Max Mullen

In this special live event, @FoundersInArms brings together a room full of founders at Mercury's San Francisco headquarters for an intimate conversation about building, investing, and the future of AI. Max Mullen is co-founder at Instacart, where he led product and grew it from a contrarian idea into the leader in online grocery delivery and eventually a publicly traded company. Now @max is an active investor and runs a founder community in San Francisco called Workshop. Max shares lessons from over a decade of building and his perspective on AI's transformative potential. In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Welcome to the first live Founders in Arms event at Mercury HQ (00:43) Introduction to Max Mullen and his early investment in Mercury (03:58) Max's origin story and first startup at Startup Weekend (04:36) Building a social network and getting acquihired (05:39) The path from acquihire to founding Instacart (06:19) Why Max wanted to solve real-world operational problems (07:17) Starting Instacart when there was no gig economy (09:15) Overcoming the "grocery delivery is dead" narrative (11:48) Market timing and why Webvan was too early (14:37) Being a non-technical co-founder in a technical role (17:45) The PARE framework for building company culture (22:09) Max's approach to M&A at Instacart (24:00) The Caper smart shopping cart acquisition story (25:31) How founders can position for acquisition (28:26) Why product-market fit attracts acquirers (29:46) Evaluating investments: market size vs. founder quality (32:54) Max and Immad's differing investment philosophies (35:39) The current state of VC funding and AI companies (36:51) The three best times to raise money as a founder (39:15) Instacart's seasonal business patterns and fundraising timing (39:59) The most interesting opportunities in AI right now (40:24) Why every profession will have AI agent co-pilots (41:44) What AI-native companies will look like for the next generation

In 20+ years of building @firstround, I’ve never hired for this specific role before. I’m kicking off a search to hire an Investor who will work directly alongside me. They will share my obsession to meet with the highest potential founders as early as possible, often before they even have a clear “imagine if” yet. Although the role itself is still being defined, my commitment is to work closely with this person to help them build the foundation of their investing career. Here’s what’s probably true about you if you’re the right fit: - You’re enthusiastic and obsessive. Following your curiosity has taken you down often weird and winding paths. - You already know a lot of brilliant builders — and more importantly, they enjoy spending time with you. You have a unique ability to generate followership, likely because you give more than you take. - You actually enjoy the work of building relationships from scratch: the cold emails, the endless events, the persistent follow-ups, the months of coffee chats. It requires relentless execution, and that excites you. You go about this work in an authentic way that isn’t conventional “networking.” If you’re looking for a role where the title does all the heavy lifting for you, this isn’t it. - You don’t find it difficult to put unreasonable hours into your work because it doesn’t feel like work to you. You’d call yourself a “work enthusiast.” - You’ve been immersed in the startup world long enough to have real context. What matters most is you’ve been close enough to startups to understand how they actually work and what great looks like. - You obsess over markets, customers, and why some businesses work while others don’t, but you can also hang when a conversation goes deep into technical choices. - You’re an exceptional communicator who tends to be more of a “simplifier” than a “complexifier.” - We’ll work together incredibly closely, but you aren’t someone who needs to be managed. You learn best by watching, by doing, by asking well-calibrated questions — preferring to “take the wheel” instead of being a passenger. You’d rather shape a role than fill one. If you want to spend your time with builders at the very beginning — and learn this craft of early-stage investing alongside someone who’s been at it for two decades and still thinks it’s the best job in the world — I’d love to meet you. SF or NYC only, with long days and lots of travel in both directions. Apply below. jobs.ashbyhq.com/firstround/4f2…

1/ @Mercury Personal launching publicly today! Its been my primary account for a while and changed my financial life: Joint account with my wife, cards+controls for my nanny. Auto transfer money between high-yield-savings + Invest* + checking. Easy+free wires

Stripe is partnering with @Instacart to enable direct checkout in ChatGPT. This new AI commerce experience is powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) that we launched with @OpenAI a few months ago. Behind the scenes, it uses @Stripe Shared Payment Tokens to securely handle payment credentials. Live today on web! (Mobile soon.)

I’m kicking off a search for a Chief of Staff to join me @firstround in San Francisco. This is a role we’ve had at First Round for more than a decade. It’s a rare opportunity for someone who’s interested in both startups and investing to learn about both from the inside. You’ll be my right hand in everything I do, from running customer references before we invest to supporting founders after we do. Former Chiefs of Staff have gone on to lead operations at a venture firm (@natewcollins), build at a breakout startup (@juliagovberg), invest full-time (@almostcmb), and everything in between. I’m looking for someone who’s a learn-it-all, unreasonably organized and proactive, as well as unusually high-agency. They should be able to manage me more than the other way around. This person should also consider themselves a “work enthusiast,” as one of our founders likes to say. I’d really appreciate getting the word out and anyone can apply below. Application is here: jobs.ashbyhq.com/firstround/8ce…

“Welcome to Stedi. Everything is your fault now.” That's the phrase @zackkanter greets new hires with when they join @Stedi. This embodies his approach to building, which is rooted in his experience scaling and selling an extremely profitable auto parts business. Stedi is the only programmable healthcare clearing house — and it took Zack four years to launch after throwing away every single line of code eight times. This episode was a special one for me because Zack’s a close friend and someone I’ve learned a lot from over the years. We cover a lot in this conversation: - Why bootstrapping is overrated - How he’s building a business he wants to run forever - What software can learn from manufacturing and discount retail And much more: (01:24) Zack’s first business (08:54) Why the first customer is tricky (10:12) The downside of bootstrapping (11:42) Why venture capital is like “going pro” (14:20) The confusion between ownership vs. control (16:08) Building a company you don’t want to leave (20:46) Do things better than other people (24:49) Stedi’s early years (31:43) Physical vs. digital product-market fit (34:41) How Stedi scaled decision-making (40:08) Stedi’s journey to product-market fit (45:22) Finding founder-approach fit (50:42) “All software is a cascade of miracles” (52:52) The surprising lessons from discount retail (57:50) How the Toyota production system influences software (1:01:31) What it means to be a high-agency person (1:03:09) The core trait Zack looks for when hiring (1:02:57) Maintaining conviction in unconventional practice (1:14:19) When should you start to hire managers? (1:17:42) “Reality has a surprising amount of detail”