Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Founder Mode

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 772 posts

Re: Founder Mode

#421

Post by daemonk »

As an exited founder who left 2 years after acquisition, this really put into words thoughts that I’ve had leading up to me leaving.

Founders can sometimes be walking contradictions of being hyper self critical and also have supreme confidence. Going from a 50 employee startup to being a part of a multinational corporation is a “corporate shock” that makes a founder think they are out of their depths and should just follow the corporate’s lead.

The founder vs manager mode definitely resonates with me. However, the lack of concrete success stories of “founder mode” (whatever that may mean) leads to most founders giving up their reigns to the horde of corporate MBAs and quietly quitting after their holdback period is over.

Why exert so much effort trying to paddle a canoe and steering against the giant cruiseship that is the mothership corporation, when you should just go start another company and reap your potential reward.

Re: Founder Mode

#422

Post by deepsun »

kaplun wrote: post #315
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…

A founder lives their company as the most important thing in their life, it's an extension of their life and they live and breath the company. A manager instead is being given a responsibility and will try their best to fulfill the role. A founder will never rest if they know there's an issue to be solved in the company, while the manager has a life and know they can move forward in case. A founder will not be intimi…

Still a lot of vague statements that different people can understand differently. Still no concrete examples.

Re: Founder Mode

#423

Post by jandrewrogers »

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…

I think it is obliquely getting at a difference between founder and manager that is very real: a founder has a moral authority over the vision that a manager does not. We can argue whence it comes but it is palpable from strong founder leaders. There is a general sense that they hold the entire business in their head.

A founder can wield this to effect changes that would be nearly impossible without it. In this sense, a founder can solve some problems in every part of the organization that no manager can. If a founder delegates everything to managers, or cannot identify problems best addressed with this founder's tool, then you are setting up managers to be ineffective in some situations that could have been solved by the founder stepping in. I think this is also part of what makes founder-led companies different generally. Professional managers do not have this tool at their disposal to solve organizational problems.

It requires judiciously picking when and where to leverage this power. Applying it unnecessarily will have the effect of disempowering your managers, and now you have a new organizational problem.

Re: Founder Mode

#424

Post by globalise83 »

bpmooch wrote: post #414
kaplun wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A founder lives their company as the most important thing in their life, it's an extension of their life and they live and breath the company. A manager instead is being given a responsibility and will try their best to fulfill the role. A founder will never rest if they know there's an issue to be solved in the company, while the manager has a life and know they can move forward in case. A founder will not be intimi…

> A founder lives their company as the most important thing in their life, it's an extension of their life and they live and breath the company. i generally consider myself a hard worker and i have done plenty of overtime in my career. i would feel pity for anyone who felt this way about any company, unless they were literally curing cancer or giving us infinite energy. yuck

At a purely financial level, making their company the most important thing in their life for a period of maybe 5-10 years means that they have a good chance at not having to work at all for the rest of their life. Doing 5-10 years of overtime for someone else falls quite short of that in most cases.

Re: Founder Mode

#426

Post by lordofmoria »

FloorEgg wrote: post #412
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…

I think Paul is pointing at something I've heard described as integrated complexity, basically someone who can hold the entire business in their head and understand how all the problems interact at all levels of abstractions. Not everyone can do this, but the people who can are better served if they exercise the ability because it improves alignment and accountability. When you assign a person to a problem (hr policy…

Brilliant explanation - it puts into words and makes sense of some experiences I’ve had that are hard to articulate.

Re: Founder Mode

#427

Post by bschmidt1 »

gniting wrote: post #408

Anyone know why PG still insists on having his posts be in a format where readability seems to be the least important thing? I am sure there's a solid/sound reason, and I am genuinely curious to understand it.

"Bookish" I kinda like it

Re: Founder Mode

#428

Post by lnenad »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #417
fhdsgbbcaA wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely, this is an essay without a thesis, or any valuable evidence or argument. This is a C- college essay at best. I’m sad about that because I was very interested in the title.

But, he's right. I'd rather a C- college essay that is saying something right than an A+ that is very convincing bs. A decent number of well rated business books are the latter.

It's only "right" because you echo his thoughts. If it were written properly with examples and proper reasoning it would entice those who don't share his opinion to consider their stance.

Re: Founder Mode

#429

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

RichardKain wrote: post #234

I think the vast majority of businesses are run in "Founder Mode," and maybe the majority of start ups. That's why they don't make it. The books about delegation from the HBS crowd are in some respects a reaction to that default mode. Chesky and Jobs are obviously managerial outliers for their extreme accomplishment. Anytime one cites Jobs as a guru I'm reminded of an evaluation Bill Gates made about Jobs, to the eff…

Even though I run a company which has only 4 million profit per year, I have seen something similar that once a company starts being successful, you attract these people who's only job is to move from successful company to successful company in a sort of a circuit. They don't add much value but they know how to stay out of trouble.

So what happens I think is that most business value is brought about by a very small percentage of a company's actual day-to-day productive output. However, as a company grows, you do need this additional people because without them the company will start losing value. But a very few people and very few work in the company actually adds value and gets the company to the next step. So imagine something like apple the iMac when they launched it and then the iPhone and then the iPod drove the company into what we know it to be today. But if they didn't have all of the other managers and stuff who were pushing papers and getting things going, the company wouldn't even exist. The founder really needs to know what matters in the company no matter how large it gets and how to go to the next step in the company and that will take very very little of the company's actual outputs. Figure out who are directly responsible for creating those outputs and create a direct relationship with them. Going through the mbas and the paper pushers is secondhand information and usually they are tampered with.

Re: Founder Mode

#430

Post by ahaucnx »

FloorEgg wrote: post #412
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…

I think Paul is pointing at something I've heard described as integrated complexity, basically someone who can hold the entire business in their head and understand how all the problems interact at all levels of abstractions. Not everyone can do this, but the people who can are better served if they exercise the ability because it improves alignment and accountability. When you assign a person to a problem (hr policy…

I agree 100%.

I would really underline the ability of the founder to have this pretty unique ability to see and set the strategic direction of the startup which requires a lot of abstract thinking with the tactical and operational skills to make sure you earn money right now.

Post reply on HN