Startup ideas Apoorva Mehta explored after leaving Instacart

So I took three weeks off. To be honest, that's the longest time I've taken off since I started Instacart. And then I started exploring areas that have been fascinating to me for some time. The first category of ideas that I started to explore was in climate. One of the coolest things that's happening in climate right now is in carbon removal. That was a really interesting area to me, just because that seemed like an area where technical and product innovation could really change the trajectory. So I recruited a former SpaceX engineer and a post grad from Berkeley and we started a modular direct air capture company. While doing that, I realized that all the best ideas were not coming from me. They were coming from my co founder, Glenn, who was the SpaceX engineer. And so it made sense for him to be running the company. And so he's running that company today and they're doing incredibly well. After that, I started exploring space. The cost of getting to orbit was going down pretty dramatically as a result of the reusable rockets from SpaceX. The idea I explored there was this idea called planetary WI fi. Today on Earth, there's Only less than 5% of the surface that actually has any connectivity. And so how could you create a constellation that would allow for the world to have WI fi everywhere? I explored that one. I was not the right founder for that for multiple reasons. I looked at robotics and humanoid robots, teleoperated cars. Cars. So, variety of diverse areas. Either they were not the right fit for me as a founder, or they were not just good business ideas. I decided not to pursue them. I think they might take some time. With Instacart, it took me 20 ideas to get to the right one.