There’s a peculiar moment in the life of a company when the person who created it becomes its biggest liability. They don’t mean to, of course. They still show up full of vision and caffeine, still believe they are steering the ship, still insist that what’s needed now is a bigger office, a think-tank, a social media intern, perhaps a bronze bust of themselves in reception. It all sounds terribly impressive until you realise nobody can explain why any of it needs to exist. Welcome to founder’s syndrome.
It begins innocently enough. The founder is the hero of the origin story. They built the company from nothing, lived on instant noodles, mortgaged their shoe collection, and worked nineteen hours a day. Their instincts were right when the business was small and fast and chaotic. The problem is that as it grows, the same instincts become the equivalent of trying to steer a container ship with a teaspoon. Control that was once essential becomes suffocating. Decisions that used to take seconds now require process and data, and process feels like betrayal to the person who once was the process.
Psychologically, founder’s syndrome is a fascinating cocktail of fear, ego and identity confusion. On one hand there’s genuine anxiety about losing control. The company is no longer an extension of their personality; it’s a thing with its own culture, its own momentum, and that’s terrifying. On the other hand there’s the ego, whispering that nobody else could possibly understand it the way they do. Put those together and you get an intoxicating belief that salvation lies in more vision, more ideas, more noise. They don’t realise that what the company needs now is less genius and more governance.
Behaviourally, it’s a masterclass in self-sabotage. The founder who once fought to get meetings now creates ten emails a day. They hire people then second-guess them. They talk about bright young things as though enthusiasm is a substitute for skill, and they commission office managers and visionary rebrands while the actual core team gasps quietly in the corner. It’s not cruelty. It’s displacement activity. When faced with questions, founders retreat into theatre.
The science of it, such as it is, sits somewhere between organisational psychology and developmental theory. Human beings build identities around their roles, and when that role changes, we experience a kind of existential vertigo. In psychology it’s called role loss or identity threat. The founder has to evolve from entrepreneur to leader, from doer to delegator, from hero to host. That transition requires humility, emotional intelligence and, most of all, self-awareness. Sadly, those are the very things success erodes. The dopamine hit of being the centre of everything is addictive. Letting go feels like withdrawal.
Real-world examples are everywhere. The charity head who insists all press releases must go through them, even though they haven’t written one since 1994. The tech founder who holds a strategy away day every month because thinking big is easier than fixing the backlog. The community project that was thriving until its creator started talking about franchising and global impact when everyone else just wanted to get the newsletter out. You’ll spot them by the slightly glazed look on their team’s faces, the nervous laughter when new titles like Chief Synergy Officer appear, and the way good people start to leave quietly, like party guests slipping out before the host starts another speech.
There’s another cruel twist in the founder’s syndrome saga, and it comes with a glossy brochure, a PowerPoint deck, and a day rate that could fund a small moon landing. Once a founder drifts into empire-building and self-importance, they become catnip for a certain species of opportunist: the consultant. Or, as I like to call them in this context, the con-sultant.
Con-sultants are masters at spotting ego gaps. They hover near vulnerable founders like remoras on a shark, sensing the insecurity under all that visionary talk. Their pitch is never about fixing problems; it’s about validating the founder’s identity. They say things like “You’re right to think bigger,” or “I’ve never met anyone with your level of foresight.” They mirror the founder’s self-image perfectly, and before long the invoices start breeding.
This is how it goes. A founder, anxious about being taken seriously, hires a branding con-sultant to “reposition the company.” Then another to “refine the vision.” Then one for leadership alignment, cultural coherence, team synergy, stakeholder engagement, and digital transformation. Nobody quite knows what any of these people do, but they all produce beautiful slides and phrases like “paradigm optimisation.” The office wall fills with frameworks and mission statements, and the actual work quietly slows to a crawl and former colleagues leave.
From a psychological point of view, this happens because founders in this phase crave reassurance, not expertise. They don’t want someone to challenge them; they want someone to translate their brilliance to the world. A good consultant tells hard truths and build a strategy that is positive for the business; a con-sultant sells flattery at scale. It’s a transaction of mutual need: the founder buys affirmation, and the con-sultant gets paid handsomely for providing it.
In practice, it’s disastrous. The team, already exhausted by shifting priorities, now has to implement the con-sultant’s “new model,” which looks suspiciously like the old one but with more buzzwords. Budgets vanish, morale dips, and the founder feels even more misunderstood. So they hire another con-sultant to “fix the culture,” and the loop begins again.
The tragedy is that none of this comes from stupidity. It comes from loneliness. Founders at this stage are often isolated at the top of something they built with their own hands, now surrounded by people too polite or too scared to tell them the truth. Into that silence, the con-sultants stroll, briefcases gleaming, ready to agree with everything.
If you ever find yourself watching this unfold, the best you can do is keep asking the simplest of questions: “What problem is this solving?” and “How will we measure success?” Those two lines alone can part the smoke and mirrors faster than any management framework. And if you’re the founder, remember that true advisors won’t flatter your vision; they’ll protect it from you.
The tragic irony is that these founders really do care. They just can’t see that their behaviour, meant to protect the business, is slowly strangling it. Their need to stay indispensable prevents anyone else from becoming effective. It’s like a parent who keeps tying a child’s shoes long after it can walk. Eventually the child trips over them.
So what’s the cure? Awareness, mostly. The moment a founder realises they’re not the story anymore, everything softens. Companies that survive this phase usually have one of two things: either a strong board willing to say “no” without flinching, or a founder who’s been humbled just enough by reality to listen. Therapy helps too, though telling a founder to get therapy is a delicate business. If you must, phrase it as “executive coaching” and offer to pay for lunch.
Humour can be a surprisingly powerful antidote. A gentle joke about the empire-building, a raised eyebrow at the latest “vision document,” can sometimes slip through the defences that data and reasoning can’t. The trick is to keep it affectionate. After all, the founder once built something remarkable. They just forgot that growth means letting others play with the additions to that build too.
If you ever find yourself in a meeting where someone declares, “In order for us to be taken seriously, we need a stationery cupboard,” take a slow breath. That’s not strategy speaking, that’s insecurity in a tailored jacket. Smile, ask for the business case, and pour yourself a large coffee. The revolution, like most, will probably fizzle out by next week.
And if you are the founder reading this, remember that the best proof of your brilliance isn’t that the company can’t run without you. It’s that one day, it will unless you kill it.
Photo by Adrián Valverde
