Grocery Delivery Service Instacart (YC S12) Raises $44M

I love Instacart. I have two comments about this raise.<p>1. I hope they use some of it to hire more shoppers. It is increasingly common to log in at 10am and see no available delivery times until the next day.<p>2. &quot;The company makes its money through the delivery fees.&quot; That is disingenuous. They appear to make significant margin on grocery items. It&#x27;s fine - I&#x27;m willing to pay for it - but I think they consistently gloss over this fact.<p>That said, I&#x27;ve been a huge champion of them to my friends and family, and I&#x27;ll continue to be. Congrats on the growth.

This really confuses me. Why aren&#x27;t the large supermarkets offering a delivery service in the US (at least last time I checked they weren&#x27;t)? I can order groceries to be delivered the same of the next day from all the major supermarkets in the UK. I&#x27;ve done it for years and rarely had an issue.<p>Also, if any of the major supermarkets in the US step in and decide to offer this service won&#x27;t Instacart&#x27;s business be instantly obliterated?<p>Is there something I&#x27;m missing?<p>Edit: I guess someone accidentally down voted my perfectly valid question.

Why Instacart over Amazon Fresh or Google Shopping Express?<p>I saw their product when it first launched but I didn&#x27;t see a distinct advantage.

Huge instacart user, was wondering what was happening now that Amazon and Google are both moving into the space. It&#x27;s awesome to see that they&#x27;re winning.

The link seems to be broken?

i loved it from the start when i was in the bay area doing my and loved it so much that if i wasn&#x27;t a founder almost applied to join. good luck and exciting market.

Congrats Instacart!

Shit, déjà Vu. Is it y2k again? If not, what are these guys doing differently from the Y2K grocery services?<p>EDIT: since Adredreseen Horrowitz invested, I assume it&#x27;s likely not a repeat from Y2k, and I&#x27;m really interested in what they&#x27;re doing differrently

Are they actually making any money? Every time I see their headlines these days, it&#x27;s &quot;Instacart raised $X&quot; and not &quot;Instacart earned $Y.&quot; Don&#x27;t you have to eventually make money to pay back those VCs?