Let’s not beat around the bush. This is about the Nov 3rd election. Here’s a couple posts on firing that were not written with the election in mind:<p><a href="https://a16z.com/2017/05/24/on-firing-why-when-how/" rel="nofollow">https://a16z.com/2017/05/24/on-firing-why-when-how/</a><p><a href="https://a16z.com/2011/08/24/preparing-to-fire-an-executive/" rel="nofollow">https://a16z.com/2011/08/24/preparing-to-fire-an-executive/</a>
The article suggests that the VC is in an infallible position and the CEO maybe the one who is failing at his job. A common trope is founders getting fired, stepping aside for some socially acceptable reason, which brings their fantastic journey to an end.<p>Here's a fun thought exercise: When is the VC the problem and not the founders? How do you even go about firing a VC? Have you ever read VC's "fantastic journey" blog post?
> It is an even harder decision to make when you don’t have an obvious replacement, or when you are not 100% confident that the obvious replacement will be an improvement over the current CEO.<p>When the stakes are high and the cost of keeping current leadership are potentially harmful to a dangerous degree and the only possible replacement isn't an obvious choice (as is the case with the obvious allusion to the US presidency) then this is true.<p>In reality, do VCs really go so far as to make the call to replace someone with someone else who has the potential to be equally bad? Isn't the risk of two consecutively bad CEOs worse than taking a little longer to find a reasonable replacement?
It would interesting to see some data on CEOs that were fired, at what stage and the eventual outcome for the company. My guess is that firing a founder-CEO before the Series B stage rarely leads to a positive long-term outcome.
This is like those social media status updates after someone is heart broken.<p>"You give your heart to someone and they break it"<p>we are all now supposed to figure out there has been a falling out of some sort, with some CEO somewhere.<p>who is he? what did he do?
Boards hesitate to remove CEOs but CEOs don't hesitate to remove employees. Elite culture requires social niceties and soft treatment while everyone else gets scored, disciplined, and underpaid.