Founder Control: The Hidden Risk

As a WordPress.com user, I have watched the recent events surrounding Matt Mullenweg with keen interest.

Mullenweg co-created WordPress, which began in 2003 and became one of the world’s most widely used publishing platforms.
He later founded Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce, among other products.
It is an extraordinary achievement.

But the recent conflict between Mullenweg and Automattic’s board raises a question that reaches far beyond one company or one founder.

What happens when the person who built an organisation becomes so powerful that challenging them becomes a problem?

In September 2026, Automattic’s board voted to place Mullenweg on paid leave.
He regained control roughly 33 hours later, and the directors involved subsequently departed or were removed.
He later announced a new board.

The episode unfolded against the background of the ongoing legal dispute between Automattic, Mullenweg and WordPress hosting company WP Engine.
On 24 September 2026, a federal judge allowed WP Engine’s antitrust claims to proceed after rejecting a request to dismiss them. The ruling addressed whether the claims could continue, not whether the allegations were true.
Other claims were dismissed or narrowed, and the wider litigation remains unresolved. Automattic and Mullenweg dispute WP Engine’s allegations.

We do not need to decide who is right in this dispute to consider the leadership questions it raises.

When does the determination that helped build a business become an unwillingness to be challenged?
When does protecting a vision become protecting the person who created it?
And how does a founder know when holding on to control is no longer in the organisation’s best interests?

When your greatest strength becomes your greatest weakness

Founders often succeed because they see something others do not.
They take risks, challenge accepted thinking and persist when others would walk away.
Their conviction can be the difference between an idea that remains on paper and an organisation that changes an industry.

But success changes the circumstances in which that conviction operates.

In the early stages, speed and personal control may be essential.
A founder makes decisions quickly, carries the consequences and keeps the organisation moving.
As the business grows, however, its responsibilities expand.
Employees depend on it.
Customers trust it.
Investors commit capital.
Partners build their own businesses around its products and services.

The organisation becomes bigger than the original idea, and its consequences extend beyond the person who created it.

Yet the leadership habits that helped the founder succeed can remain unchanged.
Confidence becomes certainty.
Independence becomes resistance to scrutiny.
A relentless willingness to challenge the status quo can gradually become an unwillingness to be challenged oneself.

This is not necessarily arrogance, and it is not unique to founders.
It is a risk that comes with power.

The more successful we become, the easier it is to assume that the judgement that got us here will be sufficient to take us forward. But what if the very qualities that made us successful are now limiting the organisation?

When the board is right. And when it isn’t.

There is no simple rule that a founder should always retain control or that a board should always know better.

Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 following a power struggle with the company’s leadership and board.
He returned in 1997 and went on to lead one of the most remarkable corporate turnarounds in modern business history.

His story reminds us that boards can misjudge a founder’s vision, underestimate what makes an organisation distinctive or favour stability at the expense of innovation.
Removing a founder is not automatically an act of good governance.

Travis Kalanick’s departure as Uber CEO in 2017 offers a different perspective.
After a period of rapid growth accompanied by serious controversies over the company’s culture and leadership, investor pressure led to his resignation.
The founder who helped build Uber was no longer seen by key stakeholders as the right person to lead it through its next phase.

These examples are not verdicts on either man.
They illustrate the difficulty of separating a founder’s contribution from an organisation’s future needs.

Building an organisation and being the right person to lead it indefinitely are two different achievements.

A good board must be capable of recognising both.
It should protect a founder’s ability to create value without allowing that founder’s influence to make meaningful oversight impossible.

Equally, founders need to distinguish legitimate challenge from resistance to change.
Disagreement is not necessarily disloyalty.
Sometimes it is precisely what the organisation needs.

When does ownership become entitlement?

There is an important distinction between ownership and stewardship.

Ownership gives someone rights.
Stewardship carries responsibilities.

Founders may have invested their money, reputation, time and personal energy in building something.
They may reasonably believe that others do not understand the business as deeply as they do.
In many cases, they are right.

But creating something does not mean every subsequent decision should be made according to the creator’s preferences.

This becomes particularly important when a business sits within a wider ecosystem.
WordPress is an example of a project whose influence extends well beyond Automattic.
Developers, businesses, publishers and customers all contribute to or depend on an environment built around open-source software.

