‘CEOs and Founders resigning from their own startups is not failure, but maturity’: Anupam Mittal opens up about Deepinder Goyal’s exit

Following Zomato co-founder Deepinder Goyal’s recent announcement of stepping aside as chief executive of Eternal, many speculated whether he was pushed out.

However, Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal argued that founders resigning from CEO roles should not be seen as a crisis, but as a sign of organisational maturity.

Anupam Mittal says Deepinder Goyal stepping aside is "maturity"

“This is not failure, this is maturity,” Mittal wrote on LinkedIn, pushing back against the narrative that a founder stepping aside is inherently negative. “For years, Indian founders believed CEO = Founder = CEO. That idea is outdated.”

He reasoned that startups scale faster than founders can evolve as managers.

“Startups today are growing faster than founders can grow as managers,” he said. “What works at 10 people breaks at 100 & what works at 100 breaks at 1000.”

Founders, he noted, are typically strongest in the earliest phases of a company’s life, what he described as the “0 to 1 and 1 to 10” stages, when vision, hustle and product-market fit matter more than formal systems. But as companies move into larger, more complex phases, a different skill set becomes critical. “Beyond a certain growth curve, companies need a different skill set,” Mittal wrote.

He explained that typically the strongest are in the earliest phases of a company’s life, what he described as the “0 to 1 and 1 to 10” stages, when vision, hustle and product-market fit matter more than formal systems.

“Beyond a certain growth curve, companies need a different skill set,” Mittal wrote.

“In global markets, this is encouraged,” he said. “Founders step aside, and professional CEOs step in. The company wins, the founder still owns the upside & most times, shareholders are better off.”

In India, however, similar moves are often framed as dramatic failures. “We dramatise this as ‘fired’, ‘failure’ & even ‘fraud’,” Mittal wrote, adding pointedly: “Most of the time it is none of that.”

“I think making oneself replaceable should be one of the key goals of every founder,” he remarked.

Mittal also pointed to some of the world’s most valuable technology companies. “That is how companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft became enduring giants,” he said. 

According to the Shark Tank India judge, stepping aside is often not about loss of control, but about choosing what is best for the organisation. “Often, it is simply the founder choosing what is best for the company,” Mittal wrote.

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