Letting Go
Mark Fletcher, the founder of Bloglines has this to say:
As an employee climbing the corporate ladder at a company, it's all about getting more. More responsibility, more control, a larger salary, a bigger title. However, the exact opposite is true when you start a company. A big part of starting and building a company is about giving up. A founder is in a weird position. When you first start a company, everything is yours. You own all the stock, you make all the decisions. This point of creation is the only time this will be the case, however. Forever after, the founder must give up more and more control to other people and more and more ownership to employees, investors, etc. The founder must do this for the company to be successful, but at the same time this is the opposite of what many people are used to doing.
My experience was that this transition was emotionally challenging, and I suspect where the founders of many successful organizations go wrong.
1 comment
That is a true a statement as you are likley to read. It's very difficult to even consider giving up control ... at least I found it so. The company I founded was more like a child than anything, and you don't sell children.