As Founders, we're so worried about losing control of our startups to investors that we completely overlook how we secretly lose control to everyone else.

The fact is, most Founders don't lose control of their startups to investors; they lose control of their startups to their own organizations, whether or not they even have investors. We do it willingly, in the name of progress, and we celebrate those milestones the entire time, all the while being totally unaware of how we've let things slip.

It's not until years later when we realize we can't make key decisions independently, we can no longer shape the product vision how we'd like, or we simply can't get anything done anymore, that we realize we've lost control through our own doing.

In...