Is it better to be a founder, freelancer or employee? (Personally for you)
I'll be honest – I've never liked the feeling that someone "owns" me.
So being employed was very distant to me. [As if I had no power over my income.]
And being a founder gave me a greater sense of "ownership", but also responsibility. And, when things are not going well, and business is going poorly, you don't really want to be a founder in bad times. :D
Freelancing probably worked out best for me – delivering a service, while also protecting your income and time... although the time part is probably the most exhausting (sometimes the tasks are beyond my strength, and I have to make things up, no social & health insurance, chasing people with paying invoices, etc.). But despite that, it's still my choice.
What suits you the most, and what advantages/disadvantages have you noticed for your preferred choice?
Replies
I think each path comes with a different balance between freedom, stability, and responsibility. Freelancing gives control over time, employment gives predictability, and building something gives long-term ownership but also a lot more pressure. None of them feels objectively better, just different trade-offs.
For me it’s more about balance than a label.
Employee = stability, less control
Freelancer = freedom, but unpredictable and tiring
Founder = full ownership, but high risk + constant pressure. Most people end up preferring whatever tradeoff matches their life stage right now, not forever.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@hazel__prime I would like to get to the bottom of this ladder, but somehow stuck in the middle :D
Spent my career as an employee in structured finance — and a side-project founder selling project-finance templates on Eloquens. That combination tells you something the binary framing here misses.
The "owns me" feeling Nika describes is real, but for specialist roles it cuts both ways. Inside a large structured-finance team you sit across deals you could never put together as a founder or freelancer: nine-figure renewables transactions, regulated-utility refinancings, multi-counterparty PPP structures. The institution buys you access to scale that a one-person shop simply cannot replicate. That access has a price, and the price is your weekday hours and a chunk of the upside.
What the side project does is invert the trade quietly. The templates I sell are built from problems already solved at the desk — DSCR sculpting, debt circularity switches, DSRA sizing — packaged so practitioners running their own deals don't have to reinvent them. Cost of creation: near-zero (the IP exists in your head already). Income asymmetry: high (each template can sell repeatedly, asynchronously, while you sleep). And critically the buyers tell you nothing about who they are or how they used the work until months later when a story surfaces — much closer to academic publishing than to a founder's product launch curve.
That model — employed in the day for the institutional dealflow, founder-adjacent on the side for the optionality and the IP residual — is, I think, the underrated third option in this thread. It isn't freelancing (the buyer of a template isn't a client), it isn't full founding (no fundraising, no team), and it isn't pure employment (you keep the IP and the residual). For specialist B2B knowledge work the economics are surprisingly forgiving and the downside is bounded.
Being an employee (depending on the employer) affords you the opportunity to learn structure and deepen your skillsets (for some). For me, I always looked at it from the angle of the minute I stop learning is the minute I go back to being a founder instead of an employee to solve problems I have gained experience in.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@bayareatech But you can learn many things, as well as the founder, but also as an employee or freelancer, too. :) Everything is about the angle of view :)
Personally, I think each path gives you a different kind of freedom.
As an employee, you get stability.
As a freelancer, you get flexibility.
As a founder, you get ownership.
For me, founder mindset feels the most exciting because you’re building something bigger than client work or a paycheck. But honestly, freelancing is one of the best stepping stones because it teaches sales, communication, and survival fast.
I’d probably choose a mix: start as a freelancer, learn the game, then build toward becoming a founder.
Founder for me. Not because it's easier or more profitable it's not but because being a solo dev means every decision, mistake, and win is yours. That ownership is hard to give up once you've had it.
I think I value ownership too much to fully enjoy traditional employment 😅
But at the same time, founder stress looks mentally exhausting long term. Feels like your brain never switches off.
Freelancing seems like the best middle ground for now, freedom + control, but it also comes with instability and constantly selling yourself.
Still figuring out the balance honestly.
You may be a part of a System, a link in a chain that incorporates these three roles: employee, founder, and freelancer. A kind of problem solver.
But what we really need is a genius who can establish that system. Yet we are what we are...
As for me, I am considering becoming a founder while still remaining an employee at some company.
The freedom of being a founder or freelancer is hard to beat. For me, it is about the autonomy to choose projects that truly excite me. The stability of being an employee is nice, but the growth curve when you are on your own is so much steeper. It is definitely a choose your hard situation!