Mr Mehta told every company that he was talking to one of its biggest competitors so it had to act fast. But the discussions didn’t get very far. The other companies were concerned about price and antitrust controls. Instacart declined to comment on deal talks, previously reported by The Information.
About that time, there were tense discussions between Mr. Mehta and a group of board members led by Michael Moritz, a Sequoia Capital investor, said four people with knowledge of the situation. The conversations with DoorDash and Uber were part of those conversations, some of those people said. (Still, Instacart and Mr. Mehta have said his departure was a voluntary move.)
Before Ms Simo was named chief executive in July, there was a brief discussion about making her and Mr Mehta co-chief executives, said three people with knowledge of the situation. That idea was quickly dropped and Mr. Mehta became chairman. (The New York Times chief executive, Meredith Kopit Levien, joined Instacart’s board of directors in October 2021.)
Carolyn Everson, a former Facebook executive who became Instacart’s president in September, left the company after just three months — the most notable departure from the company, which also lost its Chief Revenue Officer, as well as the person who served as president before Ms. Everson. . Ms. Everson was not happy because she ended up spending most of her time dealing with the company’s relationships with supermarket executives, one person with knowledge of the situation said.
Instacart’s business has continued to grow amid management turmoil, reaching $1.8 billion in revenue last year, said a person familiar with the company. But that was far from the quadrupling of 2020.
Grocery industry experts and some within Instacart have suggested that the company should take out grocers by opening its own warehouses of goods, which could prove more lucrative. But Mrs. Simo has invariably resisted the move. Instead, she has tightened Instacart’s relationships with grocers, including Kroger, Publix, Wegmans and Costco.
