Founders

Founder friend exited with a decent aquihire in a great company.

At first: massive relief, happy for the big and stable paycheck

2 months in: Getting really frustrated. Cannot build anything. Tech debt. Politics. Itching to found again.

Founding is hard. It's really hard. It feels like shit, the money is bad.

But the high agency that comes with this is a blessing, and I'm feeling grateful for the ability to build Mocha the way I want.

Building https://getmocha.com // creator of the https://blockchainsmokers.xyz

fwiw, it's mostly just a 1-1.5 year lock in. easy for them to survive and figure next thing so can gtfo. all decent acquirers know this too. but founder in role almost always better than non-founder hire even if operating at 50% productivity

typically 4 years, sometimes with cliffs 

(I survived just the first year cliff of my acquihire before I couldn't handle it anymore)