Indeed.<p>Even a hired CEO has a mandate and the board can fire him&#x2F;her but they can&#x27;t unduly influence that person beyond supplying (possibly unsolicited) advice. Otherwise no CEO would ever be able to do their job. Ultimately, whatever happens is the responsibility of the CEO and the board is a source of advise and makes sure the CEO does a good job. If the board is backed by the shareholders they can fire the CEO, but if the shareholders (and in this case that meant the original founders) don&#x27;t agree by simple majority to get rid of a CEO then he&#x2F;she can continue to do their job. Whether you still want to is another issue entirely.<p>Anybody in a CEO position would do well to make sure they understand their rights, obligations and their relationships with the various other entities they are dealing with. If you don&#x27;t understand those then it is a recipe for frustration and potentially disaster.<p>This is the reason why you&#x27;ll see board members leak to the press (see for instance Yahoo! recently). They can&#x27;t win the argument in the boardroom and they can&#x27;t&#x2F;won&#x27;t fire the CEO (maybe because they only have a minority share and the rest of the board and&#x2F;or shareholders do not see their way).<p>This is also why founder disputes are extremely risky for a company. Founders typically hold large blocks of shares and if some those suddenly align with of non-founders then it can really break your stride or cause serious trouble.<p>Say a company has two founder that still hold 60% of the shares, 5% is in an option pool and 35% is held by an outside investor. If the founders no longer see eye-to-eye the board suddenly holds the tie breaking vote and this could lead to the departure of either one of the founders depending on with who the board sides. In such a case I hope your shares are vested if you&#x27;re the founder that is forced to leave (and if not I hope you have a vesting acceleration clause in your contract).