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.

Unless there was some other news that I might have missed, it was their previous Chief Financial Offer and Chief Legal Officer, not the board members.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692654

I guess it was mostly advisory, with the added purpose of making it seem like the various organisations were stewarded by members of the community that were not Matt Mullenweg.

Delaware law requires a board.

Whether limited liability should actually be allowed at all in such a situation is a better question.

You can't know what other conditions Mullenweg signed in contracts such as shareholders agreements etc.

Typically if you take VC money, the VCs will require the ability to sack the founder and take control, perhaps if particular targets are not met.

I've seen it: an ambitious owner agreed to stretch goals, and the VCs took took over the company from the founder after they had predictably failed to meet the goals.

The company is being kept alive by 1. People who Google “how to set up an online blog/store” and click the first link and 2. Those who are already in too deep and don’t want to make the effort to migrate.

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.)

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.

> 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...