My guess would be that the founders were not happy with him abandoning the company's non-profit/open source ideals and selling out to Microsoft. Wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is where he ends up.
The reason for his termination isn't clear, but based on the report, it appears that he had difficulties with the board. As a founder I don't like this kind of events and this type of action has typically not yielded positive results for hyper-growth companies. Historical examples like Apple, Uber, and WeWork show that such moves often led to stagnation or even bankruptcy. I view it as counterproductive, potentially allowing competitors like Google to catch up, as these decisions tend to impede innovation.
I'd like a little more detail on what happened with the cofounder. WTF? Did he have a mental illness? I mean, I could understand some decline in performance or something, but totally stopping? What was he thinking?
It goes both ways. The other founder dropped him and left him with nothing but a useless codebase, he can’t even get any kind of recognition because he’s expected to not release the code he wrote. He’s been fucked.
He also got removed for creating systemic, existential risk for the company by handing out $10k line limit credit cards to anyone who wanted one, resulting in a 50% chargeback rate. There are so many reasons for them to have gotten rid of him that the answer is highly underdetermined.
Interesting that he co-founded Periscope and they also just removed any mention of Periscope from their TOS. Maybe just an artifact of them considering removing him, or it has no meaning. Just found the timing notable.
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