Executive Summary Here's the uncomfortable truth about founder-led companies: they rarely come undone because the founder is too strong. They come undone because everyone around the founder gets too weak. The board stops being a check and slowly turns into a fan club. That's the real governance risk, and it hides behind the most flattering word in business, "visionary." The same fierce conviction that builds a company from nothing is the exact thing that, left unchecked, blin

Executive Summary Most startups set up their ESOP pool in a hurry. A lawyer drafts a template, the board rubber-stamps a 10 to 15 percent allocation, and everyone moves on to the next fundraising deck. That works fine when the company has thirty employees in one city. It works a lot less well once the company has four hundred employees across three countries, a founder whose own equity is tangled up in the same pool, and an IPO on the horizon that regulators are going to scru