Founders wear many hats, and having to manage people is usually going to be one of them. I still feel that empathy is important in any other role in life even where one is not a de facto manager in a company. You and the people around you will do better with it than without it.
Right. Few early founders have a management layer between them and the general employees. That comes years later unless they've secured massive funding and are on an extremely fast growth path (which I'm sure describes a lot of startups as well).
