A founder's value doesn't depend on holding a CEO title. Ask yourself whether staying in a top role actually serves your goals and the company, or whether stepping back to let stronger leaders handle specific work would deliver more impact.
One of the key things, and this is a founder thinking about this own thing, is once you start doing a ton of interviewing, one of the big questions you have to ask yourself is like, how do I fit into this stuff, right? Where do I fit? And at every step, as you go through those stages that Nick talked about earlier, at every single step, you have to ask yourself, do I want to be the CEO or even a C-level person? That doesn't need to be the case. Remember, like, you're an important person in the organization, no matter what your title and what your role. Even if you were the founder and you might have just an individual contributor role, just doing IC work, you still have massive value because you were the driver of that culture. You were the keeper of the flame in a sense. And that might be your only role, but that is okay. So think about that in depth. Is being CEO or a C-level person bringing you value for what you care about? If not, or even if it is, what else could I be doing to drive massive critical value? Those are the questions you should be asking. And once again, remember, you will always be a founder. You don't have to be the person who is sacrificing every part of your life every single day for 10+ years. That doesn't have to be you. To build a successful company. And arguably, if it is you, you probably won't build a successful company. Once again, there are counterexamples to that, but there aren't very many. Most companies are successful because they have a great team and leaders who have the understanding about themselves to step back and hand off their pet things to people who are better than they are.
