Uber is a mess. Today, the company's nine-member board is expected to make public the findings of a wide-ranging investigation conducted by the law firm of former US Attorney General Eric Holder following allegations earlier this year of a company culture out of control. Last week, Uber fired more than 20 employees after another law firm looked into staff complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination dating as far back as 2012. Uber’s C-level ranks are thinning, too: currently, the company has no COO, CFO, or CMO. And on Monday, senior vice president of business Emil Michael—CEO Travis Kalanick’s second-in-command—announced he was departing.

Even with a sky-high worth of nearly $70 billion, the situation at the world’s most valuable startup is dire, and the blame has filtered all the way to the top. But will Silicon Valley learn from Uber's mess—specifically when it comes to giving company founders so much power? Maybe it will give startup founders and venture capitalists pause. But "pause" is not a speed anyone in the Valley likes to stay at for long.

Because of Uber's corporate structure, only Kalanick himself can really decide if he stays or goes. And the Valley has been largely welcoming of such arrangements, imbuing founders with a near-mythic ability to see a company's future clearly and weather the worst crises. The founders of both Google and Facebook enjoy majority control of their respective companies, and look how successful they are! But Uber’s woes ought to challenge the assumption behind the value of the founder. Perhaps the growth-hacking, hyper-aggressive approach to building a company with a headstrong founder at the helm might not be the only way.

"If nothing else, you will see more caution, at least for the moment, in how founders present themselves in public," says Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at NYU's Stern School of Business. "That said, though, hubris runs deep. You will have to have not just more implosions akin to Uber’s, but more punishment meted out before real change occurs."

Founder First

On Sunday, Uber's board held a seven-hour meeting to weigh the recommendations of Holder's report. Among the topics reportedly discussed: Should Kalanick take a three-month leave of absence? Because of the way Uber is set up, that decision will ultimately be up to Kalanick. Uber’s board, like so many others across the tech industry, has a “founder-first” structure—Kalanick and a few allies hold a majority of Uber’s so-called super-voting shares. As such, they have outsized sway over company decisions. Kalanick’s position is essentially secure: He could return as CEO if he did take a leave of absence, or he could even resist taking the leave at all. In short, Kalanick doesn’t really have to do anything Kalanick doesn’t want to do.

This brand of founder power isn’t uncommon in the industry. Just look at Facebook, Twitter, Google, and (more recently) Snap. Thing is, it doesn’t have to be that way—and both young entrepreneurs and venture capitalists could take a lesson from Uber's travails. Founders tend to place growth above all else, and to a certain extent for good reason: pure survival. But more balanced boards can help set more balanced priorities. "When these companies are starting up and get VC funding, very little of the funding goes to setting up culture," says Micah Alpern, a principal at management and consulting firm A. T. Kearney. "It’s not the normal focus."

With a less founder-centric structure in place on the board, companies might make better decisions to shape healthier cultures. Alpern describes a system in which venture capital firms themselves could have specialists who work with portfolio companies to help with building healthy company cultures as they grow. "It might not work if the company is made up of three or four people," Alpern says. "But when the company is getting up to 50, 60 or in the hundreds of employees, VC firms could require this."