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Founder Mode

paulgraham.com

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Re: Founder Mode

#551

Post by maccard »

yunohn wrote: post #455
maccard wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those people won’t last at big corp, and won’t be interested in it.

As for how you attract them - same way you attract anyone else. Give them something they want. For these people it’s agency, freedom and high level guideposts. For a productive big corp employee it’s clear guidance, timelines and a hierarchy to adhere to.

Re: Founder Mode

#552

Post by nox101 »

cabbageicefruit wrote: post #525
ineedaj0b wrote: post #520

I think it’s still undecided if Airbnb is a force for good or a force for evil in the world. A lot, I mean a lot of people with middle incomes have bought desirable homes in nice locations and rent them out. There are many aspiring families, young couples priced out of the market because of this. Sure, this option was always a thing but the people who rent these properties out do not improve the community or unit the…

I’d love to see the numbers on this. I suspect that the middle class families buying a rental to Airbnb are largely inconsequential to the housing crisis compared to the corporations buying thousands of homes to cash in on rent for the rest of eternity.

It might depend on the city but this was recommended recently

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6428660

their claim. Developers built to the market, the market being people wanting an investment rental property. The prices got so high that no one can afford to rent them so investors are losing money. It used to be, mortgage payment = $x. rent = $x+($500-$1000) but now it's rent = $x-($500-$1000). Further, they aren't sellable because they were never designed to be a good place to live long term.

at least that's my summary.

They didn't explain if all this is true why the prices haven't dropped 30-80% to the price that people might be willing to buy things they don't really want. As in "hey, this place is way smaller than I want but the price is really low and the location is great". As it is now it's more like "this place as way smaller than I want and even if I could afford it it's not worth the price"

I'm curious if the same thing happened in other cities.

Re: Founder Mode

#553

Post by bongodongobob »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #520

I think it’s still undecided if Airbnb is a force for good or a force for evil in the world. A lot, I mean a lot of people with middle incomes have bought desirable homes in nice locations and rent them out. There are many aspiring families, young couples priced out of the market because of this. Sure, this option was always a thing but the people who rent these properties out do not improve the community or unit the…

I don't think it's undecided at all. Pre Airbnb, rent might be $50/day ($1500/mo) for your place. Airbnb comes along and now you can rent it for $200/day. What do you think that does to home prices in the area?

Re: Founder Mode

#554

Post by smeej »

DeborahWrites wrote: post #543
smeej wrote: post #514

Isn't this really just "actually a startup" mode vs. "a growing, professionalizing company" mode? This footnote was what got me: > [1] The more diplomatic way of phrasing this statement would be to say that experienced C-level execs are often very skilled at managing up. And I don't think anyone with knowledge of this world would dispute that. I've not founded startups. I just work in them. I'm not even a terribly im…

I'm belatedly learning this lesson (you'd think I'd have caught on earlier in my career) I very much want to stick to small young startups in future, but there's less demand for tech writers there.

You might have trouble finding opportunities to do this full-time anywhere, but if you could manage the documentation and knowledge base (especially if they're training AI bots internally and to support customers from it) for 3-4 client companies, you might be able to make that work.

Good technical writing is especially important now. I guess you can try to train bots on the codebase itself, but unless that's pretty well documented, I wouldn't expect as much from that as training them on good technical documentation.

Re: Founder Mode

#555

Post by heavyset_go »

cabbageicefruit wrote: post #525
ineedaj0b wrote: post #520

I think it’s still undecided if Airbnb is a force for good or a force for evil in the world. A lot, I mean a lot of people with middle incomes have bought desirable homes in nice locations and rent them out. There are many aspiring families, young couples priced out of the market because of this. Sure, this option was always a thing but the people who rent these properties out do not improve the community or unit the…

I’d love to see the numbers on this. I suspect that the middle class families buying a rental to Airbnb are largely inconsequential to the housing crisis compared to the corporations buying thousands of homes to cash in on rent for the rest of eternity.

At the height of it, entire buildings were emptied out or built for short term rentals in the largest US cities.

