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Instacart CMO Cheryl Law is no longer at the company, TechCrunch has learned.
Instacart confirmed the departure. We were tipped off about her departure a bit before the whole Amazon making a $13.7B bid for Whole Foods thing went down. Law joined Instacart at the beginning of the year and was previously the CMO of Prosper.
Instacart’s challenges can change on a nearly daily basis — especially following Amazon’s bid for Whole Foods. The company has to ensure it can load up its team with effective executives that can navigate its increasingly complex web of logistics, growth and operations. This can sometimes be the norm at startups, as priorities change as they scale (and in Instacart’s case, raise a ton of money). The company raised $400 million at a $3.4 billion valuation in March.
Managing this new delicate situation with Amazon will most certainly not be Instacart’s only problem. It has to keep its shoppers and drivers happy, which has proven to be challenging and not a trivial issue. But it also has to expand its brand internationally and into larger markets dominated by regional retail outlets. It has to forge partnerships, expand its operations and — perhaps the most difficult part — get a ton of people using it so the unit economics show some significant progress at scale.
Instacart increasingly appears in a tricky position as it tries to both navigate the complex economics of on-demand delivery and the looming threat of Amazon — which now owns hundreds of grocery chains that are part of Instacart’s delivery network. The startup’s reach is much broader than that, but it also has to contend with the willingness of a massive online retail giant to barrel into the physical retail space. While Amazon’s intentions with Whole Foods are still not clear, it’s likely a safe bet that the deal may alter the calculus of Instacart’s operations.
