The myth of the founder

A short rant on startups.

We find ourselves glamorizing the victors of the strange world of startups. We mythologize founders. Victorious founders are the modern Romulus abandoned at the river Tiber to die, vindicated by an augury, and later remembered for their once and future empire. As a mythology is born, the truth is subsumed by legend. It can be hard to overstate how much a startup is built for a moment in time. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple can all be traced to a few men with a vision of a different future. These founders worked hard, consolidated their gains, ruthlessly fought against their enemies, defended their moat, and eventually crushed their competition. The founders of these companies deserve enormous credit for shaping and breaking the modern world. What helps no one is the mythology that follows these founders making them appear more than human. We must learn as a society to respect and appreciate the efforts of our industrial class without giving them the status of myth or legend.