Letter to Founders

Dear Founder,

By the time you read this, I suspect the world will look different to the one in which I am writing.

The technologies will have changed. Markets will have shifted. New industries will have emerged, while others will have quietly disappeared.

Yet I wonder whether the questions that matter most will remain remarkably familiar.

Not how quickly you can grow.

Not how much capital you can raise.

Not even what you build.

But who you become while building it.

There is a tendency to believe that a company exists to serve its founders.

Over time, I have come to suspect the opposite.

Perhaps a founder exists to serve the company, for only a little while.

If you are fortunate, people will place extraordinary trust in you.

Employees will build careers around decisions you make.

Investors will commit capital they may have spent elsewhere.

Customers will choose your work over countless alternatives.

None of these things are entitlements.

They are responsibilities.

One day, whether by choice or circumstance, your role will come to an end.

The question is not whether you remained in control.

It is whether the institution became stronger because you were entrusted with it.

If, years from now, someone inherits what you leave behind, I hope they find something that required care to build, and little explanation to preserve.

That, to me, has always seemed the quieter measure of success.

Jon