This month marks my 14-year anniversary of self-employment with Synchronicity Marketing and represents an important milestone: my own company is now the one I’ve worked for the longest.

A lot of the entrepreneurial stories that I read feature the ‘entrepreneur as hero’.  A dashing visionary (maybe wearing a mock turtleneck) has a brilliant idea and through near-supernatural effort creates a new product or a new industry.  In this narrative, the founder hero is the center of the story - everything starts with the hero.  I’m part of the founding team of a ~ $100 million email technology business and my experience couldn’t be further from that narrative.  In my experience, the success of a business isn’t about the brilliance of the founder (or founding team).