Comment by lenerdenator
2 days ago
Given what I know of the situation (which admittedly isn't much), wouldn't the best course of action be to shitcan the CEO?
2 days ago
Given what I know of the situation (which admittedly isn't much), wouldn't the best course of action be to shitcan the CEO?
From Reddit discussions, if they can be trusted, there is nobody who can remove Matt from any position. It's a private company and the investors were given non-voting shares.
> It's a private company and the investors were given non-voting shares.
My understanding is that the investors signed proxy voting rights over to Matt. They are mostly ordinary shares, and may be revocable. [1]
[1] https://ma.tt/2021/08/funding-buyback-hiring/
I am confused -- so if investors don't like the CEO, there is nothing they can do? Other than maybe taking their part of the money out?
Even "taking their part of the money out" is not guaranteed. Again, it's a privately traded company, so there's no open market. You have to find someone willing to buy your shares from you and make a deal with them.
he'd already be out if it was simple to force him out
Let this be a lesson to anyone investing in a startup: don't give any cash unless there's real corporate governance.
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With apologies to Louis XIV, Matt is Automattic.
L'etatt, c'est M'att.
For the unaware (or under-aware): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89tat,_c%27est_moi
Probably apocryphal. A lot of people these days only know it from Star Wars.
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wait, did he put his name in the company name?
if so, that's what we in the narcissist-identifying business call a "tell".
Or it just sounded like a fun joke for a good company name... I mean you are not wrong, but pretty much any successful young entrepreneur must have some degree of excessive appreciation for themselves, and this one was already achieving that status at 19.
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It's easy to call that a "tell" in light of Matt Mullenweg's recent activities. No one was saying shit when Wordpress was the darling of Web 2.0.
Justifiable evidence of Matt Mullenweg's unhealthy/excessive narcissism only surfaced within the past year or so (I'm fuzzy on the timeline, cut me some slack ya?). Automattic the company has been so named for, goodness, close to twenty years now.
It could be Matt's been a narcissist from the start. But people also change and not always for the better so maybe he became a "narcissist" much later in life and his chosen company name just so conveniently fell into the narrative.
There are CEOs in bigger spotlights with a bigger case for narcissism who don't put their names on any of their companies (emphasis on the plurality). One of them has a name with a similar inflection pattern to other well-known albeit fictional narcissist, Tony Stark.
I don't know what "Automattic" as a company name says about Matt as a person. I'll tell you what it is though: a damn good pun, one I would gladly score myself given the chance.
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Yes but this isn't really much of a crime or tell to me. The name is great as far as I'm concerned.
And he's full of himself and completely wrong in this crusade he launched for some reason, completely indefensible acts left & right for over a year.
Both true.
> wait, did he put his name in the company name?
Yes.
Yes. He also calls the employees Automatticians. So they're all just Matt.
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