Investment Notes: Instant

We’re excited to share our pre-seed investment in Instant. Instant is building the world’s simplest checkout experience, for every buyer and vendor online. 

Inspired by co-founders Liam and William’s own experiences, its vision is to turn billions of complex checkouts into hassle free shopping experiences.

Fighting the battle against cart abandonment

Most of us have been in the familiar scenario of sitting on our couch, arriving at the checkout and abandoning cart once we realise our wallet is in the other room. This is a common problem - seven out of ten online transactions suffer the same fate of cart abandonment. Instant is working to solve this problem. 

Instant’s technology will provide a comprehensive suite of tools to empower merchants, significantly uplifting sales and providing them with the solutions needed to delight their customers at every step of the ecommerce experience, from social commerce to data, analytics and payments. 

In the most competitive market for attention that we have ever seen, tools that reduce the cognitive load on consumers and allow merchants to seamlessly convert purchase intent are invaluable. 

We expect to see true network effects emerge as Instant secures merchants at scale. The experience will improve for consumers as Instant supports a larger share of their online transactions, and the insights (upsell recommendations and demand forecasting, for example) that Instant feeds back to merchants will become richer as scale produces a more complete view of consumer purchasing behaviour across the internet.

Instant wants to become the core checkout, not an alternative, for every moment online.

‍

Supporting our youngest Wild Hearts

Cofounders Liam Millward (Chief Executive Officer) and William Gao (Chief Technology Officer) have a depth of insight that well-exceeds their years.

Liam was seventeen years old when we met him six months ago, and William is only two years his senior. They've shown a level of composure, maturity and conviction that would be impressive for founders twice their age.

Liam and William are Wild Hearts with wild ambition right at the beginning of their journey as founders. We cannot wait to support the growth of their rare talent with the wealth of experience across our Blackbird Founder community.

Instant are hiring for a number of roles right now and you can learn more on their website.