Re: Founder Mode

#556

Post by ynniv »

What the VC’s want is to say, “Good idea, kid. The grown-ups’ll take it from here.” But not this time. This is our time. This time you’re gonna hand ‘em a business card that says “I’m CEO...bitch”

Re: Founder Mode

#557

Post by re-thc »

swalsh wrote: post #278
Aurornis wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a few Steve Jobs quotes which have tanked the tech industry. The quote "If I'd ask customers what they wanted, they would've told me a faster horse." for example is absolutely horrible advice for 90% of companies. It implies you understand your customers business better than they do. For simple B2C businesses, that might be true. For complex B2B businesses, it's very likely not true. If your founder spent dec…

> It implies you understand your customers business better than they do.

The quote does say "I" so there is an inherent assumption there. The problem with taking any quote and "best practice" at face value that can be applied anywhere is always incorrect.

> There's a few Steve Jobs quotes which have tanked the tech industry.

So hence it's like the hype trains an social media driven development. People need to think. Don't blame Jobs for it.

Re: Founder Mode

#558

Post by sowbug »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #410
sowbug wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible this essay about founder mode is itself written in founder mode? Whatever the "it" is that constitutes a startup's purpose often can't be fully articulated in mission statements, OKRs, core values, etc. Either it's simply ineffable, or it's a metamorphosizing snapshot of the leading edge of a rapid process of discovery. Expecting such an already-abstruse concept to faithfully percolate down a rigid rep…

You keep speaking of "it". I have had experience with "it". Sometimes it turns out that "It" is this very scary clown show that percolates down into the rest of the organization in a "cover your ass" mentality that is simply based on nothing but personal incentives to not be fired. "It" can indeed be percolated by clowns in the organization in this case.

It could also be survivorship bias. It's easy for a successful founder to say he or she felt it but couldn't describe it, but maybe it was just luck.

I don't know -- I've never worked at a strongly founder-driven company. I'm just trying to figure out what the essay means.

Re: Founder Mode

#559

Post by diegof79 »

baby wrote: post #548
diegof79 wrote: post #533

I know my comment will sound too cynical or not well-received in a startup incubator forum. However, what I observed in common with the founders of the B2B startups I worked on was good networking. The board members and initial contacts have much to do with the initial clients and the network effect it creates. It doesn’t matter if you have an excellent product. Without the initial boost of early adopters, you’ll str…

Does your SJ example work? pg is talking about scaling your startup after initial success

Yes, you are right. The article discusses scaling. I got fixated on the concept of "founder mode" because the article invites a discussion about its meaning. My example involving Steve Jobs doesn’t apply to scaling, but without moving forward from the company's initial stages, there isn't anything to scale. I think initial networking also plays a vital role in decision-making during growth. For example, Steve Jobs' contacts with Xerox Parc greatly influenced the creation of Apple's Lisa, and Mac.

So, a book on "founder mode" could include multiple chapters on leveraging your network to scale your company.

Re: Founder Mode

#560

Post by ryeguy_24 »

Sorry but am I the only one who got absolutely nothing from this.

Firstly, I’ve never read more generalizations or stereotypes in a PG post. So manager mode is when a person sits at the top of a company, speaks to X direct reports and cares nothing about how they do their job. I’ve never seen anyone successfully manage like this. A skillful manager knows when to dig into ridiculously minute details and when not to.

Secondly, this post says Founders can do some things managers cannot and then listed no examples of what a non-founding leader or manager cannot do. I would think this could be true but mostly based on influence/respect/gravitas.

Thirdly, so when someone tells me to hire good people, why does that result in hiring professional fakers? What? So founders hire professionals and managers hire professional fakers?

Seriously, this post makes no sense and sounds like it’s written by someone who has no idea what a non-founding human does in their job. I think we can all agree that there are good founders and bad founders. In fact, there are many many more bad founders than good, given that most founders don’t get very far - hence the existence of incubators which operate to buy a ton of out of the money options because most will fail. There are also good managers and bad managers. So, have we learned anything here?

Hire good people, let them do their job, trust but verify, override their approach when necessary, dig into details when you need to.

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