“Goodnight sweetheart, I still love you!” — a startup founder
A founders love for his startup…
This relationship between the startup founder and the startup is like the relationship between the artist and his painting. Though the startup institution has been rationalized into a business similar to most others …at its core, the startup is a creation of its founder …hence we hear these words from the founder … “Goodnight sweetheart, I still love you”.
Paintings, has various players in its life cycle, the artist, the seller, the exhibition, the buyer, the museum etc… but the soul of it stays with the artist. Similarly the startup has the startup founder, the seeds, VC’s, etc in the game, where everybody else puts their skin in the game only the founder has his soul in it. He lives everyday…breaths everyday that his creation grows and blooms…hence these words “Goodnight sweetheart, I still love you”.
When an artist or the founder sees that his creation is going to die … it is really hard for the founder with the soul and heart in the game… but not for the other players in the game.
We rarely see the funding middlemen at the death bed of a startup, which on a previous day, they had bet it to be a unicorn. In the high end betting game called investing… it is just part of the game …you win some… you loose some, but not for the founder…you loose one… you loose all!
Yes money is important for things to be build…but why has it become more important than the creator. As society, we have build institutions where the game is always played as a team with a few players as the soul for it…but him alone does not make it successful…but then we need the support institution to grow it — so not fair.
Someday institutions and society will have grown to support the artist at the soul of his creation and that be the day when the artist sleeps with his creation for rest of his life.
Everything I do, I do it for you
Everything I do darling
We will see it through
We will see it through, yeah
Yeah, just look into your heart
You can’t tell me you’ll die for love
Oh yeah, I’ll be there
I’m goin’ all the way, all the way
