Why I Still Write Code as a Two-Time Founder

Most advice for technical founders eventually arrives at the same conclusion: hire engineers, step back, spend your time on strategy and sales. I understand the reasoning, and I've followed parts of it — I'm not reviewing every pull request across every endeavor I run. But I've never fully stepped away from writing code, and I don't think I ever will.

The reason isn't nostalgia. It's that the decisions with the highest leverage in a product — what to build, what to cut, where the architecture will bend and where it will break — are easier to make well when you still understand the system at the level of the code, not just the roadmap. I've watched technical debt accumulate in places non-technical founders didn't think to look, because nobody in the room could see it.

Staying close to the code doesn't mean staying in the weeds. It means keeping enough hands-on context that when an engineer tells me something will take three weeks, I have a real basis for asking why, or for believing them outright.