The Chief Embezzlement Officer (CEO)— The First Attempt

The story of two founders of a young start-up plotting against a third to force him out

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Chief Credit Grabbing Officer

It was December. We had just been chosen as the winner of the “Fastest Growing Start-up in Asia” by a leading Online Magazine. While all three of us had contributed to the growth story in our own ways, I’d submitted the pitch and led the selection process. I was all set to attend the award ceremony in Dubai. Just to be respectful of my co-founders, I decided to check if Sanjith wanted to join and of course, he accepted.

On the award night, even though we had mutually agreed that both of us would collect the award together, as soon as the announcement happened, he bolted out of his chair and went up to the stage and collected it. While I was shocked that he did this and that he did this without even checking with me, I decided not to make a big deal of it.

We met a fewinteresting people at the Awards Event and came back to the hotel late that night. I did feel bad that I didn’t even get to go to the stage to collect the award after all the work I’d done to get the award. Sanjith didn’t even know we’d responded to the nomination for the award. I went online and saw that Sanjith was already gloating about the award as though it was his own on social media. Once back in the office, Sanjith was at it claiming credit without giving any to me (and Sughosh too). I brushed it off and said that’s just Sanjith being his usual self and did not think much about it thereafter. Who’s in it for the credit anyway, I consoled myself.

The Coup Preparation

Fast-forward a few days and suddenly the topic of a Shareholder’s Agreement needing to be signed was broached. I had discussed the topic of stock vesting and exit clauses a few times since we formed the company. It was usually brushed aside by Sanjith himself. So, this push from him was a bit surprising.

I mentioned this to Sughosh, and he put a significant effort to convince me that it was probably Sanjith turning over a new leaf. This felt weird to me because literally until a week or two ago, it was Sughosh who was bitching about Sanjith and his financial mismanagement (embezzlement?) to me.

I specifically checked with Sanjith if it was a standard agreement or if there were clauses included by him that I had to get vetted by my own lawyers. He vehemently denied any such thing and said that it was a standard agreement and he was sharing it “as received” from the lawyers. When I asked if I could meet the lawyers who he had consulted, he said, “Oh, they are expensive lawyers. You let me know what questions you have and I will try and get it answered.”. All along, Sughosh was pretending not to know anything about the entire process that was happening behind the scenes with the lawyers.

Of course, that wasn’t true and I by chance found out that a few months later. Not only was Sughosh aware of the clauses, but he specifically had insisted on inclusion of several clauses to ensure that I can be eased out. It came as a shock to me when I found out because not only was Sughosh someone I thought of as almost family, but he had even said that Bhavya and I would be his kid’s godparents a few months back. He had also made some other statements which I eventually thought about and did not know if anything he had said to me in 12–15 years of our friendship was true and if I really knew Sughosh.

I thought to myself,

“If they really wanted me out, why couldn’t they just come and tell me so and we could have negotiated an exit. Why go through so much planning and plotting?”

Anyway, we made a few changes to the agreement and eventually signed it. Literally the next day, the topic of an appraisal was broached and Sanjith said that he would do my appraisal. All along, we were working as equal partners and there was no hierarchy between us. If anything, Sanjith became CEO because Sughosh and I were still in our previous company when the company was conceptualized by us and it was convenient that while Sanjith still was working full-time as a Freelancer at another firm, it was not an employee role, and he could pretend that he was also building his own company.

In fact, Sanjith joined the company full-time long after Sughosh and I had joined the company and closed 2–3 large clients. I obviously rejected the appraisal suggestion and said that I was open to the concept of an appraisal to get feedback from both Sanjith and Sughosh, but it would not be an appraisal. I also insisted that Sanjith will have to go through something similar with me and Sughosh giving him feedback. The suggestion was accepted, but conveniently, Sughosh chose not to attend my appraisal. I didn’t think much about it, but again found out why a few weeks later. This was all being done to create that artificial hierarchy and say that as per the hierarchy, my boss decided to let me go. Clauses had already been introduced in the SHA to help this theory. In hindsight, my not insisting on vetting it with my own lawyers ended up hurting me (badly).

The Employee Surveys Prep

A month or so earlier, 1–2 weeks after the awards event in Dubai, as I came into the office like any other day, I saw there was a new person sitting with the entire team in the conference room. Sanjith was sitting outside the conference room. I wondered out loud to Sanjith,

“What is happening, who is this guy”.

Sanjith said,

“Oh, it’s nothing. I am just conducting an employee survey.”

Considering we had 10–12 employees and many of them kids with less than 1–2 years of experience, engaging an external consultant to conduct a survey did seem like overkill assuming the intent was to just get feedback. Just send a SurveyMonkey form out and collect the damn feedback I thought. What I found out soon after made it appear stranger?

