Founder Romance and Reality Clash

Being a founder is a romance. It both helps and burns.

I was a “proud founder”. I still am, in a way. When people ask what I did for the last decade, I say I cofounded my company. I almost never say I was an executive, a CPO or CTO, even though these were the roles I did every day.

So what is the romance? It says: I am a pioneer. I created this from scratch. I invented this concept. It also shows status and power, because you most likely own a big part of the company. And it shows curiosity. People who identify as founders first typically want to be involved in many parts of the business. They don’t want to stay in a smaller, highly focused role.

Romance is important. Our needs generate emotions, and emotions are what make us act. The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio studied patients whose emotional processing was impaired after damage to the front of the brain. Their intelligence was intact. But they struggled to decide. One of them spent half an hour choosing between two dates for his next appointment. Take the emotion away and people don’t become more rational. They become worse at deciding. So if emotions are important, romance is important. Nobody starts a company from a spreadsheet alone.

But as in other parts of life, romance can blur our vision.

Take love. Lovers come together because of romance. But some social scientists view a romantic relationship as a strategic and emotional alliance. It works because each partner believes they grow more, achieve more and meet more of their emotional needs together than they would alone. The romance is what brings you together. The benefits of the alliance are what keep you together.

A company is the same. Underneath the founder badge there is an alliance of roles. Someone builds the product. Someone sells it. The badge does neither.

And that’s the dichotomy that creates the big confusion. Romance creates expectations, and the practical reality, as always, kills them. You expect the world to recognise what you created. You expect your share to give you the final word. You expect to stay involved in everything. Then reality arrives. The market doesn’t care who invented the concept. A big share doesn’t make you right. And a growing company needs you in your role, not everywhere. The more ambitious we are, the stronger the emotions, and the bigger the gap with reality.

There is one more thing romance and founding have in common. In the moment, they give you the emotions that help you act and decide. But their impact only shows in retrospect.

A 3-month relationship might be very intense, but nobody will associate your life with that. The founder title works the same way. Founding is an action. Significance is earned afterwards. Before the business model is validated, “Founder” practically means that you pay for stuff: company formation agents, accountants and the Notion subscription. But if the company becomes the next unicorn, whatever your title is, everyone will learn your name.

On one hand, the romance is spreading. It’s now more frequent to see roles such as “founding engineer,” “founding marketer,” even “founding customer” for early adopters. This is beautiful. On the other hand, I’ve met later-stage executives and investors who mostly care about roles, essentially removing the word founder from their vocabulary. This is productive.

So what do we do with this?

My answer sits in between. Keep the word, but know that it’s a romance. A strong founder identity creates powerful emotions. Let it into your life on purpose, when you want the motivation, the status, the badge. But when business decisions are made, be conscious of your needs and your opinions. Which of them are driven by your need to be a founder, and which by your role?

Being a founder is a superpower, like romance. Use it consciously, otherwise it will consume you, and you may lose track of what’s real.

Romance can get a company started. Reality is what allows it to survive.