1. Ashneer Grover – BharatPe

The Shark Tank India judge recently quit from BharatPe after his wife Madhuri Jain Grover was sacked by the company. Grover had filed an arbitration with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre challenging the company’s decision to conduct a governance review.

2. Steve Jobs – Apple

While the Apple founder was known for his wit and intellect, he was also notorious for his short temper. In the 1980s, the board thought he was too temperamental to run the company. As a response, Jobs got Pepsi executive John Sculley to join the board but after multiple disagreements, the latter convinced the board to let go of Jobs in 1985. 

3. Jack Dorsey – Twitter

In 2006, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass launched Twitter and Dorsey took over as the CEO of the company. However, his lack of communication with board members coupled with his alleged poor management style and the company’s inability to fix its regularly crashing servers led to Dorsey being shown the door in 2008 by Evan Williams. He later returned to the company in 2015. 

4. Travis Kalanick – Uber

From sexual assault allegations to self-driving cars crashing themselves to a plethora of lawsuits with Google, everything was unravelling at Uber. Kalanick’s flamboyant frat-boy style of management was held responsible for all of it and he was eventually asked to put in his papers in 2017. 

5. Jerry Yang – Yahoo

Jerry Yang, Yahoo co-founder, resisted a buyout from Microsoft in 2008, stepped down from his position as CEO to return to his former position as the ‘Chief Yahoo’. However, just four years later, the stakeholders were putting the company up for sale and Yang had to resign. 

6. Marc Eberhard – Tesla

Yeah, Elon Musk didn’t come up with that one, I am afraid. Eberhard co-founded Tesla in 2003 and served as its CEO until 2007. Musk is just the guy who fired him. After a board meeting that Eberhard wasn’t a part of, he received a call from Musk telling him that he was getting relieved of his duties. Speaking to reporters at the time, Eberhard had said: 

There was no discussion. I didn’t get to hear what they said. I didn’t get to defend myself. I felt totally stranded.

7. Noah Glass – Twitter

Noah Glass is credited with coining the term “Twitter.” But he’s also the co-founder who goes unmentioned. That’s because he was fired from the company in 2006. While no particular reason has been made public for his dismissal, Glass said years after his sacking that he understood. His Twitter bio still reads, ‘I started this.’

8. Rob Kalin – Etsy

Rob Kalin founded Esty.com in 2005 but stepped down from his position as CEO in 2008. Two years later, Kalin reclaimed control of the company and reclaimed his CEO title. But as he tried to scale the corporation, the company quickly rid him of his powers and the CTO, Chad Dickerson took his job. FYI, I Googled, that’s a real person’s name. 

9. Sean Rad – Tinder

Rad was fired in 2014 after co-founder and former VP of marketing Whitney Wolfe made a very public sexual harassment claim against CMO Justin Mateen. Mateen had allegedly stripped her off her position as co-founder and called her a sl*t and a wh*re. Rad was accused of ignoring Wolfe’s complaints and was mentioned in the lawsuit for asking Wolfe to accept their decision or face termination. 

10. Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal – Flipkart

Flipkart was established by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in 2007. But during the 2018 purchase talks with Walmart, Sachin had a fallout with the board of directors and sold his whole stake for a billion dollars. Binny Bansal was fired from his position as CEO just months after Sachin was let go. 

FYI, billionaires never really go broke or anything, so don’t feel as bad, okay?