The broader question is how a founder should exercise influence when the consequences of their decisions reach people and organisations they do not directly control.

The same question applies to any business that has become integral to its industry.
A founder may have the authority to make a decision.
That does not automatically make it the wisest decision, or the one that best serves the organisation over time.

The more powerful a leader becomes, the more important it is to distinguish between what they can do and what they ought to do.

Have we made it difficult for people to tell us the truth?

Leadership does not happen in isolation.
The people around us, and the freedom they have to disagree, can determine whether power is exercised responsibly.

Can senior executives tell the founder that a strategy is failing without worrying about their future?
Can a board examine a decision independently, even when it challenges the person who appointed its members?
Can employees question a direction without being treated as disloyal?

If the honest answer is no, the problem is bigger than one difficult personality.

A board that cannot challenge a founder is not providing effective oversight.
An executive team that only presents the answers the founder wants to hear is not providing effective leadership.
And a leader who surrounds themselves with agreement may eventually lose access to the very information they need to make good decisions.

There is a particular irony here.
The more successful leaders become, the less likely people may be to challenge them.
Past success creates authority; authority creates deference; and deference can gradually remove the friction that improves decision-making.

It is worth asking ourselves a harder question: if the people around us are reluctant to disagree, how much of that have we created ourselves?

Do we genuinely welcome challenge, or only when it confirms what we already believe?
Have we built an environment in which people can tell us the truth, or one in which they have learnt what not to say?

The answers may tell us more about our leadership than our latest results ever could.

When do we realise this is bigger than ourselves?

The real test of leadership is not whether we can defend our decisions.
It is whether we can examine them honestly, particularly when our identity, reputation or authority is tied to the outcome.

That requires more than good intentions.
It requires clear accountability, independent oversight, credible succession planning and a culture in which dissent is treated as information rather than betrayal.

It also requires personal discipline.

Are we defending a decision because it remains right, or because changing course would mean admitting we were wrong?
Are we protecting the organisation’s future, or protecting our position within it?
What evidence would make us change our minds?

These are difficult questions because they challenge more than our decisions.
They challenge our view of ourselves.

Founders can become so closely identified with their businesses that criticism of the organisation feels like criticism of them personally.
But the two are not the same.
A challenge to a strategy is not necessarily a rejection of the founder’s contribution.
A successor’s different approach does not erase what came before.

An organisation that matters should be able to evolve beyond the preferences of the person who created it.

The courage to let go

Letting go of control does not always mean leaving the business.
It might mean delegating decisions, appointing a genuinely independent board, trusting a successor or accepting that the organisation needs a different leadership style.

Nor should founders surrender their vision simply because others disagree with them.
Strong leadership sometimes means holding the line when the easier option is to give in.

The distinction lies in whether the leader is acting for the organisation or primarily to preserve their own position.

That distinction can be difficult to make when the business has become inseparable from a founder’s identity.
The company may represent years of sacrifice, personal ambition and a belief that no one else could have built it in quite the same way.

But an organisation’s long-term strength is demonstrated by its ability to develop, adapt and make good decisions beyond the founder’s direct control.

Perhaps the most difficult leadership question is also the simplest:

If I genuinely believe this organisation matters, am I prepared to do what is best for it – even when that means I am no longer the person making every decision?

The question worth asking ourselves

The story surrounding WordPress and Automattic is still unfolding.
The legal disputes should be resolved on the evidence, not through assumptions about the personalities involved.
And the boardroom episode alone cannot tell us the full story of what happened or what should happen next.

But it offers an opportunity to reflect on a wider leadership challenge.

The power that helps us build something can eventually prevent it from becoming what it needs to be.
The confidence that enables us to challenge an industry can make it harder to hear criticism.
And the determination that carries an organisation through difficult beginnings can become a liability when its circumstances change.

Responsible leadership requires us to examine those possibilities before others are forced to do it for us.

It means building organisations in which challenge is possible, accountability is real and the future is not held hostage to one person’s willingness to let go.

The question is not whether founders deserve influence.
Many have earned it through extraordinary effort and achievement.

The question is whether they can recognise that influence as a responsibility, rather than an entitlement.

How will we know when holding on is no longer an act of leadership, but an act of self-interest?