The board does not remove a CEO it is happy with for something this trivial, because it is too disruptive to the company. This was probably used as a pretext in a power struggle.
- We love our CEO! We'll do anything to keep this boss happy
- We're stuck with a loser, and we need to make a change
- We're in the middle. This CEO has real strengths, which we appreciate, and real weaknesses, which concern us. We're regularly taking stock of the situation, and we'd probably like an orderly transition down the road. But we're probably okay for now.
The third situation is quite common. And in those cases, you don't really need a "pretext" or a "power struggle." You just need the board to say: "We've tolerated a lot, but maybe we've tolerated too much. This new incident is not what we'd be seeing if we had the right CEO."
True, but it's an incident he only informed the board (including new board members) about in late 2020, and is one aspect of his communication with Bloomberg Business that the board told him to stop for 10 months before being terminated.
Getting zonked on a class A drug during an important meeting with investors - so zonked you can't even read your own figures on a whiteboard - is no trivial matter.
Yeh my thought too there's a lot of shady shit that goes on in the VC world.
I think he could have done with advice from a mentor who wasn't at all involved with the vc side - even on how formal meetings like board should be run.
He is right about different cultures around how meetings are run though.
- We love our CEO! We'll do anything to keep this boss happy
- We're stuck with a loser, and we need to make a change
- We're in the middle. This CEO has real strengths, which we appreciate, and real weaknesses, which concern us. We're regularly taking stock of the situation, and we'd probably like an orderly transition down the road. But we're probably okay for now.
The third situation is quite common. And in those cases, you don't really need a "pretext" or a "power struggle." You just need the board to say: "We've tolerated a lot, but maybe we've tolerated too much. This new incident is not what we'd be seeing if we had the right CEO."