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As Founders, we're so worried about losing control of our startups to investors that we completely overlook how we secretly lose control to everyone else.

The fact is, most Founders don't lose control of their startups to investors; they lose control of their startups to their own organizations, whether or not they even have investors. We do it willingly, in the name of progress, and we celebrate those milestones the entire time, all the while being totally unaware of how we've let things slip.

It's not until years later when we realize we can't make key decisions independently, we can no longer shape the product vision how we'd like, or we simply can't get anything done anymore, that we realize we've lost control through our own doing.

In...

Just because our paths as Founders have served us well, it doesn't necessarily create that same path as anyone else.

Yesterday, on a beautiful evening, I was sharing an ice cream with my daughter outside, and I asked her, "So what are you thinking about for your first job?" Mind you, she's 12, but I figured it's not that far off.

Without hesitation, she responded, "Well, I think I could learn a lot from working somewhere else, but I really just want to work for myself." I'll point out that she's started two "startups" so far, so this isn't a new concept to her. While the Founder in me was beaming with pride in that answer, another voice in my head asked, "Should she?"

As parents, should we encourage our kids to follow in our Founder footste...

Entry-level workers are no longer U.S. college grads—in fact, some aren't even human anymore.

The world of entry-level talent has completely changed in the past decade, particularly for startups. Not too long ago, startups raided colleges with an implicit understanding that among college grads, you could find someone who was smart (the college part), willing to work hard (lots of free time), and relatively cheap (first job).

I know this well because I was exactly that—young, relatively smart, insanely hungry, and freakishly cheap to hire. Since then, I've been trying to find my 19-year-old clone every single day of my Founder life. What has changed, though, is that the most fertile hunting grounds for those folks are no longer U.S. colleges...

Our most broken assumption in Year 1 is that anyone will stick around for Year 2.

Spoiler Alert: They won't, and the cost of giving away a ton of equity and responsibility to people who won't be around for long is incredibly expensive.

I see this play out all the time, especially with First Time Founders who naively think that everyone who promised to help launch their startup in Year One will actually stick around to do it. It’s easy to make that mistake — when everyone’s talking a big game and acting just as excited as we are to build something amazing, we can’t help but believe them.

But all of a sudden, people stop showing up. That Co-Founder CTO whom we thought was going to build the whole product for "free" goes MIA. That mentor who ...

At what point do we find out if all of our startup sacrifice was worth it?

The prevailing theory is that as Founders, we can justify our sacrifices of time, money, and emotional energy for the bounty of riches we'll enjoy on the other side. It's almost hard-coded into all of us the moment we take the plunge to start something.

But what happens when we're on the other side and we're forced to come to terms with whether or not those sacrifices were justified? Can we truly replace what was lost in getting here with what was gained through our efforts? What if we straight up made a bad bet?

Let me tell you a personal story about my journey as a Founder over 30 (very long) years of building startups and my assessment of a mountain of sacrifice o...

The value in our startup in an acquisition is usually a fraction of what we think it is — not a multiple.

That's not because our startups lack value; it's because we often misunderstand how that value actually gets calculated. In the past 30 years, I've spent a tremendous amount of time on both sides of these transactions, both as a Buyer (we bought 6 companies at Startups.com) and as a Seller (I've sold 5 of my own companies).

What I've learned is that Founders have really unrealistic expectations of how our startups are valued at the time of a sale. Frankly, it's not because we're not smart, it's because there simply isn't a lot of guidance on how startups get valued at all.

Don’t miss out on free credits from Google Cloud for Startups!...

Our Founder ambition is our greatest source of strength — but can also be our greatest enemy.

While being a startup Founder and having ambition are nearly synonymous, that doesn't mean the very same ambition that drives us to climb mountains can't also push us off a cliff!

I know this because I've lived it many times. I wasn't born the smartest, the most privileged, or the most talented. But I was born with two gifts — ambition and a willingness to work insanely hard. When you're starting from nothing, those gifts mean everything. Yet, what we tend to overlook is that those "gifts" have some major drawbacks that come back to haunt us later on.

Don’t miss out on free credits from Google Cloud for Startups! It’s your chance to leverage power...

The startup world is in a "Silent Recession" that no one is talking about, and it's a real problem.

Most of the Founders I speak to in private say the same thing — their business isn't going well. It's a combination of a weird economy, a Nuclear Winter in startup funding, and sky-high interest rates. Economists can tell us that the stock market is at an all-time high, unemployment is down, and inflation means people are spending too quickly. Yet if you talk to enough Founders honestly, they will tell a very different story.

If you're at a point where you're trying to understand why things aren't quite going as well as they should, let me shed some light on things my friends. We're in a Silent Recession among startups, where secretly they ar...

Warning: This isn't intended to be a political statement. It's intended to explore the entitlement of earnings by Founders, regardless of where in the world they live or what system of government they are in.

Do successful Founders deserve the profit for their invested risk?

For a long time, this question seemed almost rhetorical, but in the past few decades, the entitlement of Founder profit in the world has come under serious scrutiny. As the cultural and economic divide among workers continues to increase, the notion of who "deserves" profit has become incredibly volatile.

Not surprisingly, I'm wildly biased on this topic because I’m so passionate about startups! I believe Founders earn and deserve every penny of the profit they make, a...

Everyone loves to glamorize the Founder who risked it all — until they are the Founder who lost it all.

Recently I was watching the History Channel series "The Toys that Made Us" with my kids, where they documented the inventors of toys from Barbie Dolls to Trivial Pursuit. Within the documentary are conveniently scripted scenes where actors dramatize key moments where the Founders "risked everything" to bet on their big dream, which of course, went on to become a huge hit.

When my daughter turned to me and asked if that's what it's really like - to risk everything to become successful — I turned to her and said, "Yes, if you're lazy." I said "lazy" because I didn't want to say "stupid" but when she's an adult, I'll be sure to add that part...