Grapevine / gossip : it’s one of the company which has an executive recruiter that works very closely with the founders. When they want to get someone out who they are not able find reasons to fire, they get this exec recruiter to place them in other startups. It is a whole different story that at least 4 other new startups did fall pray to this ploy and hired these folks but cut to 3 months - regretted the hiring decisions.
People who they are not able to fire are the erstwhile founder entourage who are not competent at all but stayed bcos of being e yes-people.