Mastodon’s founder Eugen Rochko has officially stepped down as CEO. The move comes ten months after the company announced it would transition into a nonprofit entity and that Rochko would leave his post. Rochko will take on an advisory role with the company.
In a blog post about this decision, Rochko pointed to a desire for guardrails to avoid becoming another egotistical founder “sabotaging thriving communities.” He added, “But it would be uncouth for me to pretend that there isn’t some self-interest involved. Being in charge of a social media project is, turns out, quite the stressful endeavour, and I don’t have the right personality for it.”
In his place, Felix Hlatky has taken on the role of executive director. Hlatky has worked at Mastodon since March 2020 and plans to focus on expanding the team, long-term financial stability and making it easier to run servers safely and efficiently.
Currently, Mastodon is operating as a nonprofit in the US, but aims to set up a permanent home base as a nonprofit in Belgium, known as an AISBL. Mastodon previously held nonprofit status in Germany but lost that it last year.
Mastodon has pursued outside funding since its announced transition to a nonprofit. It shared that Stock Exchange co-founder Jeff Atwood and his family gave the organization €2.2 million ($2.5 million). Part of that influx of cash has gone toward hiring new employees in its engineering, marketing, operations and product teams. Rochko also received a one-time €1 million ($1.2 million) compensation after ten years of “taking less than a fair market salary.”
