Kara Swisher of Recode interviewed former Markup editor in chief Julia Angwin about her ouster from the tech news site earlier this week.
Here is an excerpt:
So, I guess the only question is, what the hell happened?
Yes. So, I did a kind of founders mistake, which was I recruited Sue to be the business partner. And we didn’t talk about what our roles would be until we were a couple of weeks away from closing the gift from Craig. And then, she gave me an ultimatum that she would quit if I didn’t make her CEO and my boss. And I was scared. I thought, “Oh my God, we’re going to lose this money. How do I go back to them and say we’re starting again with a different team?”
And so, I said, “Okay, well, I’ll agree to that.” Because honestly, I didn’t want to do the business-side stuff. Most of that job is actually stuff I don’t want to do. But I need an employment guarantee. I need a contract so that I can’t be fired at will. And she said, “Sure, let’s totally do that. But it’s going to take a couple of months. Let’s just close this stuff and we’ll get to it. We’ll get to it.” And we never got to it.
Read more here.
