Without having the PivotDesk side of the story, I can't help but feel that there's a second, undocumented failure here: the lack of a strong feedback culture.
Did the cofounder really not receive any performance feedback until "It might be time for you to go"? Did his team members not feel comfortable talking to him about it, or perhaps even the other cofounders, until the situation reached a boiling point? Did other team members know they had an open communication channel to provide feedback about a cofounder?
Unless the issues he describes are intrinsic personality quirks -- in which case he probably needs to understand his tendencies and find an environment where he can thrive -- this whole situation seems avoidable. All employees, but especially managers, should create time and space to have candid, mostly unstructured one-on-one conversations with a handful of direct reports / superiors / peers. Leaders should invite criticism from the very beginning and make sure everyone knows it's safe to challenge ideas and decisions. And ideally, this starts during the hiring process. Let potential employees know that you value productive dissent and do your best to evaluate them on that axis.
If you don't have people within the company that can effectively evaluate you, find someone outside of the company that can provide advice. This seems more common at the (co)founder level, although could apply e.g. to a technical person at a highly non-technical company as well.
EDIT: As a cofounder, he had the power to engineer some of these support structures himself. This isn't "mean company ruins struggling cofounder," but rather a reminder to spend time on soft skills and the human element of running a business.
I'll give some insight from the PivotDesk side - I've been working there for over 2 years. We actually have a great feedback culture - he even mentions several times in the post how there was an extended period of time where this was a known issue that was being worked on.
"Over the past six months I gradually lost the confidence of my teammates."
There were actually several different 'experiments' in different tools, methodologies, and feedback loops that happened over the course of those 6 months to try to help create the right team dynamics again. David (the CEO) is always very honest with employees if there are issues, and every attempt to resolve them is made before anyone leaves the team.
Appreciate the response and love to hear that you guys tried to make it work. I originally read the quote you pulled as rationalization / post-hoc justification, but I can see how maybe he just didn't elaborate on that bit. (I was also merely trying to balance a lot of the negative commentary with a more productive approach to these sorts of problems in the future.)
I'm guessing this was a trying time for all of you. Wish you all the best moving forward!
Did the cofounder really not receive any performance feedback until "It might be time for you to go"? Did his team members not feel comfortable talking to him about it, or perhaps even the other cofounders, until the situation reached a boiling point? Did other team members know they had an open communication channel to provide feedback about a cofounder?
Unless the issues he describes are intrinsic personality quirks -- in which case he probably needs to understand his tendencies and find an environment where he can thrive -- this whole situation seems avoidable. All employees, but especially managers, should create time and space to have candid, mostly unstructured one-on-one conversations with a handful of direct reports / superiors / peers. Leaders should invite criticism from the very beginning and make sure everyone knows it's safe to challenge ideas and decisions. And ideally, this starts during the hiring process. Let potential employees know that you value productive dissent and do your best to evaluate them on that axis.
If you don't have people within the company that can effectively evaluate you, find someone outside of the company that can provide advice. This seems more common at the (co)founder level, although could apply e.g. to a technical person at a highly non-technical company as well.
EDIT: As a cofounder, he had the power to engineer some of these support structures himself. This isn't "mean company ruins struggling cofounder," but rather a reminder to spend time on soft skills and the human element of running a business.