How to Build a Startup Empire without Selling Your Freedom
Finding a startup to work for is easy. Finding a founder whose vision you believe in isn’t.
I’m sitting next to a founder whose vision I have admired over the past year.
It couldn’t get any louder in this downtown Starbucks in Singapore, but noise is probably the last thing on both of our minds.
We are here to talk about some bad news.
He just got kicked out of the startup he founded two years ago.
He had no idea that behind the scenes, his investors and co-founders had been working on a shocking plan.
“I don’t want to work with you ever again,” one of the investors told him, as the two other co-founders watched in silence from the corner of the table.
Not only was he forced to step down from his role as CEO; he was left with no choice but to give up the few shares he had left in a startup he had founded in the first place.
Over the last months, his dream to build a product customers love had gradually turned into building what investors wanted.
And these investors now wanted him out, too.
