The CEO of a tech email company I had not heard of is apparently unreconciled with his firing for irresponsible behavior.
A report by Bloomberg Businessweek says that the idiosyncratic CEO of a San Francisco startup was ousted due to his use of LSD in the workplace.
Justin Zhu, a co-founder and the former CEO of the email marketing firm Iterable, confirmed to Businessweek that the incident did, in fact, happen. He attempted to take a small dose of the hallucinogenic — known in some circles as microdosing — before a key investors' meeting in 2019.
It didn't work out. He said that he saw "numbers and images swelling and shrinking on the screen" and that his body felt like it was melting.
Seems this was just one of many antics, Zhu apparently considers dressing inappropriately for meetings and taking drugs "eastern values."
Zhu wore cargo shorts to a meeting with a VC firm called Geodesic, a blunder that he says resulted in the firm not investing in Iterable. Another awkward investor meeting drew comparisons to Adam Neumann, the embattled WeWork CEO who had a penchant for lofty, sometimes pretentious conversations.
At one point, Zhu told Businessweek that he believed that he was ousted as CEO because he wasn't white. He needed to run meetings with "more presence," he claimed an investor told him.
"I run the company with Eastern values," he told Bloomberg. "That doesn't mean I'm not equipped to be CEO."
But Zhu's removal from the position may have come down to his outspoken willingness to talk to media, even against other company leaders' wishes. He did so, he claimed, to "help founders who are suffering."
