It might sound almost impossible that a person can get ousted by a company that they founded. But this is the world, and nothing is impossible. This is, perhaps, not a rare phenomenon. It has happened a few times already, and there is a chance it will keep happening. In fact, in the tech world, this is not as rare as we would think.
These six tech executives are proof that these things happen.
1. Palmer Luckey
Luckey co-founded Facebook-owned Oculus VR in 2012. He left both companies in March of 2017. This was just after he reportedly funded an anti-Hillary Clinton meme group. Now 26 years old, he recently founded Anduril. It is a company named after a magical sword in Lord of the Rings. He is now creating a high-tech Artificial Intelligence-powered “virtual” border wall for government defence.
2. Travis Kalanick
Kalanick founded Uber and then resigned from the company as CEO in July 2017. This was because of the many scandals linked to the company at the time. People started a vigorous campaign with the hashtag #DeleteUber. This caused about 200,000 people to delete the app. The company also faced allegations of toxic work culture. After all these, the company urged Kalanick to step down. He has since been about investing in all sorts, one of which is a food delivery service.
3. Jack Dorsey
Dorsey co-founded Twitter alongside his partner, Ev Williams, in 2006. He was fired as CEO of the company in 2008. So he went on to create another company, obviously because there was more where all that creativity came from. In 2009, he started a mobile payments platform, Square, which is now worth about $31 billion. In 2015, Dorsey returned to take his position as CEO on Twitter. He took over from D**k Costolo.
4. Jerry Yang
Yang founded Yahoo in the late 1990s. He was appointed CEO in 2007. He was then pressured to leave the board not long after because of a decision he made. In 2008, Yang had rejected a takeover bid from Microsoft that had skyrocketed the stocks.
5. Martin Eberhard
Elon Musk put a call through to Eberhard in 2007 to tell him that the board had met without him. He had co-founded Tesla with Musk and was also the CEO. Michael Marks, who was an investor in the company, replaced him. This sounds like a savage move from Musk.
6. Steve Jobs
We saved the best for last. Jobs once stepped down as the CEO of his own company. He took time away to go a run a new startup he had before coming back to take back his position as CEO of Apple. He was fired from the company in 1984.