Apparently, all employees had been asked to rate all the Founders and compare them. They were told specifically to tell 3 positive and 3 negative things about all Founders and of course, the raw data was never shared with us, the concept was to keep the feedback anonymous apparently. The idea of course was great. What made it weird of course was that the person conducting the survey was Sanjith ’s close buddy and apparently his drinking partner. Of course, people who drink cannot also keep secrets when they are drunk.

At the time I didn’t think much about this whole exercise and for 1–2 months thereafter, we didn’t hear anything about the survey results — the SHA was getting signed — the plan was being executed upon. When the feedback was eventually shared though, strangely, there were no negatives for Sanjith and 1–2 negatives for Sughosh (mild ones) even though the 3 negatives were told as mandatory to all 10–12 employees. How convenient?

The First Attack

Towards the end of January, Sughosh and I did go through the appraisal of Sanjith in one of the few Board Meetings we had during our entire Company’s short journey and incidentally one of the few in our entire existence in 9–10 years. In hindsight, it almost appears that 4–5 of the 7–8 Board Meetings that have been called were only conducted to try to remove me from the company and we’ve spent well close to 4–5 years out of our 8–9 years figuring out a way to break apart instead of working together to grow the company.

Soon after, it was time for Sughosh to go back to the US and just days before he was supposed to leave, Sughosh (or I forget maybe it was Sanjith) sent out an email inviting me for a Board Meeting. My gut instinct told me there was something fishy about this and I said I am ok to have a Management Meeting, but not a Board Meeting at such short notice. I cited a technicality that they had left in the SHA that Board Meetings need to be done with at least 7 days’ notice (probably a standard clause that got left behind).

Sughosh for reasons that became clear much later took offense to my rejecting the board meeting and acted as though I was questioning his integrity and even came home directly instead of going to office to find out why I did not want to have a Board Meeting and that it was only a way for us to get together as a Team before he leaves to the US. “You don’t want to do a farewell board meeting”, he said. He of course was playing his part in trying to be the “Good Cop” trying to extract information from me and see if I’d found out about their plan. This had been going on for months as I found out later.

Once I convinced him that there wasn’t any specific reason, but just that it felt weird suddenly calling a board meeting like this, he let it be and no, he left for the US a few days later and of course, the meeting wasn’t so urgent apparently because we didn’t even have a Management Team meeting. I found out later that the fact that we had lost a major account made them accelerate their plan to remove me — so instead of fighting when the chips are down, they accelerated their plan to throw me under the bus.

The Up’risal

In early March, my appraisal was eventually scheduled and it all started to come together. Sanjith sent a long email citing why I had no role to play in the company’s growth so far and that the feedback (as per the Fake Employee Survey as I now know it) from the employees was overwhelmingly negative and he felt that I was not even putting any effort on Sales.

I clearly did not feel good about it at all and below are some of my reasons:

• Around 70% of our revenues up to that point was from one account. I had converted it single-handedly with no support from Sanjith and Sughosh by working on 2 parallel projects with the same client(one with one of our early employees who is still with us) and another on my own working 16–18 hours for 2–3 months. I also then built the team from scratch and also stabilized the account almost single-handedly.
• I had moved to the US and with little to no support from Sanjith and Sughosh (since they were busy with a critical pitch at the time), I had helped build and maintain a billing of around half a million with a small team of 2–3 people that eventually grew to 6. While I was billed 50% at the time, I invariably did work nearly full-time during the day (US Time) and during the night with the offshore team.
• Only once I came back in March did I pass on the account to Sughosh did things ease up on the hours front. I of course still continued working on Delivery until October 2014 bringing in new team members and processes to stabilize delivery.
• My Mom (who I was really close to) had a stroke in March 2014, was hospitalized for a month, was going through physio / rehabilitation and then was hospitalized again in April/May and eventually passed away in May. Once I got back to work, I immersed myself into work fully and we hired some great people and started building a great team some of whom are still with us to this day.
• If Sanjith took over delivery in October and we lost the account literally 3 months later, I clearly couldn’t be made a scapegoat for it.
• And given Sanjith had not converted even one new account in 24–36 months (including when he was part-time, but called CEO) and Sughosh had not created enough pipeline despite being in the US for nearly a year, how was I being targeted for not contributing to Sales.
• The worst part was the survey had some really gross things that were said about me that I knew for sure weren’t true. They had just gone too far in their fakery, making up things about my comments on women employees and as I found out from some of the ladies in our office later, the comment was for Sughosh, and it was manipulated by this friend of Sanjith to show me in poor light.

