kind of the poster child for an unprofitable company. So really the way I reset with the company is to say, "Let's kind of forget about, you know, what the external world is valuing us at, and let's talk about building a generational company," and that means a company that can grow sustainably and that is profitable.

    5. EC

      It's been a year since the IPO. Instacart's now valued at nine-ish billion dollars. Wall Street's still skeptical. It doesn't compare to some of the bigger gig economy players. What's your response to that?

    6. FS

      The things that I think the market underestimates is how hard it is to serve customers and deliver groceries with accuracy, with speed, with selection, with affordability. We've been at it for 12 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 are doing. And I think the market is gonna end up realizing that while there will be intensified competition, we have a very deep, competitive advantage.

    7. EC

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

    8. FS

      The Amazons and Walmarts of the world might get their fair share of people. But if your favorite retailer of choice is a Publix, a Kroger, an Albertsons, like we really are the best place for that.

  15. 16:04 – 20:50

    Smart carts, budgeting visibility, shopper concerns, and food-system ambitions

    1. EC

      You bought Caper, you know, maker of this, these AI-powered smart carts. How does it work?

    2. FS

      Well, you basically take an item. Go ahead.

    3. EC

      Okay.

    4. FS

      Take an item.

    5. EC

      Send a close friend.

    6. FS

      And you just drop it into the cart. There's a screen on Caper cart that follows you around the grocery store and can recommend things based on what's in your basket, based on the location you're at in the store, and that makes for a much more fun experience.

    7. EC

      To balance out the Tostitos. How many people are actually using this?

    8. FS

      So right now we have hundreds of carts deployed, and in the next several months we're going to thousands of carts.

    9. EC

      Also, it would be really nice to know how much you're spending before you actually go to checkout.

    10. FS

      Well-

    11. EC

      'Cause there are so many times I'm like, "Ouch, maybe I would've put a few things back." [laughs]

    12. FS

      But, and you know, that's a great point. And i- initially we... 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, like, maximizing getting to their budget. Whereas if they have to go through a normal checkout, they never wanna be embarrassed to have to put items back. It, it has actually provided a real deep service for people both on the affluent side as well as people on a budget.

    13. EC

      Now, bigger picture, groceries are so expensive. Everyone is feeling it. Are you getting sick and tired of rising food costs?

    14. SP

      When you go out to eat, think about how much higher the bill is now. I mean, honestly, feeding a family of four, for example, just theoretically, when you go out in New York City, costs double what it did four years ago.

    15. EC

      What's happening here? Why is everyone hurting so much?

    16. FS

      Yeah, I think there's been, as you know, just an increase in prices overall throughout the supply chain that ends up, you know, hurting the end customer. The role that we play is really trying to get savings for customers wherever they exist.

    17. EC

      Using Instacart, 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?

    18. FS

      Four years ago, you're absolutely right. It used to be a luxury. But when you look at the delivery fees that you get to pay, obviously, to, 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.

    19. EC

      Gig work for so many people has provided extra income, flexibility, but there are still a lot of complaints.

    20. FS

      They want 43 items, no tip. Good luck with that.

    21. SP

      I missed two $40 orders today because I didn't click accept quick enough. You have people that are buying bots and bot accounts that will just grab the order.

    22. EC

      How do you respond to all that? Like, how do you address all of that?

    23. FS

      There will always be complaints, but we really look at the numbers to figure out if we're doing a good job, and then we can always improve. You know, being a shopper is a tough job. You are in the store trying to figure out how to, like, find 20-plus items, going on a customer chat and helping the customers, like, figure out if something is missing on the shelves. So our tools and our technology are things that we always invest in so that the jobs becomes as easy as possible.

    24. EC

      Instacart's been spending time at the White House. What are you advocating for?

    25. FS

      We as a country are spending about a trillion dollar on healthcare costs for diet-related disease. A trillion is the same amount as the entire country spends on food. That's pretty crazy when you think about it. And that is fundamentally an economic problem, but also a technology problem. Because to distribute nutritious food to people all across the US, you need a technology platform that can do that. So that's why we took on the very big initiative 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 this condition.

    26. EC

      How do you think about the global food system? Like, 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. How does that shape your thinking and your strategy?

    27. FS

      We think fundamentally the food system is completely sub-optimized. It creates a lot of waste. And when you think of all the technologies that can be built and optimized through machine learning, through artificial intelligence, we could have a food system that is fundamentally less wasteful. And w- if someone was collecting consumer data, that feeds the entire system so that the right things c- could be produced at the right volume, and we think we can be that player. [upbeat music]

  16. 20:50 – 23:10

    Full circle: dinners with presidents, building in France, and growing women leaders

    1. EC

      Most of us don't stop to think about the massive machine that delivers food from the sea and the farm to our tables on a daily basis, but trust me when I say it's extraordinarily complex. Simo's plan to take a piece of that pie is nothing if not ambitious. Back in France, her vision is gaining the attention of world leaders, with conversations at the highest level. You recently had dinner with President Macron. As a little girl, did you ever imagine you'd be eating dinner with the French president?

    2. FS

      [laughs] Absolutely not.

    3. EC

      Tell me about that.

    4. FS

      It was really special. It was a state dinner that he organized to honor President Joe Biden. And, you know, growing up in France and then living in the US, it felt like a really full circle moment for me.

    5. EC

      When you wanted to go into tech, it's almost like you, you knew you had to leave to do what you wanted to do. But if you could do it all over again, would you build in France?

    6. FS

      I think it's only recently that the entrepreneurship path has been valued. I think, you know, French people didn't see that in the past as, like, the path to success, and, um, that's still a cultural thing that needs to be changed for people to really wanna take that risk and see themself as wanting to be on that path. It's still quite hard, you know, to hire in France, retain talent, have the flexibility to change, you know, the structure of your teams when you need to, but there's still some work to do. And compared to the US, I think that s- Europe is still behind in valuing entrepreneurship as much as the US does.

    7. EC

      There are so few female tech CEOs, and even fewer French female CEOs.

    8. FS

      [laughs]

    9. EC

      I mean, I'm realizing it's such a small community.

    10. FS

      Yeah. Well, we need to change that. [laughs]

    11. EC

      [laughs]

    12. FS

      It's, it's very, very small. But I, I also think that, um, you know, we have incredible women in C-suites right now that are primed to become the next wave of CEOs. And I think as we have more of these women in position of powers are gonna lift other women up. It takes a lot of time, sadly, uh, for this to be a big enough transformation that we see the impact.

    13. EC

      Mm-hmm.

    14. FS

      But I'm hopeful that, uh, we have more people that are realizing that there's enormous talents that we're not recognizing properly to have the performance we need in our companies.

  17. 23:10 – 24:01

    Message to the next generation: dreaming big and focusing long-term

    1. EC

      What's your advice to the next French Fidji Simo?

    2. FS

      A lot of what I try to do is actually show women that, you know, someone who grew up in a small town in a family of fishermen can end up being a CEO in Silicon Valley. I would just tell them to dream big and not put, um, any limitations on themselves, and really focus on, on the long-term goal. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 24:01

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