Your board firing you is not a "legal obligation".

So you don’t get sued, but you lose control or even your stake or even the whole business. Remember how Uber founder got kicked out? He had a strong hand.

Chilling effect is there one way or another, and even when that does not work adverse selection does.

You have to have a very strong market position to resist the investor pressure. Kinda like Google had twenty years ago.

Or you can have a diverse set of investors who can’t or won’t be swayed by activist investors. But that usually means being public at which point your employees are incentivized by RSUs.

I'm not arguing there isn't an incentive problem. I'm arguing that it doesn't have any basis in statute. The distinction is important because it points to a different solution and different moral culpability for the system's outcomes.

The funding is raised to chase growth, otherwise no VC will ever give money.

If you get the money and then try to U-turn and refuse to chase growth, the board will start asking questions

The legal obligation is that CEO does whatever board tells him to, otherwise board can fire ceo

This still does not produce any legal obligation.

Ok but you’ve lost your mission, your tools to accomplish that mission, and effectively your company.

Yeah, but you not getting what you want, you not having own little imperium is not the same as "you having legal obligation".

This amounts to an argument that if doing something immoral gives you money and power, you can not possibly say no and no one can blame you. That somehow more money and power is good enough excuse.