While I still sometimes wonder how I continued to work with people who tried to do this to me, in my mind, there was a semblance of an apology from both of them (even though they technically denied any such action) and I let it be because I felt embarrassing them might make it difficult for them to work with me.

The feedback and the appraisal comments (put in writing for reasons that were obvious later) just did not make sense to me and I expressed the same to Sanjith. He said that he stands by this and he said that I needed to get 10 leads within 30 days and that there would be a review in 30 days. This too seemed a bit extreme — but I took it up as a challenge since even at the time, I didn’t know what the intent was.

It’s You or Me (or was it Us)

Around 3–4 weeks later, Sanjith set up a meeting to review and he was shocked to find that I’d generated not 10, but around 20+ leads by running our very first webinar. Most of these were leads who had shown genuine interest in a specific product Sanjith was working on and hadn’t made much progress on. He should have been happy.

But, their masterplan had failed and Sanjith lost his bearings — he refused to believe these were genuine leads (even though he had given no qualification criteria) and he eventually said,

“It’s you or Me, let’s have a board meeting and then decide”.

The attempted board meeting in February started to make sense then. I was shocked, didn’t know what to say and broke the news to Bhavya. She was even more shocked and said that I should speak to Sughosh. She truly trusted him at the time. She had contemplated tying him a Rakhi and she says to this day,

“Thank God, I did not end up doing that.”

I called Sughosh and his reaction was even more shocking — he said in a very distant tone

“It is an issue between you both and that you should sort it out between yourselves.”

I then asked him a simple question, if you have to vote on my being thrown out of my own company without a valid reason, how would you vote. He refused to answer. This was the guy who had an career in analytics because I put my reputation on the line to recommend him in an earlier company twice when he was first rejected by the interview panelists. While I never made any claims about this until this day, his own wife had told me many times that Sughosh should be grateful to me for his current position. And here he was — literally throwing me under the bus. I guess so much for being grateful.

1. “Karma is a Bitch and she’ll get you when you least expect it” and

2. “God finds his own unique ways to help those who are honest”.

The Expose

These two are almost my life’s mantras and this came true soon after. 1–2 days after that appraisal day as I was sitting in my cabin in the office, I received a post addressed to Sanjith. Since it was from a law-firm, I assumed it was for the drafting of the SHA, I peeled it open to take a look at how much they’d charged.

What I saw there gave me the shock of my life. The entire plot was out there: The multiple meetings both of them had with the lawyers, discussions and plotting on how I can be shunted out, the planned fake survey, the appraisal and the multiple iterations to include every clause to make the exit forced. The two of them had got caught with their pants down. I later got multiple confirmations on every piece of the puzzle including multiple proofs handed down to me by the two plotters themselves because of their stupidity / arrogance / guilt.

Long story short, I got legal advice and was told that there was no way they would be able to go ahead with this plan and that it was a badly drafted legal document. So much for the 3–4 Lacs spent from the company coffers to suit their agenda.

I eventually confronted Sughosh the day before the Board Meeting and I eventually told him

“I know what you’ve both done and that I am not going to walk out of my own company like this. I am shocked you of all people would do this. But, go ahead and try it if you want.”

The (Temporary?) Resolution

They had been exposed and their plan was of course to do this without Sughosh getting exposed. Sughosh eventually spoke to Sanjith the morning of the supposed board meeting to remove me and Sanjith reached out to me asking to go out on a long drive in his car. We spoke at length and he said that he only wanted us to work more closely together for the good of the company.

While he didn’t admit to any of the plotting which I was well aware off by then, he seemed genuinely wanting to make amends and I thought it’s best to let it be instead of making them feel bad about their cheap actions.

I asked a few questions and eventually said if the intent is to work together, let us focus on that. Just for the record, I asked Sanjith to share the brief sent to the lawyers and he sent over what was clearly an edited version of the email with only him in the thread and almost to show this as a standard request for a SHA. Who pays 3–4Lacs for a standard SHA anyway.

I anyway decided to let it be, trust them again and together focus on the company’s growth. This of course turned out to be my biggest mistake in hindsight, almost as big as if NOT bigger than starting the company with these two individuals.

Coming Soon:

I know you might have a lot of questions:

• What happens next?
• Did they try this again?
• Did they go through with this the next time?
• And what’s with the title, “Chief Embezzlement Officer”.

All this and more will be revealed in the next few parts. And this is a Drama that involves Crime, Politics, Law-Enforcement, Emotions and Family. Watch this space.

Note:

This is a draft of one chapter in an upcoming corporate drama novel tentatively titled “The Chief Embezzlement Officer”. All characters in this series are fictional and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.