If you’ve ever sat through a mandatory corporate governance training, you probably walked away believing that boards of directors hold the ultimate power. You were told that checks and balances keep CEOs in line. You were lied to.
Just look at Automattic. In a move that gave the entire tech industry whiplash, the board reportedly booted founder Matt Mullenweg as CEO. Two days later, he was back. It’s the kind of power fantasy that makes you wonder if corporate governance is just a cheap costume pulled over old-fashioned feudal rule.
In Silicon Valley, a board of directors isn’t a check on power; it’s an elaborate, velvet-draped theater prop.
We’ve seen this movie before. Sam Altman got fired by the OpenAI board in 2023, and within days, the board was dissolved, and he was restored to the throne. The pattern is clear: when you try to decapitate a founder-led company, you don’t get a smooth succession. You get a violent snapback to the exact same power structure, exposing just how little actual governance exists in these organizations.
But dismissing this as a simple clash of egos misses the darker reality. The board didn’t fail because they lacked legal paperwork. They failed because they had no credible succession strategy. When you fire the founder, you aren’t just removing an executive. You are severing the company’s brand identity, its stakeholder loyalty, and its core authority.
Firing a founder without a succession plan isn’t a coup; it’s a collective hallucination.
You might think this is just internal drama at a company you don’t care about. But you should. WordPress powers a massive portion of the open web. If you build on, invest in, or depend on the internet, this kind of leadership instability directly threatens your livelihood.
And the timing couldn’t be worse. The real fight here isn’t about Matt Mullenweg’s personality. It’s about what Automattic becomes when AI completely commoditizes digital publishing. The traditional moats of open-source platforms are eroding fast. When anyone can spin up a functional, AI-driven publishing engine with a single prompt, WordPress’s legacy infrastructure becomes a vulnerability, not a strength.
Removing the founder in the middle of an existential technological shift doesn’t fix the problem. It just removes the only person holding the chaos together. The board realized—too late—that keeping the founder exposes massive strategic risk, but removing him exposes that there is absolutely no one else steering the ship.
We preach democracy in our governments, but we happily submit to absolute monarchy in our workplaces.
The Automattic saga isn’t a tragedy. It’s a dark comedy. It proves that in the face of AI disruption, companies will cling to the cult of the founder because it’s the only moat they have left. The board tried to stage a revolution, only to find out the kingdom can’t survive without its king. And for the rest of us building on the open web? We’re just peasants hoping the king knows what he’s doing.
FAQ
Q: Doesn't this just prove Matt Mullenweg is a tyrant who can't be controlled?
A: It proves he's the ultimate authority, but 'tyrant' misses the point. The board's failure wasn't a lack of effort; it was a lack of leverage. When a founder holds the brand identity and stakeholder loyalty, they aren't a tyrant—they're the keystone. Remove them, and the structure collapses.
Q: What's the practical implication for developers and businesses?
A: If you build on WordPress, your business relies on the stability of one person's judgment. The board has proven they cannot act as a check on his power. If strategic drift happens during the AI publishing revolution, there is no safety net.
Q: Is corporate governance completely useless in tech then?
A: In founder-led tech companies, yes. It's a costume worn to appease investors. When push comes to shove, ownership, loyalty, and brand identity trump any board resolution. Governance only works when the CEO isn't the company's scarcest resource.