Grow the Pie

This weekend, the French daily newspaper L’Opinion published a series of essays as part of its 10th Anniversary Commemorative Issue. I was honored to include my perspective on the importance of building businesses in a way that supports entire ecosystems — or as we like to call it at Instacart, a “grow the pie” approach. I’m happy to share an English translation here.?

As an entrepreneur, a technologist and an executive, people often ask me how I think about building and leading companies. I tell them that the best companies help elevate entire ecosystems. If your success depends on lifting others up, you’ll do a lot better than if your success comes at the expense of someone else. I call this approach “Grow The Pie”.

It’s a lesson I learned at an early age. I grew up in Sète, the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of fishermen. In a community built around a harbor, I saw first-hand that my family’s success was inextricably linked to the success of the entire community — from the fishmongers, to the net makers, to the restaurant owners.

I took these lessons with me when I left Sète for Silicon Valley. As I built Facebook’s advertising business, one of our core principles was to provide more value to the small businesses who relied on us than they gave us in return. That approach helped create entirely new companies – from app developers, to direct-to-consumer products.

Now I’m taking a similar approach as CEO of Instacart, the leading grocery technology company in North America. Our success comes from helping retailers and brands transform their businesses for the digital age and serve their customers better. When they win, we win.?

We’re also applying the same philosophy to our work on improving health outcomes through better nutrition. Instead of trying to solve a massive problem by ourselves, we’ve built technologies to help the entire healthcare ecosystem – from payers and providers, to non-profits and even governments – scale food-as-medicine programs. Instead of creating a new product, we're helping create a movement.?

I’m applying this same lens to my role as co-founder of Metrodora — a new medical center and research institute that I launched earlier this spring.?

Three years ago, I was diagnosed with a complex chronic illness. As I learned more about it, I was shocked to discover that different parts of the healthcare and scientific communities weren’t working together, even often competing — slowing progress and hurting patients. We launched Metrodora to show what healthcare should be: a system grounded in collaboration, where world-class clinicians, scientists, and technologists work together under one roof to find new treatments and cures.?

In order to achieve Metrodora’s full potential, however, we need to go even further — applying the same collaborative approach to the industry more broadly. That’s why we’ll be sharing insights from Metrodora’s patient biobank and data repository with academic institutions and biotech companies — a novel approach in our industry. Through this open approach, we hope to create breakthroughs much faster than we could if we were doing everything on our own, and give hundreds of millions of people around the world reasons to hope.

Solving big problems requires cooperation — and the most successful companies grow by lifting others up. That’s why, where some people see competition, I see opportunities for collaboration — so we can grow the pie for everyone.