> If you don't control over 50%
Founders will virtually always lose control once they hop on the investor conveyor belt. It can happen as soon as Round A e.g. VC wants 25% with 10% option pool and seed investors owns 15% (say due to carry along provisions) - et voila - founder diluted to 50%! It often is inevitable as soon as a founder takes seed money because (a) if you must take seed you probably need future cash for competitive growth, and (b) seed investors define expectation of future VC rounds (e.g. YC demo day). The well known exceptions where founders retained control are outliers.
Furthermore, founders are third class because investors get first class preferential shares. Preferential shares have a variety of powerful benefits over common shares - including rights to oust the founders (under conditions that will usually occur: VCs take advantage of the natural optimism of founders).
Even worse: the game is systematically rigged against founders, because VCs are “the house” and have been setting up the rules while playing multiple games for decades, but it is usually a founders first game. Bacon and egg breakfast: where the founders are the fully committed pigs providing the bacon, but the investors are chickens providing the eggs. 10 years of life is one hock. If a founder wins a game and want to play again, then a founder often starts their own casino by doing seed rounds. Sometimes a successful founder can afford to start a new business without using VC investment (self-invests).
VC capital can be a drug worth taking if you fully manage your risks. Just beware that the industry rule-of-thumb is that 90% of the time a founder has an expected payout of approximately $0.
The YCombinator casino is a bit of an exception because they better understand how much a founder is worth so they help founders play games with other casinos. But you still can’t argue that your sweat equity should be equally worth dollars invested: a software developer taking a $100k paycut for the first year of a startup should receive $100k of preferential shares - but I have never heard of that happening. Subtle game play.