[kaplun]

A founder lives their company as the most important thing in their life, it's an extension of their life and they live and breath the company. A manager instead is being given a responsibility and will try their best to fulfill the role. A founder will never rest if they know there's an issue to be solved in the company, while the manager has a life and know they can move forward in case. A founder will not be intimidated by any internal policy or rule if they believe they need to change something. A manager will try to play by the rules, and in case try to modify them through influence. A founder is basically a ruler who truly care about the success of the company (not necessarily about the happiness and fulfilment of the people taking part in the company). For a funder the Company comes first, before anything else.

[deepsun]

Still a lot of vague statements that different people can understand differently. Still no concrete examples.

[bpmooch]

> A founder lives their company as the most important thing in their life, it's an extension of their life and they live and breath the company.

i generally consider myself a hard worker and i have done plenty of overtime in my career. i would feel pity for anyone who felt this way about any company, unless they were literally curing cancer or giving us infinite energy.

yuck

[globalise83]

At a purely financial level, making their company the most important thing in their life for a period of maybe 5-10 years means that they have a good chance at not having to work at all for the rest of their life. Doing 5-10 years of overtime for someone else falls quite short of that in most cases.

[germinalphrase]

“… they have a good chance at not having to work at all for the rest of their life.”

We must have different expectations for the failure rate of startups.

[shiroiushi]

Startup founders are probably never pessimists.

[germinalphrase]

Paranoid optimists?

[shiroiushi]

You're obviously not a startup founder with an attitude like that. And it's OK: being a founder of a startup really isn't for everyone, for good reason. Most startups fail, remember. And like you, most people don't want to dedicate their life to a company. I wouldn't want to be a founder either: I like having a life outside work. Founders are different; their company is their "baby" so they have an entirely different outlook to work than the rest of us.

[ekanes]

Your comment doesn't seem to describe you in a founder role, because founders don't do overtime. Whether or not it's healthy, and it often comes with a price, the entire concept is there's no separation (at least in the early days) between them and the company. They embody the company. So they aren't working hard or doing overtime, they're doing "whatever it takes". The grandparent concept is alluding to this different.