I still remember sitting in a boardroom during my first company, PowerLinks, when a big UK institutional investor leaned back and said:
“We’ve built the product now — can’t we lay off the engineering team?”
It was one of those jaw-dropping moments where I realised: this wasn’t my company anymore. I was down to less than 10% ownership, “founder and leader” in title, but not in control. Years earlier, another investor tried to hire a COO on literally ten times the salary of the co-founders — a person who nearly destroyed the business.
That was the hidden tax of dilution: not just financial, but emotional. A slow erosion of control over the very thing you’ve poured yourself into.
Building Differently This Time
At FunnelFuel, I’ve done almost every…
