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Founder Mode

paulgraham.com

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Re: Founder Mode

#391

Post by jbs789 »

fallinditch wrote: post #296
tlogan wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that we don’t have a clear understanding of what “founder mode” truly entails. But, I predict that once Reed Hastings leaves Netflix, the company will begin to decline.

PG's commentary is interesting but I think he is leaning towards an unsatisfactory conclusion. He's trying to simplify management into modes but in reality life is more complex and nuanced. Chesky's experience instead says to me that as managers we should be be wary of all advice and management styles and playbooks. For sure it's good to listen to advice and learn about management but life and managing a business are…

This was my takeaway too. We are all different, in the skills we bring to the table and the problems in front of us, and a good leader is self aware and discovers the solutions for their problem, not blindly copy someone else’s.

Re: Founder Mode

#392

Post by gist »

> Their advice could be optimistically summarized as "hire good people and give them room to do their jobs."

What's the definition of 'good people' in the sense that nobody knowingly hires 'bad' people. And to my other points (below) how is someone with (very very generally) no actual business experience (or very little ie in or out of college) supposed to know if someone is good (or just faking it even with embelished references) if they don't themselves have an idea of what 'good' is? (Also how well they are able to read people.

> You tell your direct reports what to do, and it's up to them to figure out how. But you don't get involved in the details of what they do. That would be micromanaging them, which is bad.

If you are a startup founder typically you wouldn't be able to anyway because a) You don't know their job and b) You actually don't know that much about business (or operating one) to begin with.

> judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them dr ive the company into the ground.

To my first point because they don't know enough don't have enough actual experience to even know how to vet someone. Welcome to the business world where actual time in business does make a difference.

> Steve presumably wouldn't have kept having these retreats if they didn't work. But I've never heard of another company doing this.

While Steve might have had other reasons for keeping the retreats the fact that PG has never heard of another company doing it could just be because Paul only reads what he reads AND not every company talks about things they do in a public way.

Re: Founder Mode

#393

Post by marcosdumay »

sethammons wrote: post #364
marcosdumay wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were worth, literally, their weight in gold That's correct. They do nothing, but when that nothing is actually done well, it shows. Unfortunately, this is not common.

> They do nothing ... but I explicitly stated what they did and it was not nothing

Your list doesn't include a lot of "doing". It's only achievements.

Re: Founder Mode

#394

Post by aorloff »

gizmo wrote: post #9

The big thing missing from pg’s essay is how the professional managerial class has this big filter where only those who are willing to jump through hoops for 20 years get to the c-suite. In businesses of any size it’s just not possible to get promoted straight up the ranks in your 20s no matter how good you are. Seniority trumps ability. Founders are excluded from this filter process and to nobody’s surprise founders…

The problem is that very few manager-capable younger folks can truly embrace the thing that has to be done to become a great manager, and that is to cease being an IC.

Every startup actually discourages this, which is why so few startups have great young managers.

Re: Founder Mode

#395

Post by gist »

dmurray wrote: post #316
smugglerFlynn wrote: post #294

This whole article is written around one key sentence: > There are things founders can do that managers can't, and not doing them feels wrong to founders, because it is. But there are absolutely no examples given of what these things actually are. Paul kinda vibes around that vague statement for 5 more paragraphs, giving absolutely nothing concrete. And to be honest this hn comment section scares me, as it feels like…

Based on pg's other work, I would guess that previous drafts of this essay had concrete examples, but they were removed after deciding that including them would make the discussion all about those specifics. But in general I think it's clear: founder mode here means having strong opinions about all parts of the company. Maybe it's a technical founder telling salespeople what they should emphasise in their sales pitch…

> I would guess that previous drafts of this essay had concrete examples

It's always bothered me to no end that PG has his essays read by others prior to posting. This isn't academia (or an application to college or a job application) and he's not writing for a journal and requiring peer review (or comments or suggestions). Fine it's his own style apparently.

Now what would be very interesting is to see some of the reply comments on the drafts of the PG essays (and how extensive they are).

Re: Founder Mode

#396

Post by ywain »

nberkman wrote: post #389
CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Cracked is just slang for insanely talented, ergo...

"Crack", not "cracked". "Crack": adj., first-rate; excellent: a crack shot. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/crack "Cracked": no such meaning https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cracked

Urban Dictionary might be a better place for recent internet slang: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cracked

Re: Founder Mode

#397

Post by voiceblue »

There is no such thing as "conventional wisdom". Wisdom will guide you to treat convention not as instruction, but as input - one of many.

PG did not go far enough here. The problem isn't 'bad advice', the problem is that advice is no substitute for thinking. Neither is looking at what Steve Jobs did at Apple for that matter: what really works is to think about all of this, considering problems from multiple angles.

However, as Bertrand Russel said:

“Most people would rather die than think and many of them do!”

Which also applies to businesses!

   Indeed, another prediction I'll make about founder mode is that once we figure out what it is, we'll find that a number of individual founders were already most of the way there — except that in doing what they did they were regarded by many as eccentric or worse.
Based on that quote, here's my attempt to define 'founder mode' in terms of what TFA is suggesting: be an independent thinker. Does it sound like common sense? It probably is. But remember what Charles Munger said:

    The so-called common sense is common sense that ordinary people do not have. When we say that someone has common sense, we are actually saying that he has common sense that ordinary people do not have. People think that it is easy to have common sense, but in fact it is very difficult.

Re: Founder Mode

#398

Post by [deleted] »

nberkman wrote: post #389
CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Cracked is just slang for insanely talented, ergo...

"Crack", not "cracked". "Crack": adj., first-rate; excellent: a crack shot. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/crack "Cracked": no such meaning https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cracked

[deleted]

Re: Founder Mode

#399

Post by gist »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #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

Wonderful but almost all startups don't have a cultural icon (and btw he was one way back after Apple got started and obviously when he returned) nor do they have the resources to 'hire great people' and fire anyone and replace them.

Re: Founder Mode

#400

Post by eapressoandcats »

This just sounds like PG overly fixating on “founder” vs “manager” as the distinction, when the actual focus should be on relative skills of delegation vs skills in the business domain.

Whether or not you are a founder, if your strengths tend toward understanding the business domain and implementation, then you probably should lean more hands on. If your strengths lean more towards the management side, then hiring strong people to manage parts of the company.

Of course, which works better is very company and culture dependent. Larger conglomerates that don’t have a focused mission probably shouldn’t have leaders that aren’t geared toward that.

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