[jasode]

As others already mentioned, it sounds like your preference is building a bootstrapped company from day one without need for any VC funding. You're not the intended audience for the author's blog post.

But to respond to your other questions...

>Is the way to do that really by employing an "executive team of leaders"?

Yes. Many founders can't delegate and end up obsessively micromanaging others which puts a ceiling on growth.[1]

>he author writes about an IPO, which is something that feels so far from the initial founding stage that it is useless to think about?

The IPO thinking at the very early stage isn't necessarily premature because the founders may make early decision to offer equity (stock options) to employee #2 instead of a higher market salary. (Because they have no money to pay high salaries.) If so, they've basically chosen the fork in the road towards an IPO. If the employee can't eventually sell the stock (liquidity provided by IPO), there isn't much point to offering equity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder%27s_syndrome

[dasil003]

Offering equity is nothing more than giving a stake in the company. An IPO is only one way that can pay off, and these days probably not even the most likely.

Of course VCs want you to believe that an IPO is the only successful exit, because they want moonshots. But as a founder you need to keep your own council as to the wisdom of pursuing growth at all costs.

[jasode]

>Of course VCs want you to believe that an IPO is the only successful exit,

Yes IPO is not the only way. VCs will also consider an acquisition by Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon at a good price to be a "successful exit" and will explicitly go over those possible scenarios with the founder.

But there are other motives behind exploring the acquisition scenarios:

1) VC is actually asking in a more roundabout way if the founder has an answer for the above giants cloning the feature and rendering his startup obsolete

2) VC wants to gauge founders' openness to sell to earliest buyer or has plans to stick it out and stay independent until the end

I don't think Sequoia VC is complaining too much that WhatsApp never went to IPO. They still got a good return when Facebook bought it.

Also, I don't think VCs are actually that single-minded about IPO-or-else... especially for SaaS/enterprise type of startups. They will tell the founder that the more likely exit scenario is a bigger company acquiring them. This is not a big secret.

[dasil003]

You can also grant equity in a bootstrapped or angel-funded company where the goal is not an exit, but to build a profitable business. The main thrust of my point is that granting equity to employees is not only for VC-funded companies in the typical moonshot case study.