The owner of the company express weak, unprofessional communications. He is deeply crossing the personal borders, stressing out, demotivating employees and overruling. His hyper-controll is close to paranoia.
The enormous staff turnover he is explaining with saying “it's a start-up”, but the company is close to 2 years old, not a start-up definitely.
The bad behaviour is explained with “he is an owner and has the right”. But the truth is — he has not.
Furthermore, the owner isn't signing contracts with employees. To me, he was saying, that it is very complicated, that having contracts for the international team is a mess and so on. That was at least strange, that for almost two years he didn't find time to develop official documents. I only understood why he isn't interested in contracts when saw him firing a person in one day, or moving a person to another position, or not paying or paying less upon firing. Absence of contracts is giving him power over employees and employees just aren't secured with anything in written.