Contacts who were at Tesla during Series A told me Elon Musk did the same thing having hundreds of one on ones with engineers
Founder Mode
281–290 of 772 posts
Re: Founder Mode
#282It’s pretty clear why “hire good people and let them do their jobs” wouldn’t work for AirBNB.
AirBNB is a company that’s entirely built upon getting around regulations and destroying wealth (but passing on the costs onto others).
Good people coming in to the company assume it provides some actual value so they don’t make decisions that are net negative and just ensure passing on the cost to others.
But this isn’t something that’s gonna be stated outright so it largely remains within the head of the founder so the ideas that make the company work also remain within the head of the founder which is why they’re essential for the company to tick.
Re: Founder Mode
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has the company not already declined? I've been subscribed for years, but I cant remember the last time I watched something on it. The next time I do a round of canceling subscriptions, there is a very real chance it's gone. I have so many other subscriptions, I'm just not sure it's important enough to me anymore to make the cut.
Have you looked at the stock price recently?
I'd argue decline lags value fundumentals. Sears decline took decades. The early metric is probably "viewer hours" per customer or some use base metric. That will probably dip before the revenue dips.
Re: Founder Mode
#284Having started three companies, and got a successful exit on the third, the solution is to be opinionated
I built what I wanted and needed. Directed things in the way I wanted them to go. Changed an entire industry.
Don't let MBAs run your company, because they generally only care about the numbers, not about the product. If it's a good product, it sells itself.
Edit: At one point, we brought in a CFO that kept on trying to insist we go another way (advertising.. you just keep chasing that). Maybe we would have made more money that way, but now the profit is at 4x expenses
Re: Founder Mode
#285It’s pretty clear why “hire good people and let them do their jobs” wouldn’t work for AirBNB. AirBNB is a company that’s entirely built upon getting around regulations and destroying wealth (but passing on the costs onto others). Good people coming in to the company assume it provides some actual value so they don’t make decisions that are net negative and just ensure passing on the cost to others. But this isn’t som…
Yup. Uber, Airbnb, Spotify…All these companies we glorify for essentially being a well polished middleman are like this. Glad someone else sees it like it is.
Re: Founder Mode
#286Counter-example: Reed Hastings, co-founder and the CEO of Netflix for 22 years, famously did the opposite of what pg is saying. Reed insisted on a particular style of employee freedom & responsibility that IMO set the benchmark for innovating year after year and avoiding micro-managers, even as it scaled up past 2000 engineers. This story still has not been fully told. Reed was closely involved but perhaps the opposi…
I think it’s important to gleam some insights from past successes, but ultimately these “case studies” have over factors. For example, the time with which Apple, Netflix, Facebook, and so on, flourished. Where talent existed, what the landscape looked like, is quite possibly totally different than anything today.
Take the iPhone: a product so good at a time when there wasn’t much like it. A guaranteed success. You’re going to have talent rally around it and get excited for it to succeed. But that’s been done, and in the Phone landscape, there’s never going to be such an event again.
So in general, it’s never one size fits all. We can learn from the greats, but it’s best to develop our own, situational ideas along the way.
Re: Founder Mode
#287I disagree with a lot of things pg has said but this essay is SPOT ON.
Manager mode is utter BS. MBA books and management coaching teaches people to occupy a higher position in the org chart and to define rules, bureaucracy, and measurement of whatever they are managing. Tech companies have a perverted form of this where IC track and manager track are separate - so managers are only defining rules, bureaucracy, and measurement of people - stack ranking them.
Of course this method is flawed. We all inherently feel so. But no one asks why this is flawed. It is flawed because MBA-style box management is trying to impose boxes - which is orthogonal to innovation. Innovation literally means thinking/doing work outside the box.
As an example, lets say that your 10 layers of management has hired a whole bunch of innovators but then said that they will be stack ranked against each other every 6 months based on criterias and hiring committees. This is a BOX - that is preventing ANY work that may require working OUTSIDE THE CONFINES OF THE BOX.
Imagine a situation where a project is at 6 months performance review BOX boundary but still needs 2 weeks of slow rollout to ensure it doesn't crash on customers. In FOUNDER mode, the team is encouraged to take those 2 weeks to ensure that customers get a good experience - because it matters. In BOX management mode, these 2 weeks are going to appear as a fail for the stack rank committee gods. The nuance of the 2 weeks is lost. Instead, the management chain will ensure that the stack rank is executed perfectly - thus causing the people WHO CARED about the service and customers to depart - voluntarily or involuntarily.
Ultimately, NO ONE is happy with the BOX management mode of work. Employees feel like their work and insight is undervalued, C-Suite is unhappy about causing customer issues, teams are unhappy because the BOX is hurting morale and causing sabotagey environments. The only people who seem to be ok with this is the 10 layers of BOX managers whose entire existence depends on perfect execution of the BOX.
Re: Founder Mode
#288I think there's a property which is hard to describe. But i've seen the opposite property countless times at companies. People, and leaders who are building "cool demos". Things that tell a great story, but somehow never materialize into any material revenue for the company. I've seen these guys move up into higher and higher positions, and yet the projects they build are simply great stories. The higher up the org y…
I have done the building in quite a few of these.
Often what happens is that the engineering that made it a cool demo in the beginning, is pushed aside, and once funding and a variety of product managers and sales people start chiming in, users and genuine value proposition is forgotten in favor of things that sound huge for the business, in theory. Not seen it materialize in practice yet.
Re: Founder Mode
#289From an execution perspective, I believe it makes more sense to start from the top down. Workers should believe that their boss is a boss because they can synthesize ideas.
Re: Founder Mode
#290Counter-example: Reed Hastings, co-founder and the CEO of Netflix for 22 years, famously did the opposite of what pg is saying. Reed insisted on a particular style of employee freedom & responsibility that IMO set the benchmark for innovating year after year and avoiding micro-managers, even as it scaled up past 2000 engineers. This story still has not been fully told. Reed was closely involved but perhaps the opposi…
Good points in pg's essay:
* CEO/founder should engage directly at multiple levels rather than only interact with the company through their direct reports. (Same applies at every management level, btw)
* Delegation is good, and it should happen in proportion with trust.
* The dominant culture at many tech companies is flawed and sub-optimal.
Bad points:
* "Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides". The two supporting points could both be true: "VCs who haven't been founders themselves don't know how founders should run companies, and C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world." However, it does not follow that the only option left is "Steve Jobs Style."
* "an annual retreat for [...] the 100 most important people"... I have trouble envisioning an effective org chart with lots of people at the top who would not also be in the "top 100" list. If your department heads are not your most skilled operators, then... maybe that's a good problem to fix.
* Assuming that the skills and intuition that make a founder successful will 100% apply to the very different job of being the chief of a 2000-person tribe. We should not assume that.
On average, everyone has an equal chance of needing to learn something new to succeed in a new situation-- founders included. Don't let pg's founder flattery go to your head.