[snowpolar]

Actually it sounds more to me that he should be the one resigning instead of firing "Tom". But well perhaps as the owner of a company he can't really fire himself, so someone have to be the scrape goat which is Tom.

However, it is good that he understand that he is partly to blame too, as some startup founders I seen rather shift all the blame to someone and fire him and think of many reasons why it's not their fault at all.