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Founder Mode

paulgraham.com

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Re: Founder Mode

#81

Post by Sammi »

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…

Steve Jobs scaled it. Brian Chesky, maybe the Zuck and Elon? There are multiple examples.

Re: Founder Mode

#82

Post by heisenbit »

I struggle to see this different from the manager vs. leadership discussion. Founders need to give direction and shape where the company is going. This is not new e.g. the situational leadership model advices a more directive style during the initial phase and even competent, experienced newcomers to a team start at low performance and require help.

One systemic problem in the more mature parts of the industry seems to me the layering of management over leadership. Maybe one needs more of the former than the latter but without the latter in each layer it is impossible to turn a larger ship on a new course or adjust speed.

Re: Founder Mode

#83

Post by frankdejonge »

Saying “hire good people and give them room to do good work” is bad advice is the same as judging a dish while using half a recipe. It’s execution centric and execution alone is never enough, you need direction. A strategy, a vision, a need. Without a need from a customer it’s nothing.

Re: Founder Mode

#85

Post by kijin »

maaaaattttt wrote: post #43
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.

Letting your employees tell you what you need to do is not the same as giving them room to do what they want.

In the former, you are immediately aware of what they're doing and why, because they're telling you! You can ask questions if their reasoning doesn't sound convincing, intervene early if there's disagreement as to what should be done, and decide whose project takes priority. Steve Jobs was a very active CEO in this regard. Bullshitters will not survive long in such an organization.

The latter, on the other hand, is often taken to imply that you should not intervene unless absolutely necessary -- which often means, until it's too late.

Re: Founder Mode

#87

Post by puzanov »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #39

I am writing a book about an idea - software literacy is a new form of actual literacy and will be as impactful. And I keep coming back to how important organising above the Dunbar number is and how bad economics etc is at this. This resonates for me - and it’s still just grasping in the dark - but they seem to revolve around the idea that with software a company is no longer a lot of Dunbar number tribes working tog…

Using Dunbar number as an indicator for the conpany growth and how to use this number to form better org structire is a valid idea

Re: Founder Mode

#88

Post by Chance-Device »

When a company is successful, by which I mean it turns a healthy profit and eventually even enough to go public, it ends up sustaining a lot more employees doing a lot less than a smaller, leaner company that can’t afford inefficiency.

That doesn’t matter much to the successful company, it makes more than enough money to cover the inefficiency, and the inefficiency isn’t causing any real trouble - it just means that a lot of people are being paid either to not produce very much or to produce things that will end up being thrown away.

Most executives and high level managers are used to this environment. You don’t actually need to be lean or very effective, you just need to pretend to be and know that whatever the company’s main revenue source is will cover you whatever you do. As long as you can tell a good story internally to justify your position.

Turns out that doesn’t transfer well to startups that actually need value out of every dollar spent.

Re: Founder Mode

#89

Post by _9hey »

When I first joined the corporate world, I finished some tasks for my team and immediately went to other teams to ask if they needed help with anything. Astonishingly, this was met with backlash. This was at a heavily culture driven company with a core value of "self employed mentality" and "breaking down silos". I don't blame my manager, it probably made him look bad in that environment. The corporate world has done its darnedest to beat the founder out of me.

Re: Founder Mode

#90

Post by mitko »

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…

Maybe one way to think of it is fractal management where a manager would have deep read-write interactions with few skip levels. HBR style says read everywhere, write only direct reports. And it makes for a good software design except that humans are not computers, but there is a shared global context - the company vision and mission.

Through fractal management, a visionary leader can have a better chance to ensure that the vision is translated into practice at the various levels of detail.

Fractal management is only part of it, though as it is a technique, but it doesn’t cover the enormous skin in the game founders have about the success of the company. For many founders, the company is their baby(I am projecting here) and they want to make it succeed. Contrastingly, many of the professional fakers instead see it as just a job, and a step on the ladder. Principal/agent. Without genuine care, and cohesive vision, fractal management can quickly devolve into chaos. It is high reward and also higher risk!!! Maybe that’s why only the founders do it but not their VPs. I wonder if any VPs at Airbnb are doing anything remotely similar to what Bryan Chesky is doing as management style? (Honestly I have no idea)

I am sure that many founders failed also because of it as they might have been missing the charisma, clarity and conviction to pull this off.

(PS. Take my ideas with a big serving of salt, I am a founder but not at a large organization, and the article mainly focuses on large orgs)

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