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Founder Mode

paulgraham.com

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Re: Founder Mode

#151

Post by getnormality »

neom wrote: post #130

This 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.

I carefully reviewed all three of these articles. While it's possible that I still missed something, I did not find any material that aligns with the unique point of Paul's post. Nothing that says leaders may have to directly engage with employees underneath their direct reports to understand what is actually going on in the company.

It is perhaps possible to interpret these articles as saying anything whatsoever, but they don't seem to specifically say what Paul's article says.

Re: Founder Mode

#152

Post by alok-g »

mihaic wrote: post #75

After 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…

>> ... 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 ...

+1. I see this over and over.

Re: Founder Mode

#153

Post by [deleted] »

mdorazio wrote: post #115
mihaic wrote: post #75

After 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…

[deleted]

Re: Founder Mode

#154

Post by alok-g »

rvnx wrote: post #128
mdorazio wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not about how much they get. The reality is that you can give 100k extra to a software engineer, he will still prefer his kids and wife. Money isn't buying love. You can hire a prostitute, she will work for you, but she will still not love you. This is the same with companies.

+1.

Someone recently hinted at the opposite angle: Give them a lot of money and their motives would move to safeguarding their jobs, which results in a higher level of corporate politics.

Re: Founder Mode

#156

Post by alok-g »

Sammi wrote: post #81
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.

I would be interested in hearing about Wolfram Research too, if someome knows.

Re: Founder Mode

#157

Post by inglor_cz »

detourdog wrote: post #119
breck wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actually hire the superstars to join your startup as the early employees/partners? You have to become a superstar first. I had the good luck of living down the street from the AirBedAndBreakfast founders in San Francisco in 2008 and we'd commute together to our Tuesday night YC dinners in Mountainview. I picked up early that Nate was already a superstar coder, Joe was a superstar designer, and Brian was a superstar…

Don’t think of people as superstars. Think of them as individuals that are able to pay attention and consistently meet expectations. I’m starting to think paying attention to what is happening is undervalued.

This only works up to a point, if you lack talent.

AFAIK Florence Foster Jenkins spent her whole life taking singing lessons, and this was the result:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE

Re: Founder Mode

#158

Post by giarc »

getnormality wrote: post #151
neom wrote: post #130

This 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.

I carefully reviewed all three of these articles. While it's possible that I still missed something, I did not find any material that aligns with the unique point of Paul's post. Nothing that says leaders may have to directly engage with employees underneath their direct reports to understand what is actually going on in the company. It is perhaps possible to interpret these articles as saying anything whatsoever, bu…

But even PG goes back on that by saying "Obviously founders can't keep running a 2000 person company the way they ran it when it had 20. There's going to have to be some amount of delegation." So what he is saying is managers should talk to their reports. He writes like this is some groundbreaking realization, but to me I'm not even sure what he's getting at. For example he pushes back against the idea of hiring and letting them do work, but then says don't micromanage them, so which is it?

Re: Founder Mode

#159

Post by mihaic »

mdorazio wrote: post #115
mihaic wrote: post #75

After 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…

> Why should they ignore their own self-interest in favor of your company's long-term success?

I wasn't expecting them to do something bad for themselves, merely to simply do what I was explicitly asking and paying them for (and we paid above-market salaries). Too often communication was conveniently misinterpreted in obvious bad faith to justify them using some expensive AWS feature, or simply ignore the core message in the request. This was hidden for a lot longer than it should have been since Covid forced us to go remote all of a sudden and people would vouch for one another.

Honestly, I think now that there simply isn't a way to align most employees with you, and that the secret to successful start-ups is only going for the easy to execute things, that don't rely on the qualities of your employees (or you have 100mil raised and your problem is naturally a good challenge for them).

Re: Founder Mode

#160

Post by habosa »

The reason founders are different is because they generally own enormous chunks of the equity. Everything matters to them and the rewards of success are enormous.

Us “fakers” get 0.1% if we’re lucky and then pg writes an essay saying we’re not trying hard enough. We are.

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