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Founder Mode
141–150 of 772 posts
Re: Founder Mode
#142This is conventional wisdom. https://hbr.org/2004/01/managers-and-leaders-are-they-differ... https://hbr.org/2016/06/do-managers-and-leaders-really-do-di... https://hbr.org/2022/09/the-best-managers-are-leaders-and-vi... Almost every HBR "Must Read" series on enterprise management says the same thing as this blog post. The business world has been talking about this stuff since the 90s.
Synthesizing conventional wisdom into readable blog posts is Paul Graham's specialty though. It clearly has a market.
Re: Founder Mode
#143There is a huge survivorship bias in this start-up wisdom space. And none of these gurus mention it. Probably because it is not good for the brand.
Re: Founder Mode
#144> So he had to figure out a better way on his own, which he did partly by studying how Steve Jobs ran Apple.
What is the essence of Steve Jobs' management style?
Re: Founder Mode
#145After 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…
How did you incentivize people to do what was best for the company rather than only for themselves? What percentage of it did they own? Why should they ignore their own self-interest in favor of your company's long-term success? There's a weird cognitive dissonance I've run into where career advice from most people on HN boils down to "Companies don't care about you. Optimize your own total comp. Jump ship when oppor…
This is why most of the actually meaningful companies are "mission driven" (the phrase has been coopted).
That's how you obtain incentive alignment, when you genuinely believe that working hard as possible for the company is in pursuit of something greater.
This is impossible to do for yet another tax/hr/finance/billing startup, and why companies with big missions like SpaceX et al have no problem hiring.
Re: Founder Mode
#146This is conventional wisdom. https://hbr.org/2004/01/managers-and-leaders-are-they-differ... https://hbr.org/2016/06/do-managers-and-leaders-really-do-di... https://hbr.org/2022/09/the-best-managers-are-leaders-and-vi... Almost every HBR "Must Read" series on enterprise management says the same thing as this blog post. The business world has been talking about this stuff since the 90s.
Synthesizing conventional wisdom into readable blog posts is Paul Graham's specialty though. It clearly has a market.
Well the blog post said that some other wisdom was conventional wisdom, I'm not sure what the conventional wisdom he was pointing to is, I was just saying, people have known how to build, grow and manage enterprises for a little while now, I'm not sure why Ron Conway was so flabbergasted. Maybe he didn't make notes because he'd read some Patrick Lencioni. ;)
Re: Founder Mode
#147This is conventional wisdom. https://hbr.org/2004/01/managers-and-leaders-are-they-differ... https://hbr.org/2016/06/do-managers-and-leaders-really-do-di... https://hbr.org/2022/09/the-best-managers-are-leaders-and-vi... Almost every HBR "Must Read" series on enterprise management says the same thing as this blog post. The business world has been talking about this stuff since the 90s.
Synthesizing conventional wisdom into readable blog posts is Paul Graham's specialty though. It clearly has a market.
Was it conventional wisdom when he published an article suggesting that lisp knowledge would have prevented 9/11 hijackers from succeeding?
It’s so conventional that he de-listed the article but keeps it published and available by URL
Re: Founder Mode
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
A really special failure mode is to hire management from proper grown up companies to implement real processes for your aspirationally-real startup. Serious economic misunderstanding on multiple levels and a popular choice nevertheless.
Hah! I have seen and cleaned this up several times now; spend 80% or more of the total lifetime spend of the company in say year 4-6 after you got some basic traction, borrowing like crazy, gain literally nothing, fire everyone involved, start over with skeleton team, rebuild something useful out of the ashes.
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Re: Founder Mode
#149Our understanding of organizations completely derives from military and manufacturing. It is essentially top down. Heck, our whole society and schooling is top down. Someone else knows more than you and is better at things than you are. So if you want to be good at something, you follow. Guess what? So what is the alternative to top down? Another model is that the persons in an organization act in two roles. First th…
Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow elaborates at length on this, pulling in recent research and reevaluating old anthro and archaeological work
Re: Founder Mode
#150Your characterization using the phrase "conventional wisdom" is demeaning.
I've found that a lot of wisdom PG passes on is novel, not 'conventional'; moreover the observation he offers is not something I would have been able to obtain through my own life experience, and I very much appreciate him putting his thoughts out into the world for us to learn from.