Severe weather warning for the West Coast of the United States. Several young Silicon Valley bosses are leaving, pushed out by their shareholders, or quite simply tired of the life of a start-up that has become an adult. Parag Agrawal has just been fired at the head of Twitter by its new owner Elon Musk. His departure shortly follows that of Jack Dorsey, and before him Dick Costolo.
Ben Silbermann, co-founder of the Pinterest site, has resigned as chief executive. Emily Weiss, creator of beauty products site Glossier, has given up her day-to-day responsibilities as chief executive to care for her baby. Joe Gebbia, one of the three pillars of Airbnb, also intends to devote himself to his new start-up: his child. He greedily evokes the future production of documentaries, while remaining an advisor and member of the board of directors of his company.
To understand these multiple departures, or at least these distancing, Josh Lerner, professor at Harvard Business School, evokes the life cycle of the universe of venture capitalists, the financiers of high-tech start-ups. When money circulates in abundance, which was again the case during the record year of 2021 with investments of 344 billion dollars (about 348.5 billion euros), these financiers are “enthusiastic, optimistic and hands-free for the founders”.
“Mentally exhausting”
On the other hand, when the fear of a recession looms, “they are much more worried about their return on investment”. “They want to know how and why decisions are made, insists the teacher. They arrogate to themselves much more control rights. And for the entrepreneur, it becomes less fun. He loses the freedom to adopt bold measures and feels pushed out. » Especially when the start-up has grown enough to reach the status of “Unicorn” – valued at more than a billion dollars – the situation changes.
“The start-up founder must show a lot of courage and determination to shake up the status quo, says Sebastian Mallaby, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) international economics expert, author of the book The Power Law. Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption (Allen Lane, untranslated). The boss of a mature company is supposed to be responsible. It’s no wonder then that successful founders are no longer successful when their company goes public. » Hence the possible change of leader.
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