My story is like this; I may be in a vastly different boat than him, but I am not so different from Apoorva Mehta. He and I are both entrepreneurs; we both have that fire to create inside of us. We are both in our 30's, we both have good degrees (Mehta’s in electrical engineering, mine in entrepreneurship & marketing) that taught us well, and we have both failed in bringing our prior ideas to market. A lot. And ya know, that’s not a bad thing. Failing is the world’s best teacher; if you’re willing to listen and learn from those failures, that is. And that seems to be where our similarities end, because where I try to be humble and see my failures as opportunities; Mehta instead seems to see his failures not as failures at all, and instead chooses to double-down out of hubris.

Of all the problems I see in Instacart, I know deep down that they are all solvable. But from my marketing perspective, the thing that absolutely boggles my mind about Instacart and their abysmal track-record with their shoppers is this: They have 70,000+ agents at their disposal, who, if properly taken care of financially, would bend over backwards for them, market and advertise for them, sing their praises, consistently provide excellent service, and champion their name in the streets. And if they did that, not only would they have a super-loyal army of shoppers, Instacart would easily be worth way more than the $7.2 billion they are now. Why, they might even be public at this moment.

But no. Instead, Mehta and Instacart have lied, cheated, and stolen from their shoppers, again, and again, and again. And for what? Money? Payback for some perceived slight? I rightly have no idea, but it reeks of penny-wise and pound-foolish behavior. Regardless, the fact remains that they possess a literal ARMY of people who deliver groceries to 100,000+ customers daily, and the power of that kind of marketing is … mind-blowing, to say the least.

McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Ford; they would all KILL for the opportunity to show up (invited, no less) to millions of homes every month all across America and have their workers expound about the virtues of their company. Just look at what they pay for TV advertising alone, but then multiply the power and effectiveness of their marketing campaigns by about 100, because that’s how much more powerful and trusted word-of-mouth marketing is over a TV advert.

Sadly, and likely to their ultimate demise, through their consistent and reliably unconscionable actions against their own shoppers and workers, Mehta and Instacart not only squander that very considerable amount of FREE market power, they instead choose to proactively and strategically engage in EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE ACTION, within their power, to ensure that that very large and imposing army of shoppers consistently and reliably stabs them in the back whenever and wherever possible. And rightfully so, if I might add.

Soft strikes, class actions lawsuits, chasing away valuable veterans, batch abandonment, batch avoidance, terrible reviews (from customer and shopper alike), wasted hours on the phone with SH for no good reason, threats of unionization and government regulation, and so on, can all be avoided by just paying their workers a fair and decent living wage. And moreover, their workers would be grateful for the opportunity to make a livable wage, and express that gratitude by helping Instacart grow from the bottom up.

Instacart had every opportunity to take care of their workers. And in return, their workers would have taken care of them. Instead, Mehta and Instacart chose to screw their workers, and as a result, they have lost the most valuable thing any company can possibly hope to have: Trust. When trust is lost, all is lost, and it certainly doesn’t take a fancy degree to see what inevitably comes of that.

If and when Instacart ends up being Apoorva Mehta’s 21st failure as an entrepreneur, case studies at universities across the world will look for reasons why this company, with this service, and millions of customers, ultimately failed. Many answers will be given, but I think the over-arching one will be this: A company’s success (or demise) can always be determined by examining how much the folks at the top value the folks who make it all possible.