From Ashneer Grover To Steve Jobs: Founders Who Were Fired From Their Own Company
Any business journey is like a roller-coaster ride and being a founder of the company doesn't prevent you from potentially getting fired.
Recently, BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover has resigned from his own company and stepped down as a board member after he lost an arbitration that he had filed against the company. The Shark Tank judge had filed an arbitration with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre challenging BharatPe's decision to conduct a governance review.
His wife, Madhuri Jain was recently terminated from the company, and she called the ongoing governance review "an eyewash and means to an end". Grover took a voluntary leave of absence from the company on January 19, and after that, the Board appointed an independent audit of the firm's internal process.
So if you think, it¡¯s not a good thing that happened with BharatPe's MD and Co-founder Ashneer Grover, there are many other company founders, who were fired from their own company.
Guys like Apple's Steve Jobs and Twitter's Jack Dorsey are some of the high-profile founders that once got pushed out by the board, one way or another.
1. Founder of Apple - Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer era. With Steve Wozniak, Jobs founded Apple Inc. in 1976 and transformed the company into a world leader in telecommunications. Widely considered a visionary and a genius, he oversaw the launch of such revolutionary products as the iPod and the iPhone.
Why was Steve Jobs kicked out of Apple?
Apple founder Steve Jobs was fired from his own company in 1985, almost 10 years after he started it in his parents' garage. Although he returned as Apple CEO in the late 90s.
Jobs once said in his 2015 Stanford commencement speech, "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
While away from Apple, Jobs launched two very successful companies, NeXT and Pixar, and became a family man. "I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple," Steve Jobs added in his speech.
2. Founders of Flipkart - Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal
Flipkart was founded in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, alumni of the IIT, Delhi, and former Amazon employees. The company initially focused on online book sales with country-wide shipping. Flipkart slowly grew in prominence and was receiving hundreds of orders per day by 2008.
Sachin Bansal had a fallout with the Board of Flipkart during the Walmart buyout talks in 2018. He sold his entire stake in the company for more than one billion dollars and exited the company. After that, Binny Bansal resigned from Flipkart in 2018, which is India's largest e-commerce company by market share, following an investigation by the parent company Walmart over the allegations of "serious personal misconduct".
3. Founder of Yahoo -? Jerry Yang
Jerry Yang, a Stanford graduate who co-founded the search engine and web services provider Yahoo! and is currently the founding partner of the venture fund AME Cloud Ventures, has been elected chair of the Stanford University Board of Trustees.
When did Jerry Yang leave Yahoo?
In 2008, after resisting a buyout from Microsoft, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from his role as CEO to return to his earlier position of "chief Yahoo." However, it was only four years later that Yang resigned from the company altogether when company shareholders were looking to put the company up for sale, a move that Yang opposed.
4. Founder of Groupon - Andrew Mason
Andrew Mason is an American businessman and entrepreneur. He is the founder and former CEO of Groupon, a Chicago-based website offering users discounts on local businesses and scholarships.
In 2013, Groupon co-founder and former CEO Andrew Mason was fired from the daily deals website four and a half years after its founding. Under Mason's leadership, the company's shares plummeted and the business faced serious financial challenges. Mason took responsibility for the company's poor financial state and after being fired, issued a statement to his employees that read: "After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding -- I was fired today."
5. Founder of Uber - Travis Kalanick
Travis Cordell Kalanick is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer of Uber.?
Why did Travis leave Uber?
In 2017, eight years after he founded the ride-hailing company, Kalanick was forced to step down as CEO after a series of rows rocked Uber. The 43-year-old is now chief executive of City Storage Systems redevelops distressed real estate.
6. Founder of Twitter - Jack Dorsey
Jack Patrick Dorsey is an American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist who is the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, as well as the founder and CEO of Block, Inc., a financial payments company.
Why was Jack Dorsey fired in 2008?
Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass launched Twitter in 2006. In the beginning of the company, Jack Dorsey took the title of Twitter CEO, but it wasn't before long that discussion surfaced about his poor management style, lack of communication with board members and inability to fix its constantly crashing servers. In 2008, Jack Dorsey was fired by co-founder Evan Williams, who was the main investor of the company and the chairman. Dorsey returned to the company in 2015.
In 2021 Jack Dorsey stepped? down as Twitter CEO, he wrote, "I've decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders," Dorsey said in a statement released by Twitter. "My trust in Parag as Twitter's CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I'm deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul.
8. Founder of BlackBerry - Mike Lazaridis
Mike Lazaridis Founded BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research in Motion Limited) in 1984. He grew the company by riding the widely successful Blackberry smartphone which was extremely popular with executives and celebrities in the mid-2000s.
The company has struggled since then and Lazaridis relinquished leadership in 2012. In 2013, the co-founder of BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion retired as vice-chairman and director of the company he had co-founded in 1984. His quitting the company came as surprise since he had managed to turn it around. Lazaridis later started an investment fund.
9. Mozilla Corp - Brendan Eich
The chief executive of Mozilla - the company best known for its Firefox browser - has stepped down, which he had co-founded in 2002. Brendan Eich had quit after facing backlash over his views against same-sex marriage.?
For the latest from trending, click here.