Dear Founder,
There are bad days and then there are horrible days. This counts as a horrible day.
A difficult experience with one of the great entrepreneurs in our portfolio recently reminded me of this. I had just come from an emergency meeting for Yahoo and walked into a scheduled meeting with the CEO and my WIN team. I apologized profusely for being late—this rarely happens—and explained I was having a tough time. I noticed that the CEO was very low energy, which isn’t his normal M.O., and he said, “I bet we can argue about who’s having the worse day.”
He told me the board called the night before. They were replacing him as CEO. He had just met the new CEO, a very experienced executive, that morning. He had been asked to stay on in a key strategy role. This founder was holding up amazingly well under the circumstances, but his angst was palpable.
What puzzled the founder most was that this had happened when he owned 50% of the company. But this happens way more often than founders think. Unless you’re self-funding, there’s always a risk that your job can be taken from you.
If you find yourself in this situation, think about the following:
- Is this a surprise?
- Assess whether this is recoverable or negotiable. Do you want to fight the decision? Where does that lead?
- What does this mean for you and for your team? Do you message this as your decision and lead through it, or do you fight it and create a lot of emotion around your role? Are you still being asked to be involved in a big way?
- Will shareholders (and remember that you’re also a key shareholder) end up better in the long run?
- Try to ease the transition. When I left LiveOps I was willing to commit to staying as Chairman for two years to help. I committed to the new CEO that I would help in a transition and I asked him how long he would like. He said, “You can leave my first day.” I didn’t take this personally, as he had been warned by his former colleagues about having someone like me on the board and was concerned that I may overpower everyone else.This isn’t my style, but he didn’t know that. It’s important you offer what’s right—despite how others will respond.
- Take some time. Figure things out. There’s no way this will make sense immediately. Determine the insights and learnings you can take with you for the future.
- Be proud that you had the courage to start something from scratch. We are proud of the traction you’ve built.
- If you can’t find an engaging role that you love and can get passionate about in the current company, don’t grow bitter. Figure out round two. You’re in control of the move you make next. Figure out what you’re uniquely qualified to do and, importantly, what you want to do. This situation was not in your hands, but the next one is.
- Finally, and I don’t want to give any false hope, but we all know Silicon Valley “comeback” stories that involved greats like Steve Jobs returning to Apple, Larry Page returning to Google and Jack Dorsey returning to Twitter. Nothing is impossible.
I’m very sorry you’re going through this. You’re amazing and, while this is a horrible day, rest assured there are better days ahead. You’ll be smarter and stronger for having gone through this, and this experience will be reflected in what you achieve next.
All the best,
Maynard