This is a dumb article that ignores the shift in terms and structuring of early stage deals à la the Rich vs King tradeoff [0].
Investors and Employees both have an incentive for an exit. Founders on the other hand have an incentive to remain in control of a company as long as possible.
Enough funds and employees are pissed that the 2018-23 era vintage of late stage/growth equity rounds like Stripe, Databricks, etc led to terms that were extremely founder friendly but negated both early stage investors and employees ability to exit.
The era of the rockstar CEO founder like Zuckerberg is dead becuase no investor or employee wants to put capital in an organization which the founder has structured so that they may remain in control in perpetuity with no interest to exit - thus leaving investors and employees with stock options essentially holding the bag.
This is also why there have been a large amount of board changes and litigation over the past 2-3 years as funds are now starting to hit their 10 year vintage, fund IRR metrics need to be hit, and continuation funds can only go so far.
alephnerd•1h ago
Investors and Employees both have an incentive for an exit. Founders on the other hand have an incentive to remain in control of a company as long as possible.
Enough funds and employees are pissed that the 2018-23 era vintage of late stage/growth equity rounds like Stripe, Databricks, etc led to terms that were extremely founder friendly but negated both early stage investors and employees ability to exit.
The era of the rockstar CEO founder like Zuckerberg is dead becuase no investor or employee wants to put capital in an organization which the founder has structured so that they may remain in control in perpetuity with no interest to exit - thus leaving investors and employees with stock options essentially holding the bag.
This is also why there have been a large amount of board changes and litigation over the past 2-3 years as funds are now starting to hit their 10 year vintage, fund IRR metrics need to be hit, and continuation funds can only go so far.
[0] - https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=38550