Instacart board adds Facebook exec Simo, ex-Netflix CFO McCarthy

Instacart is adding two tech heavyweights to its small board ahead of an expected IPO this year.

Fidji Simo, who is the executive in charge of the Facebook app, and Barry McCarthy, former CFO at Spotify and Netflix, will join founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta and three early investors. The appointments represent the first independent members and first woman to join the board of the nearly decade-old company, which has become one of the most valuable start-ups in America as the Covid-19 pandemic spurred a huge increase in online grocery shopping. In 2020, it more than doubled its valuation from the beginning of the year to $17.7 billion.  

Simo joined Facebook 10 years ago, and has been a core driver of Facebook’s mobile monetization strategy. 

“She has worked on not only the most mainstream products, but most scaled products in the world, including newsfeed, stories, group, marketplace, gaming, and dating,” said Mehta. “She has a diversity of experience and, in my opinion, she is one of the best executives in Silicon Valley.”

Mehta reached out to her with a cold email. “We wanted to bring in people that we think will be transformational,” he said. “We are being very deliberate about this.”

Mehta met McCarthy seven years ago and said he left a big impression. 

“I was talking to [CFO] Nick Giovanni about who we wanted on our board and asked, ‘who are the most impressive people in the finance world?'” Mehta said. “Barry was at the top of our list. At Spotify, he wasn’t just CFO, he was also head of their ads business.” 

McCarthy has also been called the architect of the direct listing, having led Spotify’s unusual path to public markets without the traditional assistance of investment banks. 

Mehta said McCarthy is the “inventor of the direct listing,” but declined to comment on whether his addition suggested Instacart was considering a direct listing.

The nearly decade-old start-up’s other board members are Mehta, and early investors Daniel Sundheim with D1 Capital Partners, Michael Moritz at Sequoia Capital and Jeff Jordan of Andreessen Horowitz.

Instacart has also been building out its C-suite over the last few months. In January, the grocery delivery firm tapped Giovanni, former head of the technology, media and telecom group at Goldman Sachs, to join as chief financial officer. Asha Sharma, former Facebook vice president of product, joined as COO at the start of February.

Goldman Sachs will reportedly lead the IPO and could value the grocery delivery app at around $30 billion.