No, but there seems to be more to this than a simple question about access. Usually when a question about access comes up the root concern is more the accounta

No, but there seems to be more to this than a simple question about access. Usually when a question about access comes up the root concern is more the accountability. Access used appropriately is rarely a problem, but access misused can be very damaging. In small organizations is not uncommon for everyone to have access to everything. The required knowledge domain is small enough that everyone knows what's going on and everyone needs to be able to address issues without undue delays from process. The larger the organization grows this begins to break down and access needs to be segregated to groups that understand their areas. This prevents a person from making changes to things for which they do not understand the impact. If your organization is at this point and you feel like you need to push on denying access to something, be it founders or others, you should consider the why of this. Do these people insist on access to the DB due to lack of trust of those responsible for the DB? Are you as committed to the organization as a founder or CEO? Are they causing disruptions/outages by having this access? Ultimately founders, owners & c levels are usually the chief decision makers and therefore should have the ability to access nearly anything, and they'll view it as such. Their house, they should have keys to it kind of thing. So perhaps the argument to be made is, just because it's your house you shouldn't leave a mess because we all have to live here too.