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Founder Mode

paulgraham.com

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Re: Founder Mode

#41

Post by resonious »

picafrost wrote: post #28

I struggle to see "founder mode" as something that scales. Is there not some self-selection bias occurring here, given the audience "included a lot of the most successful founders we've funded"? If a founder is exceptional and all of the other stars necessary for a startup to succeed have aligned, this may be a good approach. But then we are just back to the question YC has always tried to answer: what makes a founde…

It clearly doesn't scale infinitely, which is why PG says you still need to delegate.

The argument seems to be that if you understand the business as deeply as the founder does, you can get away with selectively breaking some conventional management wisdom.

Re: Founder Mode

#42

Post by mkl »

Kiro wrote: post #26
tkiolp4 wrote: post #17

> VP of marketing? Nope, professional money extractor. VP of engineering? Nope, professional money extractor too. Wasn’t this obvious? I’ve been in the software industry for long enough to distinguish people who do actual work from those who don’t. All the VPs I’ve encountered share the following traits: - huge paychecks - they hire others under their supervision to do the actual job - you don’t actually know what th…

What are you quoting?

Seems like it's supposed to be a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41415637 by jasode, which is in turn quoting https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18003253 by coffeemug in 2018.

Re: Founder Mode

#43

Post by maaaaattttt »

coahn wrote: post #18

The premise of this is that advice to hire "Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs" is bad because that turns into "hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground". So, if I get this right, hiring is done by the founder, who is not capable of choosing good people in a sea of fakers, and because of founders incompetency the advice is bad? I do agree that every founder/CEO should…

Also, I'm 99% sure that Steve Job once said (paraphrasing): "We don't hire talented people to tell them what to do, we hire them to tell us what to do". Which to me sounds like "Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs". So there is a discrepancy here as Steve Job is also used as an example of a "Founder Mode" CEO.

Not saying there is a contradiction, just a piece missing somewhere in the essays logic.

Re: Founder Mode

#44

Post by mcculley »

There is a more charitable explanation for the different outcomes than assuming that the professional management class are all “fakers”. Every business has to decide how much of their org chart and processes should be industry standard and how much should be proprietary. Those businesses that do everything the standard way are too similar to competitors to provide greater value. Ideally, you want your competitors to misunderstand why you are doing things differently.

Re: Founder Mode

#45

Post by gbin »

picafrost wrote: post #28

I struggle to see "founder mode" as something that scales. Is there not some self-selection bias occurring here, given the audience "included a lot of the most successful founders we've funded"? If a founder is exceptional and all of the other stars necessary for a startup to succeed have aligned, this may be a good approach. But then we are just back to the question YC has always tried to answer: what makes a founde…

What is described here is for me a competent technical manager. As they scale, it is just that their focus cannot be on everything at the same time so they need to pick what is the most important and help a specific team at specific times. It also means that they need a good bullshit detector to dodge those that are skilled at "managing up" and know the real underlying state. Unfortunately the organizations tend to follow Peter's principle and you end up with incompetent managers everywhere that just "manage" and don't understand what is made or how.

Re: Founder Mode

#46

Post by sudhirj »

xwolfi wrote: post #27
rl3 wrote: post #20

The essence of Founder Mode is simple: The founder's principal duty is to communicate a vision to their team and ensure that vision is executed faithfully to the spirit of the vision. This is precisely what Jobs did effectively and why he was successful. Involving oneself at all levels of the company is by no means at odds with avoiding micromanagement. Likewise, neither is empowering people in your company with degr…

But wasnt Jobs fired and replaced by a Pepsi CEO because he was so toxic the company was running aground ?

Most references to Jobs' management style refer to his second term, presumably after he matured a bit.

Re: Founder Mode

#47

Post by picafrost »

resonious wrote: post #41
picafrost wrote: post #28

I struggle to see "founder mode" as something that scales. Is there not some self-selection bias occurring here, given the audience "included a lot of the most successful founders we've funded"? If a founder is exceptional and all of the other stars necessary for a startup to succeed have aligned, this may be a good approach. But then we are just back to the question YC has always tried to answer: what makes a founde…

It clearly doesn't scale infinitely, which is why PG says you still need to delegate. The argument seems to be that if you understand the business as deeply as the founder does, you can get away with selectively breaking some conventional management wisdom.

I think I have made a poor choice by using the word "scales". I do not mean within the lifetime of the company -- that much is clear -- but scales across different startups, founders, and niches.

Re: Founder Mode

#48

Post by telesilla »

Good to see this essay, it resonates a lot with me after a hard week with staff which fortunately had a positive outcome in the end thanks to what I've come to believe is important. Having been through several disasters as a founder and come through: scaling is possible through clear, direct communication and setting heuristics that are important to you as the founder, and having senior management develop processes. Iterate through each failure, develop stronger heuristics and documentation, communicate and communicate and communicate again and again to your team and you should find that over time it's embedded in culture as if it were written in stone. "Hire good people and let them do their job" has only worked for me once we were in full agreement on the outcomes, including budget, time, resources and how we treat each other.

Re: Founder Mode

#50

Post by huhkerrf »

_1tan wrote: post #19

Is there a good resource on the management methods of Steve Jobs as indicated by the essay?

The thing about Jobs is that he's become whoever you want him to be. If you believe yourself a visionary, he's the one to emulate. But, conversely, you can't visit Linkedin for a second without seeing the Jobs quote about hiring smart people and getting out of their way. (Ironically, considering the point of this essay.)
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