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

451–460 of 772 posts

Re: Founder Mode

#451

Post by mattgreenrocks »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #225
Aurornis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first exposure to big company management was, ironically, at a startup. They hired their C-level executives from big companies. Those executives hired VPs and extra layers of management who were also from big companies. Very quickly we had a deep org chart where ICs could be 5 steps removed from the CEO even though they hadn’t decided exactly what product we were going to build. Everything was done by committee in…

Honestly, the people that put in these processes are the smart ones. Useless as they are, they do climb the ladder, get good titles, and good pay.

Smart? I doubt they like doing those things.

If they were actually smart they’d figure out how to set up an employment situation that they don’t mind that also has the pay/status that they want.

Re: Founder Mode

#452

Post by bogdan-lab »

This is what I understood from this article:

Manger mode is "hire good people and give them space to do their job". Founders mode is Steve Job's way " + make those good people feel important".

There are many founders, who failed to scale their sturtups, because they did something wrong. But it is not because they ALL in fact did the same mistake. It is just many of them can match their particular mistake with the vague concept of "bad manager mode advice".

Re: Founder Mode

#453

Post by mattgreenrocks »

ackbar03 wrote: post #93
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

How do you guys actually hire the superstars to join your startup as the early employees/partners? And not just the typical friend you know who's "a pretty smart guy" and his friend and so on

How many startups actually need superstars? Most of them are doing glorified CRUD work. There’s nothing wrong with that!

But companies should be honest with themselves about what they need. Everyone still seems obsessed with being able to pretend they somehow got the absolute best deal on the employment market instead of interviewing for the position itself.

Re: Founder Mode

#454

Post by maayank »

Aurornis wrote: post #203
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

The problem with Steve Jobs advice like this is that it doesn’t work out of context. I worked for a VP and CTO who embraced this advice literally: They wanted to hire smart people and have them decide what would be done. They took it to so much of an extreme that they washed their hands of the responsibility for deciding and executing anything. Their job, they thought, was to call us to meetings and then ask a lot of…

I like to say "you can't delegate vision"

Re: Founder Mode

#455

Post by yunohn »

maccard wrote: post #112
ackbar03 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you guys actually hire the superstars to join your startup as the early employees/partners? And not just the typical friend you know who's "a pretty smart guy" and his friend and so on

Instead of thinking of them as some superstar, think of it like hiring an IC - you want someone who can, and will ship, especially in the face of ambiguity. If you hire a mega talented engineer who specialises in designing fault tolerant distributed systems, you’re going to build a fault tolerant distributed system. If you hire someone who ships scrappy features and doesn’t leave a giant mess behind you, you have a m…

I felt like their question was, how to hire them to your new startup over them going to or staying at a big corp.

Re: Founder Mode

#456

Post by ozim »

gregfjohnson wrote: post #446

I grew up seeing founder mode first-hand. My dad founded Celestron, and he operated just as Paul is describing. At my current company, I see the CEO doing the exact same thing, which gives me great hope. Huge contrast from my previous start-up, for which I have great anti-hope unfortunately. (Current company is Zap Surgical Systems, with Dr. John Adler as the founder.) I've seen John everywhere, all day every day. I'…

I don’t think it is a bad outcome with misusing a concept.

Because it does not affect those truly embracing it.

Having an excuse is not going to save bad business run by bad people. It might let them slide a bit more but ultimately it is not doing the job for them.

Re: Founder Mode

#457

Post by FloorEgg »

YZF wrote: post #443
FloorEgg wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This does resonate but I don't think it's necessarily a "founder" vs. "manager" thing. I've seen at least one company that was not successful under its founders and where a hired CEO took it to the next level. That hired CEO operated closer to what you'd call "founder mode". Both these companies grew to multi-billion dollar valuations and would have likely never gotten there without hiring a CEO and both executed rea…

I agree that the labels Paul used already carry meaning that confuses what I think Paul is really trying to point out. I also agree that it's really hard to tell whether someone is capable of leading in "founder mode", and to what degree.

Ray Dalio describes these people as "Shapers", and maybe using a new term is the right way to go.

So putting this term to work, Paul's point is that the best way to run a company when the leader is a shaper isn't going to be the same as when the leader isn't a shaper. And to your point not all founders are Shapers and not all Shapers are founders.

Re: Founder Mode

#458

Post by vajrabum »

This fits with most of Warren Buffet's acquisition practice in the last 40 or so years. He switched (mostly) from buying stocks and securities to buying highly profitable, privately held companies with good management in place and doing everything he could to keep them in place. And I remember research from a Stanford business professor about 20 years ago that family run companies on the S&P 500 significantly outperform ones with 'professional management'. Both could just be as simple as the management incentives are aligned with the long term health of the companies.

Re: Founder Mode

#459

Post by Spivak »

intelVISA wrote: post #38
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…

> filters out the most capable and most effective people from executive positions Well, yes, because generally somebody who is actually 'the most capable and most effective' will simply be running their own business, why would they waste time climbing the ranks to work for somebody else's yacht? The filter exists because whilst PMCs can't build the ship, a founder can, they're fine at keeping it away from the rocks e…

> why would they waste time climbing the ranks

Because their role in a company is support like CFO, CIO, CPO, CMO (and honestly CEO). The startup lifecycle where "person or people who make or design the product muddling along the other business functions until they're big enough to need someone specialized" doesn't really work for an accountant.

Re: Founder Mode

#460

Post by fluorinerocket »

Aurornis wrote: post #180
JonChesterfield wrote: post #100

Earlier 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.

My first exposure to big company management was, ironically, at a startup. They hired their C-level executives from big companies. Those executives hired VPs and extra layers of management who were also from big companies. Very quickly we had a deep org chart where ICs could be 5 steps removed from the CEO even though they hadn’t decided exactly what product we were going to build. Everything was done by committee in…

This sounds like my last company.

Was it a new space startup in the Bay area?

Post reply on HN