Manasi VarmaFidji Simo, who had till now been working as the Head at Facebook’s social media app, will now be joining grocery delivery application Instacart, as their new CEO. She will officially become the first outsider to take over as head at the startup, and will be replaced at Facebook by the industry giant’s Vice President of Engineering, Tom Alison, who has previously led the team at Facebook Groups.
A Shock, But Mark Was Supportive
As per a report by CNBC, this comes as a jolt to the Mark Zuckerberg-led company’s plans of increasing and maintaining diversity in its workforce. French Fidji Simo was hitherto one of the female staff with the highest pay at Facebook, right behind COO Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Business Officer Marne Levine. Her post had been at par with the app headsat Facebook’s various subsidiary labels, like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.
On August 2nd this year, Simo will officially take over the CEO role at Instacart from founder Apoorva Mehta, who will become the Executive Chairperson of the board at the startup, which stands at a valuation of $39 billion.
Simo’s departure from Facebook, despite taking a few weeks to finalize, did not enter the territory which is labelled as “messy”. According to her, she held several talks with Mark Zuckerberg, whom she said had been a “supporter from day one”. She further added that the Facebook CEO was willing to “understand her motivation”, for which she will always be grateful.
Having joined the product marketing sector at Facebook in 2011, Simo eventually took on the role of Leader at the firm’s main app in 2019. She is touted to have been behind the increase in video content on the platform, through livestreaming, autoplays, etc.
Good Times Awaiting Instacart?
Fidji Simo has been a board member at Instacart since earlier this year, and Mehta says that he has been “blown away by her capabilities as a leader.” He also adds that now he knows that both he and Simo have an ambitious vision, when it comes to Instacart.
Makes sense, since Simo has already said that she wants to make the grocery platform into an “incredible consumer app,” that will make people want to visit it multiple times a week for their grocery purchases.
Drawing parallels to her time at Facebook, Simo has also said that she can see many new food companies having the potential to be created, by leveraging the support from Instacart, much like what happened when Facebook ads started extending its support to a number of small businesses.