I find this move concerning, and wish that the Founder had looked for a new CEO that shared his values rather than a Private Equity and Mergers Expert.
Furthermore, the change to the GRIT motto is worrying. Trust is useless without Transparency when it comes to code and security.
I wonder how much the new choice of CEO was up to the founder versus the venture capital investors. I’m assuming the investors had the main input.
And this is why every time a tech company raises venture capitalist funding, it’s almost inevitably on the road to enshittification, as the ones holding the pursestrings only care about what profit they can extract from the company over the next few years.
It needs a conscious effort from companies that are small but successful to stay that way, to keep their size and business model sustainable, and their mission connected to the interests of their users. From the top of my head I know Obsidian does it this way (fully user-funded), but there are probably others too.