Back to reality. Read TFA again.

robocat was answering a general question about the relationship between ownership and control. And they're right that representing 84% of the voting shares doesn't mean anything. It's standard for major investors to have their board seats guaranteed, plus veto rights over things like creating new stock and selling the company. (It's not standard to have "the ability to sack the founder and take control", though.)

Founders are almost always outnumbered on the board by Series B, but like I speculated in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49638676, Automattic is unusual here, and Mullenweg may control it. There's still a decent chance that True Ventures left in protest rather than being booted, though, and has the right to a seat[1]. It's just, what's the point if Mullenweg has them beat 4-1?

1. Edit: The article confirms that Toni Schneider resigned, but not whether True Ventures (his firm) has the right to a seat.

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robocat a day ago | parent [-]

Thank you for correcting me. I'm in an armchair but I did find this good article on the topic:

https://ilyastrebulaev.substack.com/p/who-controls-your-star...

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FreakLegion 21 hours ago | parent [-]

The board can sack the CEO, usually with a simple majority vote. That's just how boards work.

What's not normal is any kind of special investor right to sack the CEO unilaterally.

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moralestapia 19 hours ago | parent [-]

You're all arguing as if TFA was about the board overpowering the CEO, whereas if you read (even) the title, the reality is that they couldn't do anything, zilch.

	▲	FreakLegion 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We're talking about the question that spawned this thread: > what is even the purpose of a board in a multi-class share structure with the founder holding above 50% voting shares. This is a question about governance in general. The details of what happened at Automattic are irrelevant.