[vinceguidry]

Right. Ultimately participating in a startup as an employee and as a founder are two totally different life choices with very different skill sets required and very different arcs. Founders have to juggle making sure the company is on track building value with courting investors, keeping track of the balance sheet, designing the product because they're the only ones with enough skin in the game to do them effectively.

It's a different level of hard work. And a different set of circumstances if the business fails.

Honestly as a society, we should be less focused on raising the mostly already-high ethical standards of busy founders and more on providing education and support to the next generation of startup founders and startup employees. Employees can bounce to any number of happy-to-have-them bigcos because those skills are almost as rare as those you need to be a founder.

If you're looking for a bottleneck, look in the mirror. There's always more that can be done to build the community. There's a huge hunger for tech skills, tech companies, tech products.

[x0x0]

your comment is... well, less coolaid maybe, or less hero syndrome

Courting investors does not build value. Building a product builds value.

Plenty of people can and do design products.

In the case of an acquihire, founders, unlike employees, often clear a decent chunk of money (say $.5-$1.5mm) plus get an interesting job. (I personally know of several such cases).

There is plenty of unethical behavior by founders, but most of it isn't discussed in public or on HN, but rather privately between peers.