Over the years I found that, broadly speaking, you encounter two types of startups: On one hand you have companies which are the extension of their founders brain, heart and hands. The companies which live and breath the founders’ ethos and are synonymous with the individuals which originally built that company.
And then you have the ones where which are the embodiment of an idea – detached from the founders, these companies go on to live their own lives. The founders are merely the people who breathed live into the idea in the first place and cradled it into existence.
I don’t think there is inherently anything wrong, bad or specifically good about either way. But you have to figure out which type of company yours is — as running them is pretty different. The first requires the founder(s) to be soul (and often operational center) of the organization. The latter asks of founders to create culture, operating principles and decision making systems which go beyond the individual.
Which type of company are you building?