[jandrewrogers]

In my opinion, the relationship between founders and investors has changed with time. The role of “founder” has become much more of a structured profession, whereas it used to simply be a random person who started a tech company. In the modern version, I would argue that the role of the founder is to create high-performing investment vehicles for venture capital. This is explicitly understood by some founders and creates a different relationship with investors than “building a company” founders. Even though the activity is essentially identical, the perspectives and priorities are different because you are optimizing for slightly different things. Building companies is just a means to an end for investors.

The biggest implication is that the primary "customer" of the founder is different in these two versions of the role.

My experience is that founders who internalize that their role is to create and manage investment vehicles for venture capital have a different and higher leverage relationship with investors, including compensation, than founders that think their primary purpose is to build a company.