How do you fire a Founder without having them leave the startup?

You give them a bullshit title.

The moment you hear about a new CEO being anointed at a startup, and you learn that the previous Founder/CEO is now the "Chief Vision Officer," or "Head of Strategy," or in some cases even "Chairman" — you pretty much know they got canned.

It usually means things have gone horribly wrong and from the outside you may not see it. But short of a company preparing for an IPO, the Founder rarely voluntarily relegates themselves to some arms-length title. It's almost always foisted upon them by someone else in the organization (typically investors) who are pushing hard for regime change.

So yeah, it sucks. But the way to make it less sucky is to unde...