When COVID Hits and You are CFO at Instacart with Sagar Sanghvi

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Turpentine Media
April 10, 2024

In this episode, Sasha sits down with Sagar Sanghvi, current Partner at Accel and former CFO at Instacart.

They discuss how Sagar drove the change in financial culture at Instacart and adapted rapidly to Whole Food’s acquisition by Amazon, scaling Instacart during the COVID pandemic, the balance between growth at all costs and unit economics, Sagar’s transition from CFO at Instacart to being Partner at the venture firm Accel, and much more.

This show is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co

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⏲️ Timestamps:

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(02:30) Sagar's time at Instacart

(04:29) Training from Goldman and KKR

(06:58) When to transition to unit economic focus instead of growth at all costs

(08:31) The process of changing a financial culture at a company

(10:57) Advice for CFOs in driving culture with a founder where financial discipline is not present yet

(13:39) Sponsor: Attio

(14:55) How do you bring colleagues from other functions into alignment

(17:22) Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods and Instacart's internal dynamics

(20:17) Signs that Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods was a positive infection for Instacart

(21:43) Instacart's wartime and tactical parts of Sagar's job during wartimes

(24:04) Size of Instacart's finance team

(25:10) What Sagar would have done differently in response to the acquisition

(27:54) Sagar's VP of Strategy transition to CFO at Instacart

(30:13) Balancing growth versus profitability

(36:27) Instacart during COVID and lockdown

(40:41) Sagar's transition to Accel and VC

(44:59) Advice for CFOs positioning themselves to VC

(47:34) What gets Sagar excited about a deal?

(49:58) Wrap

Subscribe to this season of Turpentine Finance, where our guests speak candidly about big business inflections, market curveballs, and how they approach decision-making to tease out tactics and mental models you can use when the pressure is on.

You’ll hear stories from Instacart, Mercury, OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz, Netflix, Runway, and more. Topics frequently touched upon M&A, Market Downturn, Macro, PMF, Fundraising, Financial Forecasting, Headcount, Equity.

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Turpentine Finance is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co

This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more covering technology, business, and culture, all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors - if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected]