Elizabeth Pollman and Yifat Aran: Ousted, Startup Failure and Equity Compensation in the Unicorn Era.
Elizabeth Pollman is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Yifat Aran is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Haifa. We dive into their article titled “Ousted” where they observe that “a substantial number of founder-CEOs have been ousted—forced or pushed to step down from the CEO role despite maintaining important indicia of control that, according to prevailing theory, empowers them to withstand such pressures.” We also discuss other topics involving the governance of venture-backed companies, including the OpenAI governance debacle, startup failure, equity compensation in the unicorn era, private vs public markets and the Silicon Valley ecosystem generally. If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. You can also contribute as a Patron on the link patreon.com/BoardroomGovernancePod or you can subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at evanepstein.substack.com This podcast is sponsored by the American College of Governance Counsel.