How about you fire the CEO that allowed such a boneheaded decision? With them in charge, how could one ever trust your company to not make such moves again?
Sequoia also backed Apple, Cisco, Google, Youtube, Instagram, LinkedIn, PayPal, Reddit, Zoom and many more. They are just one of the largest VCs out there.
There is a difference from backing a fraud vs backing a failure.
No one is pointing fingers for the latter.
SBF would have never done anything with a simple BoD requirement: independent auditor. That was not done by BoD. This is a very standard requirement for most companies beyond A. SBF got special treatment. Why is the question
"I was just following orders"? In the very specific case of the CEO, considering their position of power and control, they are still responsible - civically and criminally.
Also, a good CEO knows how to manage the board and provide sensible strategic alternatives; even if the board liked this dumb move, it's the CEO's fault for not having leveraged the company's resources (business directors, other C-level executives, etc) to produce a better strategy. The board was certainly pushing for more profits, but the CEO is the one to say how the company will get these increased profits.
Less "I was following orders" and more "my job is the make the company money". And sure, if I had to make the company money in the next quarter or two there's no initiative I can make on the technical end to launch a new product and run up buzz. Unity tried doing that all throughout the pandemic with a bunch of expansion to other industries (automotive, sports, construction, etc.).
So in comes the fees. But then those pesky LTS means nothing I charge to 2024 Unity will stick next quarter, nor all of 2024. The only question at this point is why I chose to do install based fees instead of the Rev share model standard in every other industry. It might have worked if they undercut Unreal and said "we'll only charge 2% of revenue after $1m". I wonder what the CTO was thinking because everywhere I've read suggests that there is simply no effective and ethical way to track installs as a Middleware.
Even Apple did similar with their proposed CSAM scanning, and after the uproar, walked that decision back. So at least Unity is at least giving a head nod towards decency. It could definitely be worse. Imagine if Musk was in charge.
To be fair, cutting staff seems like it would be reasonable. How do they have ~2x the number of employees that Epic has? I know the ad side probably takes some numbers but Epic actually makes games.
That’s the entire point of a CEO: to be a well-paid martyr to blame when bad things happen. It’s the company to blame; putting the CEO specifically on blast plays into the narrative that things will be better if they are replaced.
Once a company gets this big it’s simply a horde of independent maggots writhing in the pile. No true sense of direction, just a deep-rooted desire for growth at all costs. No one is sure what’s happening with other parts of the company, because that’s outside of their scope. All they know is that for their own sake they must continue growing the company.
It's the new board that got 3 new heads from IronSource and Sequoia VC (who pushed for the IronSource merger).