Co-founder and MD of Indian fintech platform BharatPe, Ashneer Grover, resigned earlier this month after facing a setback in an arbitration case in Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC). He said that he was embroiled in a battle against the company’s board to save his reputation after allegations of financial misconduct were levelled against his wife. Ashneer said that he was left humiliated by the entire controversy which forced him to resign from the unicorn startup which he co-founded. However, Ashneer is just a new addition to an infamous list of founders who resigned or were fired from their own companies. Here’s a list of 8 founders who were also asked to leave their own companies:
1. Steve Jobs-Apple Steve Jobs co-founded Apple along with Steve Wozniak in 1976. Jobs is considered the father of the personal computer. He transformed Apple into a tech giant by overseeing the launch of revolutionary tech products such as iPod and iPhone. However, he was fired from his own company in 1985 due to differences in his vision for the company’s future from that of his colleagues. He returned to join Apple again in 1997 after the company bought his new business, NeXT.
2. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal- Flipkart Both Sachin and Binny were alumni of IIT Delhi and were former Amazon employees. They applied the Amazon model in India by initially shipping books across the country by launching Flipkart in 2008. When their business started to receive traction, they expanded it to include shipping of other goods and merchandise as well. Flipkart became India’s largest e-commerce company. However, when Walmart approached the Flipkart board with an offer to buy the company, Sachin Bansal had a fallout with his company board over the deal. He sold his entire stake for more than a billion USD and exited the company. Binny resigned the same year after Walmart launched an internal investigation regarding financial misconduct by him.
3. Jerry Yang-Yahoo Jerry Yang co-founded the search engine and provider of web services, Yahoo in 1994. In 2012, Yang resigned from the Yahoo board after the shareholders wanted to put the company up for sale.
4. Andrew Mason-Groupon Groupon was founded as a website which offered discounts on local businesses. It was founded in 2008 in Chicago by Andrew Mason. However, Mason could not help the company grow its business as its shares plummeted and the company faced serious financial losses. Mason resigned in 2012.
5. Travis Kalanick-Uber Uber-a cab service application famous across the world, was co-founded by Travis Kalanick in 2009. However, after Uber failed to show financial sound numbers and a series of internal sexual harassment allegations within the company forced him to exit the board in 2017. Currently, Travis is the Chief Executive of City Storage Systems.
6. Jack Dorsey-Twitter Jack Dorsey quit as the CEO of Twitter last year. However, it was not the first time that he left the company he co-founded in 2006. He was the CEO of the company in 2008 when he was fired due to lack of effective communication with the board and poor company management skills. He returned to Twitter in 2015.
7. Mike Lazaridis-Blackberry Mobile company Blackberry was founded in 1984 by Mike Lazardis. The phone became a symbol of class and vogue as it was used by some of the most powerful people, such as company executives, in the world. But it lost competition to Apple and Samsung who led the technological evolution. In 2012, Lazaridis was forced to quit Blackberry.
8. Brendan Eich-Mozilla Mozilla was co-founded by Eich in 2002. However, due to his conservative views on the same-sex marriage, he was forced to quit in 2014.
