>The answer is compensation. Not that big companies don’t compensate them enough, but that the compensation structure is not aligned with an entrepreneur’s world view.
As far as I can tell the dominating decision factor for everyone I know who runs their own company seems to be "freedom from management". That's why people work for years at an expected value of a below-market wage. That's why people leave a year into their four year vesting schedule post-acquisition.
In the anglo corporate culture there is little to no room for co-determination; and I would wager that's especially grating to those in the position to do something about it.
You're right to pick this quote. The central thesis, which is about money, rests on the assumption that entrepreneurs are categorical idiots, unable to accurately assess the wealth of data that clearly indicates the vast majority of entrepreneurs earn less than corporate careerists.
that's what a lot of people say, but I think it's more of an excuse/laziness around explaining the actual problem. any entrepreneur who raises a series A will be managed by his investors. if he is not the CEO he will be managed by the CEO and the investors/board.
You will always have to compromise with people. That will never go away. But the social relationship between you and your investors - and definitely not with your fellow c-levels or co-founders - will never be quite like to that between a regular employee and their boss.
Your mileage may vary if you're on the brink of collapse, of course.
One critical difference between investors and management: investors have a lot of other things to do, so they're more inclined to stay out of your way on technical details. I can't imagine a VC telling a CTO what programming language to use. Managers are under pressure to spend 40 hours per week telling others what to do, so a lot of them get trader boredom (zero-expectancy noisy activity) that adds annoying process and micromanagement.
As far as I can tell the dominating decision factor for everyone I know who runs their own company seems to be "freedom from management". That's why people work for years at an expected value of a below-market wage. That's why people leave a year into their four year vesting schedule post-acquisition.
In the anglo corporate culture there is little to no room for co-determination; and I would wager that's especially grating to those in the position to do something about it.