Having been with Carolina Gold since day one (and, thankfully, still there), I think that being part of a new/building corps is kinda like having/raising a kid. You are around for the bad times as well as the good. You want it to be something that corresponds to your perception of what it should be, but you are prepared to let it develop to what ever it does become, and you still support it fully.
You feel that it relys on you for its existence, and therefore, you find even more reason to stick around and see it through to its maturity...
You find that, later on, there are parts of the corps that you claim "hey, I started that" or "hey, that was my idea".
And eventually, you find that sticking around and slugging out the trials and tribs is the easy part; the hard part is finding yourself having to, eventually, leave it ....