Companies die when founders become employees of their own product.

When leaders stop creating and start complying, stagnation begins. A founder’s role is to question, provoke, and rebuild—never to maintain what once worked.

The death of a company rarely begins with the product. It begins when its founders surrender to it. When the one who once questioned everything starts defending what already exists, innovation halts. Vision becomes maintenance. Energy, once expansive, turns inward. Slowly but inevitably, the company stops evolving—not because it has reached its limit, but because its creators have started operating inside the very logic they once intended to disrupt.