If he wants day-to-day control as a founder but doesn't want to keep an ownership interest, then he can sell his shares and apply for the job of CEO. But that means he can be fired. So he wants to be CEO, not own the company, and yet nobody can fire him. The Romans had a word for that: Tyrant, with tyrannicide being a virtue. This scheme is doomed. The sooner he realizes it the fewer heads will roll during the cleanup.
I would be wary of taking advice from a CEO who cannot fire his cofounder. Technically that means he is not the CEO and there is no one explicitly in charge of the company.
Yes, this seems to be the way. Fire him, get him away from day to day operations asap. He's already off the board, so that should satisfy your investor right? Does he need to own 0% of the company to put anything more into it?
If he takes the company private (solo or with other investors), he'll make sure to have the votes to impose the CEO of his choice, with the option to change him/her whenever he pleases. That should be a sine qua non.
One should consider the fact that in this case the ex CEO is independently wealthy so clearly wasn’t doing it for the money. In addition he started it with partners as originally as a non profit. Finally he didn’t own any equity in the company despite being one of its core team and founding members, in addition to its very public face. How many of us in the same position as him could be controlled given that the only thing one has to lose is their ability to have influence over the other board members and he seems to have lost that anyway.
If you see a CEO/Founder/Chairman focusing on a new, spin-off, company, this is generally the American way of handling a volatile situation when the offender is perceived as irreplaceable.
You've been downvoted but I don't know why. It's clearly true. He wants the power that comes with CEO, but not the levelheadedness to run what is now a large company making large promises.
What he's done is remarkable. But he should step down, assign himself a founder/chief scientist title, and move forward with "fixing" his company. No fear of ejection; I suspect he's a major shareholder.
He’s (at this point) a non large shareholder CEO. His income is highly dependent on the board not firing him every single day. It’s not a great situation to be in
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