You're misinterpreting the statement in your search for a soapbox. Brendan was one of "Mozilla's founders," not "Firefox's founders," so he was the wrong person for the job anyway.
I actually missed that too, I guess because it wasn't where it seemed he was going after the previous paragraph.
So looking at that section again, his argument seems weak on that point. He is promoting founders as leaders because they have innate clout and don't have to engage in consensus building, but that should apply to Mozilla's founders too.
You're right, founder effect wears off in terms of consensus-free authority, and it should. Founder effects in code style and culture last practically forever, in my experience. But with Mitchell pulling $3M/year, the top job needs leadership and consensus around what to do to save Mozilla, not resting on laurels from a couple of decades ago. (BTW Mitchell was not on founding staff @ mozilla dot org; she was on Netscape's legal team and wrote the NPL and MPL.)
