Chapter 2 – The Termination

Three weeks later, Ivy was called into a meeting with Sophia and the company’s newly hired VP of Engineering, a hire Ivy hadn’t been consulted on despite the position reporting, technically, to her.

“We think it’s time to transition your role,” Sophia said, her tone carefully professional in a way that felt, to Ivy, like talking to a stranger wearing her best friend’s face. “The board’s decided to bring in outside technical leadership. We’d like you to stay on in an advisory capacity, but step back from day-to-day operations.”

“You’re firing me,” Ivy said flatly. “From the company I cofounded. Built. Wrote most of the original codebase for, by hand, in your apartment before we even had funding.”

“It’s not personal,” Sophia said, a phrase Ivy would come to recognize as the exact wording used by people who fully understood how personal it actually was. “The board feels the company needs a different kind of technical leadership at this stage of growth.”

Ivy left the meeting in a fog, only realizing hours later, reviewing her original cofounder agreement at her kitchen table, exactly how vulnerable her position actually was — a poorly negotiated vesting schedule from the company’s earliest, trust-based days had left her with less protected equity than she’d assumed, and no contractual role protection at all.

She had, she realized with a sinking clarity, trusted a friendship to do the work a proper legal agreement should have done.