Name: Fidji Simo's path to CEO of Instacart
Uploaded: 2021-10-01
Duration: 7 min 48 s
Description: Instacart's new chief executive talks about how she got into tech, her health struggles, and what went wrong at Facebook.

<p>I'm gigi chemo and I'm just here of insta cast. So I grew up into a small town in the south of France and I was a daughter, granddaughter, great granddaughter of fishermen, my grandmother was a fishmonger and I was the first one of my family to graduate from high school, let alone college. I would say it was really during business school that I was learning about different industries and I was incredibly interested in industries that were fast moving and I had kind of the american dream and so as soon as I was able, I set sights on the U. S. And I immigrated to the United States about seven years ago. My first internship was at Ebay and I learned so much about technology that how technology can help people who have a passion uh and and want to make a living really thrive online. I was very interested in moving to facebook because there was this incredible social media platform kind of exploding rolls open at the time were jobs in marketing and communications. I had on strategy at Ebay which had nothing to do with marketing and communications. Uh so I spent all of thanksgiving weekend imagining a product which at the time was called facebook stores and writing all of the marketing materials for that product uh and sending that to the hiring manager kind of begging them to hire me and telling them that even though I didn't have the profile, I don't know his work to prove to them that I could do marketing and communication and that's kind of how I got the job when I moved to product, I had a very well intentioned product manager. Tell me, well Fiji, you're never gonna sheet with the engineers, you're never gonna get credibility with like all of you. And what that meant was, you know, too much makeup to french. I tried for a day to kind of dropped the makeup tie, my hair dressed with a hoodie, no one recognized me and I didn't recognize myself and I realized, no, actually is a way in which I'm gonna lead and the way in which I'm also going to inspire my teams is by recognizing all of who I am. I got a lot of feedback really quickly that uh, it was actually allowing other people to be themselves, giving them permission to really show up with all of their magic, all of their diversity, which I think is incredibly important if we want to create workplaces where people can do the best work of their lives. I was diagnosis endometriosis right? As Mark offered me to lead the facebook app. And you know, the last discussion you want to have with Mark Zuckerberg, who is offering you to lead the facebook app, uh, to tell him about your uterus. Like that's really the last conversation you're hoping to have in your life. And yet I realized that I was probably about to have surgery because of these issues and I needed him to know. And when I told him about it was not only incredibly supportive, but he also told me that it was really looking at people as relationship that he wanted to build a world across the decades and not as you know, something that you wanted from me in the next couple months. So many women do not have to support. So many women are incredibly alone and isolated in the workplace with these issues and terrified to talk to their manager about going through this because our worries are going to lose our job, lose our credibility, lose out the next promotion. I felt a responsibility at that point in time uh to speak up because I was in a privileged position of having all of the support. So many women have said like, oh I have a mess, I have rheumatoid arthritis and I never expected a leader in your position to have, let alone be public about them. I feel that it's a risk as a woman to talk about how it's a huge taboo as women, we need to you know, look absolutely exceptional at everything and and you know, be completely invincible to even get a shot at being taken seriously. So it's always a risk. But I shall like I have a responsibility to do that for all the women that don't have my privilege. Yeah, I think leaders always have to take extreme responsibilities for for anything that they bring to the market and I think we were quite optimistic about all of the outcomes that are products could create. And they certainly created a lot of good. But we didn't look around corners early enough to really understand what could be the shortfalls. But that has taught me is to be incredibly proactive in the future in anticipating the risk of any technology product. You can do great things with technology, you can do bad things with technology. And so as technologies, our job is to make sure that we maximize the good and minimise the bad. And that's something that I'm taking very much to heart in the next job. Mhm. I think the learnings about growing a global company uh and growing and advertising business and understanding the needs of consumers will certainly sell new Orleans the next job. But I also think that in psychology is unique and very different and I think it's a it's a business that is really a marketplace at the intersection of consumers or shoppers or retailers or CPG partners and it's a four sided marketplace and a big part of my role is to make sure that we serve all of these different constituents in the best way possible. Shoppers are literally the face of a company. I take enormous responsibility on making sure that these people who are critical to our service are getting everything they need from us, including flexible learning opportunities which are very important to them, a safe work environment and you know, the recognition that they deserve for for the service that they provide. So uh this is something that I take incredibly seriously and will be a very big part of my job going forward. It's a little bit poetic that I I grew up in a family of fishermen where uh kind of the mission of my family was cheating on their families and and I'm back to my roots by by leading insta cart which is fundamentally about giving people access to food when you grow up in a french italian family uh food is how you should love food is how you celebrate uh fully. That's the center of everything. It's so much more than nutrition. It's it's part of rituals, it's part of all the emotions of the family. And so I hit the cart as you know helping all of the families around around the U. S. Uh in really making this moment of you know bringing food to the table a lot more convenient and a lot more enjoyable. And to me that that was deeply uh</p>

Instacart's new chief executive talks about how she got into tech, her health struggles, and what went wrong at Facebook.

