A common mistake of founders is to believe that being a founder is anything of value. In fact, a founder is best defined as a composition of 3 roles.

The first role is the one of "stockholder". A stockholder holds stock. It is the fact that founders hold stock that will eventually make them wealthy. When you start, you and your excited co-founders own the company. So you are primarily stockholders.

The second role is the one of "CEO - Chief Executive Officer". Well, in a fresh startup being called the CEO is usually a nice euphuism to describe the guy who wears the tie among the group of engineers that make the founding team. But basically it means that as CEO you call the shots and direct the strategy of the company. It won't make you rich unless you take a large part of the profits as bonus (if you happen to be the CEO of a bankrupting financial institution). As a startup your salary is not going to make you rich. 

The third role is the one of "technician". In tech companies this role is described as the "CTO - Chief Technology Officer" or something similar. This is most likely, your main area of comfort and initially it is yours (and your team's) technical or service experience acumen that will make the company successful.

The first conflict occurs when you have to bring in investors. Investors give you money and become stockholders. Inexperience, greedy people do not understand the value of well capitalize companies and they refuse to part way from a percentage of the company to someone "who is not going to work". Very common situation when starting small, service oriented businesses. The concept of an investor that will never dirty his own hands is a bit alien.

The second challenge typically happens to the founder CEO, as the company grows. In the beginning the company is small and everyone is focused on building the product or providing a service to a small set of customers. If it is a service the main founder is probably the guy who is doing a large part of that service. As the company grows more work is done at managing people, financial stuff, you know: boring junk. Regularly, the founder tends to find refuge in the "technician" part of his 3 roles and the company starts to suffer. This is probably a good time to think as a stockholder, fire yourself and hire a CEO to run your own company. If you have brought a good VC they will make sure that your investment and theirs is well guarded and they will help you fire yourself. 

In the US this is usually okay. People care too much about money to understand they rather prefer to be the owner of a successful company than the leader of a failure. They retrench back to a CTO or technical role easily. The founder of Yahoo at a point was called Chief Yahoo. Cool title.

In Portugal, I have seen founder CEOs who desperately need fresh money into the company alienate investors because they are afraid of losing control, i.e. being fired. A smart investor will not touch these companies with a mile-long pole. 

Many founders, ex-CEOs cannot phantom having to work for an external CEO and they leave. Leaving is okay, hey you are still a stockholder and you own an asset that later might be sold to a private equity or another company. So it is worth potential money. It is an investment. Owning a piece of a company might cost you a lot of money or sweat but after you got it is the easiest role to perform. Just stand still and let the thing grow and valuate the best it can.

This is why I do not really like the term founder. I prefer Stockholder, CEO or Technician. If you can define what you are, what you are good at, it will help you and your co-workers work out your internal conflicts of interest. The company will be healthier and all stockholders will know that everyone is working to maximize company value.