Bring Back Steve Jobs!
Founder Mode
71–80 of 772 posts
Re: Founder Mode
#72This is why people love working for Elon Musk. Anyone can raise problem with him & he will fix it directly.
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Re: Founder Mode
#73I think the most important thing a founder brings is to "not give up". The journey of most startups that innovate is complicated, unknown and unusual. Traditional management is not made for this. I have always felt that "pivot" comes from "founder mode" itself. It is one way of keep trying, even when a founder accepts that the original idea is not working well. Many founders have attempted and failed multiple times to finally get to something that works. This value is less visible in any other domain of management.
Re: Founder Mode
#74The 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…
Staying in the details is different from micromanagement. It’s the difference between understanding (and deeply caring) about what’s happening vs. telling ICs how to solve a problem. You can’t be a good leader, mentor, or decision maker if you’re not invested in the details.
Re: Founder Mode
#75After two unsuccessful but still alive start-ups, I've come to very similar conclusions. Absolutely every single time I've tried to say to it anyone other than a founder I was met with disbelief that eventually turned into accusations of not knowing how to be a leader.
While I do admit that I didn't fire people as quickly as I should have, most of our structural problems came from employees simply doing what was best for them and bad for the company, and most of them not even realizing or caring to think about the long-term consequences of their actions. My main lesson was that almost nothing can be delegated except to other founders or some exceptionally rare adults. Success in scaling seems to be actually more in making sure the things you do are simple enough that employees can't mess them up.
From founder reactions I've had when telling this, I think a lot more people have come to internalize similar beliefs, but none will publicly say them since they don't want to risk PR backlash.
Re: Founder Mode
#76Is there a recording / transcript of Chesky’s talk or even a blog discussing its main points anywhere?
Listen to the Lenny’s newsletter podcast episode with him, he goes through what I assume are similar topics - https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-...
Re: Founder Mode
#77I thought it was a great start to an idea. I think it went sideways once it decided founder mode could be studied and taught. Teaching founder mode sounds as simple as teaching creativity or how to be an individual. Founders are most likely are made up of people divergent of social thinking in some way and have a non-verbal need inside trying to get out. Founder mode is fed by an intense focus, desperation, and insig…
I don’t think he’s suggesting we can teach how to be a good founder in general. Just that we can study and then teach the difference between managing a team as a founder vs general management practices
There's also the concept that companies that succeed, succeed despite themselves.
You have catch the wave; otherwise you do a lot of paddling.
Re: Founder Mode
#78> He followed this advice and the results were disastrous. The whole idea of this article hinges on this sentence. What disasterous thing happened exactly? Considering the premise seems to be missing, dare I say, this article seems to rhetorical.
yeah for sure he invented a premise to then write an article about something thats rhetorical. how does that thinking make sense.
Airbnb struggled for a while (in his opinion) until he changed his management style organized the whole company around a release cylce (and other bits I cant remember) and taking on much bigger responsibility for design (UI UX). its super interesting stuff. its not new actually and I saw him speaking about multiple times on youtube. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/brian-chesky-interview-orga...
Re: Founder Mode
#79"We hired truly great people and gave them the room to do great work. A lot of companies [...] hire people to tell them what to do. We hire people to tell us what to do. We figure we're paying them all this money; their job is to figure out what to do and tell us."
-- Steve Jobs
Re: Founder Mode
#80Is there a recording / transcript of Chesky’s talk or even a blog discussing its main points anywhere?
He talks about some of these things on Lennys podcast from a few months back here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ef0juAMqoE