Fidji Simo's path to CEO of Instacart

Features

I'm gigi chemo and I'm just here of insta cast. So I grew up into a small town in the south of France and I was a daughter, granddaughter, great granddaughter of fishermen, my grandmother was a fishmonger and I was the first one of my family to graduate from high school, let alone college. I would say it was really during business school that I was learning about different industries and I was incredibly interested in industries that were fast moving and I had kind of the american dream and so as soon as I was able, I set sights on the U. S. And I immigrated to the United States about seven years ago, my first internship was at Ebay and I learned so much about technology that how technology can help people who have a passion uh and and want to make a living really thrive online. I was very interested in moving to facebook because there was incredible social media platform, kind of exploding roles open at the time were jobs in marketing and communications had on strategy at Ebay, which had nothing to do with marketing and communications. Uh so I spent all of thanksgiving weekend imagining a product which at the time was called facebook stores and writing all of the marketing materials for that product uh and sending that to the hiring manager of kind of begging them to hire me and telling them that even though I didn't have the profile, I don't know his work to prove to them that I could do marketing and communication and that's kind of how I got the job when I moved to product, I had a very well intentioned product manager. Tell me, well Fiji, you're never gonna sheet with the engineers, you're never gonna get credibility with like all of you. And what that meant was, you know, too much makeup to french. I tried for a date to kind of dropped the makeup tie, my hair dressed with a hoodie, no one recognized me and I didn't recognize myself and I realized, no actually is a way in which I'm gonna lead and the way in which I'm also going to inspire my teams is by recognizing all of who I am. I got a lot of feedback really quickly that uh, it was actually allowing other people to be themselves, giving them permission to really show up with all of their magic, all of their diversity, which I think is incredibly important if we want to create workplaces where people can do the best work of their lives. I was diagnosed with endometriosis right? As Mark offered me to lead the facebook app. And you know, the last discussion you want to have with Mark Zuckerberg was offering you to lead the facebook app, uh, is to tell them about your uterus. Like that's really the last conversation you're hoping to have in your life. And yet I realized that I was probably about to have surgery because of these issues and I needed him to know. And when I told him about this, it was not only incredibly supportive, but he also told me that he was really looking at people as relationships that he wanted to build wealth across the decades and not as you know, something that you wanted from me in the next couple months. So many women do not have to support. So many women are incredibly alone and isolated in the workplace with these issues and terrified to talk to their manager about going through this because our worries are going to lose our jobs, lose our credibility, lose out the next promotion. I felt a responsibility at that point in time uh to speak up because I was in a privileged position of having all of the support. So many women have said like, oh I have a mess, I have rheumatoid arthritis and I never expected a leader in your position to have, let alone be public about them. I feel that it's a risk as a woman to talk about how it's a huge taboo as women, we need to you know, look absolutely exceptional at everything and and you know, be completely invincible to even get a shot at being taken seriously. So it's always a risk. But I shall like I have a responsibility to do that for all the women that don't have my privilege. Yeah, I think leaders always have to take extreme responsibilities for for anything that they bring to the market and I think we were quite optimistic about all of the outcomes that are products could create. And they certainly created a lot of good. But we didn't look around corners early enough to really understand what could be the shortfalls. But that has taught me is to be incredibly proactive in the future in anticipating the risk of any technology product. You can do great things with technology, you can do bad things with technology. And so as technologies, our job is to make sure that we maximize the good and minimise the bad. And that's something that I'm taking very much to heart in the next job. Mhm. I think the learnings about growing a global company uh and growing and advertising business and understanding the needs of consumers will certainly sell new Orleans the next job. But I also think that in psychology is unique and very different and I think it's a it's a business that is really a marketplace at the intersection of consumers are shoppers or retailers of CPG partners and it's a four sided marketplace and a big part of my role is to make sure that we serve all of these different constituents in the best way possible. Shoppers are literally the face of a company. I take enormous responsibility on making sure that these people who are critical to our service are getting everything they need from us, including flexible learning opportunities which are very important to them, a safe work environment and you know, the recognition that they deserve for for the service that they provide. So uh this is something that I take incredibly seriously and will be a very big part of my job going forward. It's a little bit poetic that I I grew up in a family of fishermen where uh kind of the mission of my family was cheating on their families and and I'm back to uh to my roots by by leading insta cart which is fundamentally about giving people access to food when you grow up in a french italian family. Uh food is how you should love food is how you celebrate uh fully. That's the center of everything. It's so much more than nutrition. It's it's part of rituals, it's part of all the emotions of the family. And so I hint the cart as you know, helping all of the families around around the U. S. Uh in really making this moment of you know bringing food to the table a lot more convenient and a lot more enjoyable. And to me that that was deeply uh