[kresten]

I’m not in agreement with you.

The original poster is saying that as founder, no one cares to the level you do, no one else has as much at stake, others care but to a point.

The original posts point is that as founder it’s really up to you and no one else.

If this fails, as founder you lose all the things you risked, possibly everything you have. No one else is likely to have as much at risk as you. This means you care in a way and to a depth no one else does.

Of course others care, of course your grandma cares, of course your momma cares, of course head of marketing cares and of course the investor cares, but none of these people have everything on the line.

Everyone else except you can walk away. No one else is going to relentlessly hit this problem till it’s solves except you.

That’s the point.

[mikk14]

In my opinion, you're fundamentally mis-interpreting the original post. The author is NOT saying that you as a founder care more about your success than, say, your stakeholders. If you fail, they care, and a lot, because you made them lose money.

What the post is saying is that they don't care about you having a story about WHY you failed. Nobody else cares about that.

To stay in the metaphor, if you lose a game and your story is "well we have a lot of injuries", the only thing other people will hear is "yep, here's someone who's trying to find an excuse for why he failed".

They don't care you have a nice little theory about why you lost. They want you to win. So focus on finding a way to win, not to explain your loss.

Whether that's wise advice I don't know. I feel that knowing why you failed is important per se, even if other people don't care.

[dasil003]

I agree it’s important to know individually why you failed, this goes along with self awareness which is critical in all facets of life.

That said, after working with a lot of people in problem solving careers you’ll tend to see that the excuse vs adjustment response is not purely situational; different personalities will tend to one or the other. There’s sometimes a thin line between honest analysis of failure and reflexive ego protection. Whether founder or not you don’t want to be on the wrong side of that line.

[headsoup]

This is only true where the founder has the most risk relative to the rest, but I'd say that's often not so. Founders can have a career stream to fall back to, additional capital, Etc. Some people could risk being on the street if they lose their job.

There are also numerous ways the founder can walk away

It's very relative.

[seer]

Isn’t the lack of equitable outcome a major driver in this? Of course head of marketing will not care as much - they will not be compensated as much if they solve your business problem’. Both in status and money.

As a counter example - we can look at organizations which have goals that are not only monetary in nature - spacex, nasa in the 50s, the red cross - organizations where there are plenty of people that care about the goal alongside the founders to a great extend. Plenty of people there outside of leadership also care a lot. A startup that picks a worthy goal like that can in fact attract those types and do so regularly. People do care.

[heavenlyblue]

>> but none of these people have everything on the line.

What everything exactly? I don’t know a single CEO who isn’t paid at least a good average wage of a high-level exec in a startup.

On top of that, they have 0 liability if anything goes south.

And then the golden chutes.

[endothrowho333]

Founder != CEO

Individual founders that are most likely to be a current or past employees, and not someone that has climbed into the C-suite.

There is no golden parachute for a new private company. If it fails, the founder will likely have to go back to regular employment (much more difficult if he exited stable employment to work full time on his project). Whatever money is used up (usually personal) is lost forever and any plans of retirement must be pushed back.

[mcphage]

> If this fails, as founder you lose all the things you risked, possibly everything you have. No one else is likely to have as much at risk as you.

> Everyone else except you can walk away.

Tell that to Adam Neumann.