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8 tech execs who were ousted from companies they helped to build
8 tech execs who were ousted from companies they helped to build
Meira GebelFeb 15, 2019, 18:34 IST
Julia Malakie/AP Images
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Just because you founded a high-flying tech company doesn't mean you can't be asked to leave.
Steve Jobs himself was once ousted by Apple (or left voluntarily, depending on who you believe), and spent years running his own company before coming back into the fold as CEO.
More recently, Uber founder Travis Kalanick was ousted as CEO, following a year of scandals for the company.
Here are 8 tech executives who were once ousted from the companies they helped to build.
Just because you founded one of the most successful tech companies in the world, it doesn't mean that job security is automatically guaranteed.
Steve Jobs was once ousted from Apple (or voluntarily left, depending who you ask), spending years running his own startup before returning to the fold as CEO. More recent examples include Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick, who left the company after a year of scandals, and Martin Eberhard, the ousted cofounder of Tesla.
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They weren't the only ones, either.
Take a look at 8 tech executives who were ousted from companies they helped to build:
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs famously left (or was ousted, depending on who you believe) in 1985, after clashing with CEO John Sculley. 12 years later, Apple bought Jobs' startup NeXT Computer, bringing him back into the fold.
Perhaps ironically, Jobs orchestrated an ouster of his own: Just months after returning to Apple, Jobs convinced the board to oust then-CEO Gil Amelio. Jobs became CEO in 1997, and the rest is history.
Uber founder Travis Kalanick resigned as CEO in July 2017, following long months of scandals for the company.
Kalanick left Uber in July 2017, following a long string of scandals — from a #DeleteUber campaign that saw 200,000 people delete the ride-hailing app, to allegations of a toxic company culture from former engineer Susan Fowler, and more.
Ultimately, things came to a head when Uber's board urged Kalanick to step down. In July of 2017, he did. Since then, Kalanick has been dabbling in various investments, including an initiative to try a new kind of food delivery service.
Jack Dorsey founded Twitter with Ev Williams in 2006. Two years later, Williams fired him from the CEO role — even though it was Dorsey who came up with the idea for the micro-blogging site in the first place.
But this didn't stop Dorsey from founding $31 billion Square, the mobile payments platform, in 2009. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg even tried to hire Dorsey after he left Twitter.
However, in 2015, Dorsey was brought back to Twitter as interim CEO, taking over for former leader Dick Costolo. Not long after, Twitter dropped the "interim" from Dorsey's job title.
Parker Conrad founded Zenefits, the cloud-based software company that helps business owners handle human resources, in 2013. However, he left in the wake of a controversy over how its agents were licensed.
Conrad is still in the startup game: He launched Rippling, a service that aims to provide businesses with an easy way to onboard new employees, in 2017.
Palmer Luckey, the 26-year-old who founded Facebook-owned Oculus VR left both companies in March 2017, not long after it was reported that he funded an anti-Hillary Clinton meme group.
More recently, Luckey founded Anduril, named after a magical sword in Lord of the Rings, in 2017, and is creating a high-tech "virtual" border wall for government defense that relies on artificial intelligence.
Andrew Mason, the founder of discount site Groupon, was fired in 2013. The site had a ton of buzz early on, but after the company went public, growth disappointed investors. Not long after, he was ousted from the company he built.
In the same year he was ousted, Mason quickly went on to found a new company called Detour, a startup that makes audio tours for smartphones.
Back in 2007, Jerry Yang was made the CEO of Yahoo, the company he'd founded in the late 1990s. A year later, he rejected a takeover bid from Microsoft, sending the stock plummeting. The board reportedly pressured him to leave, and so he did.
In 2007, Martin Eberhard says, the co-founder and then-CEO of Tesla, got a phone call from Elon Musk, telling him that the board had met without him. He had been replaced by Michael Marks, an early Tesla investor, as interim CEO.
Eberhard is now investing in various startups, according to his LinkedIn profile.
