Wow, thanks for this post, it seems obvious now, but it really gives me some closure on a startup role I burned out on after a year. I totally had foundersyndrome, and it was extremely stressful because there was a total mismatch between my emotional investment in the company, my equity share, and my power to enact change.

I only had 0.5% equity yet was completely invested in the company at the detriment of my wellbeing. And it wasn't really discouraged, some of the other employees regularly worked weekends, and I was dumb enough to do it too when my work was particularly interesting.

I LOVED the work, but ultimately it just ran me into the ground, and when I didn't have the power to push initiatives through that were important to me it was extremely frustrating. That combined with being the first engineer and basically building the engineering team and V1 of the product, but then not being promoted to director of SW basically sealed the deal for me, and I was like fuck it I'm out of here.

Thanks for your comment, I've doubted myself many times for leaving that role, but now it's crystal clear that there needs to be a good match between emotional investment and ownership, and mine was completely out of balance, so it really was never going to work out.