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You have a false dichotomy between "running by committee" and "giving the founder complete control." Trying to have the board literally run the company is not

You have a false dichotomy between "running by committee" and "giving the founder complete control." Trying to have the board literally run the company is not generally a great idea. Having one or more non-founders in the leadership of the company, including possibly the CEO spot, is a fine idea and was how it used to pretty routinely be done. When the company is very small, it probably doesn't make sense to inject an outside leader. The company isn't worth anything at that point: if it fails, it just fails. But by the time the company has product-market fit, traction, revenue, and is trying to scale up, there may be plenty of reason to have non-founder leaders. Way before 20-30 years old.

rossdavidh 8y ago
Certainly there is a continuum there, but the decisions that a founder makes that are most likely to be critical for a startup's success, are the very ones that are most likely to be opposed by non-founders, because they will be the most unconventional. Typical startups fail. "how it used to pretty routinely be done" was kind of like what was called "adult supervision", as I recall, back in the late 90's. I don't find that the success rate of the late 90's startups (the dot-com bust) to be all that much better than the current boom (which, granted, is not totally bust yet but no doubt will).