Vote out dude who has 84% shareholder control.
Immediately sign yourself a golden parachute deal for 8 million right before getting fired the next day.
Seems like complete breach of fiduciary duty.
If there is any litigation, it opens Matt up to liability for the same thing. Unfortunately, as we've seen, Matt is willing to self-destruct himself and the company if it would effect sufficient self-glorification for him.
Obviously that may not be the case, but when the captain is steering the ship into rocks over and over the crew is going to take what they can and hit the lifeboats.
Ed sp
It was also the worst absolute time to pull these stunts. Between static site generators, LLMs, and the open internet dying - he couldn't have picked a worse time to do his massive mask reveal power play. Wordpress was on the precipice of irrelevance and he gave it a massive shove.
Unless you want and can go with Shopify and go all in on their platform, WooCommerce is what you need to host an online store on hosting of your own choosing. Alternatives seem to lack the numbers to tackle issues when something goes wrong without too much downtime.
(WooCommerce being a popular WordPress plugin.)
I did plenty of WP back in the day and I agree, historically, but each of the strong answers I had in my mind (db integration, editor, plugins, themes) are weakened substantially by the AI agents' ability to port a working site to a new framework. I totally agree for normal users still but for devs taking jobs on this do you think the barriers to switching have come down in size?
> Special meetings of the stockholders may be called by the board of directors or by such person or persons as may be authorized by the certificate of incorporation or by the bylaws.
California law specifically allows for a meeting called by stockholders with 10% of the vote, but for Deleware, a large holder would need authorization in the bylaws. If there was no such provision, a board could plausibly control the company until the next annual meeting, or until court action. Annual meetings can be delayed a bit, but any stockholder can force one once they're a little late.
If you were concerned about the judgement of the CEO/majority holder, and you were optimistic that it was a temporary issue, it might make sense to remove said person for as long as possible; be it a few months or a day and a half.
[1] https://law.justia.com/codes/delaware/title-8/chapter-1/subc...
That's less fiduciary duty and more hacking a payday.
If they truly believe the CEO was destroying the company/its value.
2. I guess I should move my blog off Wordpress
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1998201848008679424/OGH...
[0] see, for example, this submission from the front page a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402521.
WP users want a mature, easy to use framework, with lots of plugins, and a tutorial that can show you how to get anything done. Wordpress is the piece of software that kind of defines that genre. The fact that every host offers a Wordpress package seals the deal.
Most other software wants more than the $100 one time payment that some random WordPress plugin demanded (VikBooking.)
A large golden parachute for firing a board member could be a disincentive mechanism to do it: a 'poison pill' of a kind.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan
They could have felt they were doing the right thing, and making a public statement of the situation, but knew it was a bit of a kamikaze tactic and so made it more painful for when the eventual backlash occurs.
I'm not suggesting the board actually did anything legally risky here. The standards for that in Delaware are high. But morally, it's much harder to defend, so long as they knew this is what the outcome would be --- which it seems like they kind of clearly did.
Indeed, Matt has a fiscal responsibility to resign from the company and stfu. He's dragging it down for all the investors, of which he is only one, and doing it purely for personal glory. That is unethical.
Boards vote themselves pay packages all the time. It was unwise for Matt to agree to pay it out by firing them for reasons purely personal to Matt.
Matt, since we know you are reading this: Do what is best for the company, not yourself: go away.
If that is "all" you read in the post, I encourage you to take more than a couple seconds to read it, because you completely missed every single point.
Matt is an adult and had a choice. He approved the board. He knew the board had the severance package they had when he made it. Then he realized he regretted his own board choices because they were putting their responsibility to the company above loyalty to him personally.
As a result, he selected the option which was worst for the company, worst for investors, worst for fiscal responsibility, and best for himself and only himself. That is all far less ethical and moral than anything you've alleged.
