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What's the difference between a startup that's growing and just getting fat? Startups are synonymous with growth, so much so that we treat growth and the prospect of "getting bigger" as exclusively good. If we're growing, we must be winning, and therefore "growth is good."

But what happens when that growth turns from muscle to big, sloppy fat? All of a sudden, growth isn't good anymore. In fact, it's just kinda gross. Well, that's exactly what happens at startups, and it's not just when we hit thousands of people post-IPO. It can happen when we hit 20 people, and we're no longer the lean startup we were meant to be.

As Founders we need to be hyper-conscious about every bit of growth and whether it's actually making us more healthy overall.

We need to get back to building the startup that inspired us to begin with — we need to get back to our "Why."

Part of the Founder journey, really for all of us, starts with this amazing inspirational period of hopes and dreams, where we have this idea that we just can't wait to bring into the world. At that moment, all rationale and reason give way to exuberance and optimism — we become completely and utterly intoxicated with what's possible — and it's incredible!

At that very moment, we are filled to the brim with our "Why." Our "Why" is the entire purpose of building our startup. It's different for all of us, but it typically is a combination of personal goals, product vision, and desire to put a little dent in the universe. If you talk ...

No matter how much success we create with our startups, it almost never "cures" our need for validation. If anything, it often makes it worse.

It usually starts with this feeling that we need to prove the world wrong, and when we do, we'll have the last laugh (which is just code for "I need personal validation"). The relationship between building a startup and getting "revenge on something" is particularly strong with Founders because the very nature of what we do is so damn combative!

Haters and doubters are as much a part of our startup DNA as investors and customers. We've all had someone who thought we'd never pull this off, who questioned our ability and idea. Whether we admit it publicly or not, we all want to show them how incredibly...

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...

Just because our paths as Founders have served us well, it doesn't necessarily create that same path as anyone else.

Yesterday, on a beautiful evening, I was sharing an ice cream with my daughter outside, and I asked her, "So what are you thinking about for your first job?" Mind you, she's 12, but I figured it's not that far off.

Without hesitation, she responded, "Well, I think I could learn a lot from working somewhere else, but I really just want to work for myself." I'll point out that she's started two "startups" so far, so this isn't a new concept to her. While the Founder in me was beaming with pride in that answer, another voice in my head asked, "Should she?"

As parents, should we encourage our kids to follow in our Founder footste...

Entry-level workers are no longer U.S. college grads—in fact, some aren't even human anymore.

The world of entry-level talent has completely changed in the past decade, particularly for startups. Not too long ago, startups raided colleges with an implicit understanding that among college grads, you could find someone who was smart (the college part), willing to work hard (lots of free time), and relatively cheap (first job).

I know this well because I was exactly that—young, relatively smart, insanely hungry, and freakishly cheap to hire. Since then, I've been trying to find my 19-year-old clone every single day of my Founder life. What has changed, though, is that the most fertile hunting grounds for those folks are no longer U.S. colleges...

Our most broken assumption in Year 1 is that anyone will stick around for Year 2.

Spoiler Alert: They won't, and the cost of giving away a ton of equity and responsibility to people who won't be around for long is incredibly expensive.

I see this play out all the time, especially with First Time Founders who naively think that everyone who promised to help launch their startup in Year One will actually stick around to do it. It’s easy to make that mistake — when everyone’s talking a big game and acting just as excited as we are to build something amazing, we can’t help but believe them.

But all of a sudden, people stop showing up. That Co-Founder CTO whom we thought was going to build the whole product for "free" goes MIA. That mentor who ...

At what point do we find out if all of our startup sacrifice was worth it?

The prevailing theory is that as Founders, we can justify our sacrifices of time, money, and emotional energy for the bounty of riches we'll enjoy on the other side. It's almost hard-coded into all of us the moment we take the plunge to start something.

But what happens when we're on the other side and we're forced to come to terms with whether or not those sacrifices were justified? Can we truly replace what was lost in getting here with what was gained through our efforts? What if we straight up made a bad bet?

Let me tell you a personal story about my journey as a Founder over 30 (very long) years of building startups and my assessment of a mountain of sacrifice o...

The value in our startup in an acquisition is usually a fraction of what we think it is — not a multiple.

That's not because our startups lack value; it's because we often misunderstand how that value actually gets calculated. In the past 30 years, I've spent a tremendous amount of time on both sides of these transactions, both as a Buyer (we bought 6 companies at Startups.com) and as a Seller (I've sold 5 of my own companies).

What I've learned is that Founders have really unrealistic expectations of how our startups are valued at the time of a sale. Frankly, it's not because we're not smart, it's because there simply isn't a lot of guidance on how startups get valued at all.

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Our Founder ambition is our greatest source of strength — but can also be our greatest enemy.

While being a startup Founder and having ambition are nearly synonymous, that doesn't mean the very same ambition that drives us to climb mountains can't also push us off a cliff!

I know this because I've lived it many times. I wasn't born the smartest, the most privileged, or the most talented. But I was born with two gifts — ambition and a willingness to work insanely hard. When you're starting from nothing, those gifts mean everything. Yet, what we tend to overlook is that those "gifts" have some major drawbacks that come back to haunt us later on.

Don’t miss out on free credits from Google Cloud for Startups! It’s your chance to leverage power...