by jrnkntl on 10/17/24, 11:51 AM with 27 comments
by anotherhue on 10/17/24, 12:27 PM
If you were good at product but bad at business hire a business person and accept that CEO is a different skill set. Don't wrap it up in some egotistic 'once more unto the breach' nonsense.
by lukev on 10/17/24, 12:31 PM
1. Many companies have too many layers of management, with too much abstraction from the actual product, which kills drive and focus.
2. Micromanagement and disempowerment of employees is bad management and ultimately harmful.
In practice these two facts often exist in tension, but they are not inherently contradictory, and it's possible to thread the needle.
by jt2190 on 10/17/24, 12:28 PM
With this willfulness comes the challenge of “herding the cats” to an achieve an ultra-focused vision. This is what requires “founder mode”.
No talented founder will resort to typical junior manager mircromanagement antics as it would drive the company into the ground. Instead, they seem to have some kind of “reality distortion field” ability, what we’re calling “founder mode” here. The challenge is discovering the parts and pieces that make up “founder mode”… we know it exists but don’t really understand it.
by hintymad on 10/17/24, 6:23 PM
And why is that a problem? I understand the connotation of "micromanaging". It's just that in the context of this discussion, it really depends on what we mean by "micromanaging". The CEO of Scale AI has a better interpretation: micromanaging is just managing. So, micromanaging will be bad if such managing is counter productive, otherwise it is good. For positive examples, I'd say Steve Job's "micromanaging" of product details is amazing (he wants to to have elegance inside a computer case. How micromanaging is that!). Jeff Bezos' micromanaging on company culture is also amazing - he even dictates on how every team should conduct meetings and he forces how every team manages service access. How micromanaging is that!
On a personal level, I'd always crave for a leader who can frequently and correctly tell me how wrong I am or how much better I can do things. That'll be a hell of a learning experience.
by billsmithaustin on 10/17/24, 12:51 PM
Glassdoor reviews are a poor measure of a company's culture.
by cynicalpeace on 10/17/24, 12:31 PM
"“founder mode” paradigm, a valid alternative to “skillful liars”
"I guess anyone can see how a spreadsheet with yellow, red and green statuses is nothing groundbreaking really!"
"Graham goes as far as positioning this as an entirely new paradigm, literally believing he's discovered something that nobody knew existed before."
"this approach is well known to business schools as poor, dysfunctional management, and the alternative to that is of course good management."
I could keep going. I am happy to read arguments for/against Founder Mode, but I want to read an actual argument, not ad hominem dressed in smarty pants.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says"
by gmerc on 10/17/24, 1:56 PM
It’s a cyclical thing that ends up in disaster about 4-8 years down the road.
by guillim85 on 10/17/24, 12:41 PM
by tyleo on 10/17/24, 12:32 PM
by theideaofcoffee on 10/17/24, 12:56 PM
If you want to have impact, do less! Have a clear vision above all, be able to articulate it, rally people behind you, micromanagement “founder mode” is just a bandaid over poor fearful, leadership. Sure, micromanage your startup of five people, after that you should have the discretion to hire people to carry out your vision. Otherwise, just get out, you’ll just make your life and everyone else’s less miserable otherwise.
by tennisflyi on 10/20/24, 6:45 PM
by 1oooqooq on 10/17/24, 12:29 PM
by colinmorelli on 10/17/24, 12:34 PM
It follows that founders (or employees who were early enough to have a founding mentality), often, tend to care more about their products and services than anyone else will and this can lead to centralized decision making being highly effective. This is the case for Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Howard Schultz, Brian Chesky, and Elon Musk (please set aside any recent personal opinions of him).
It also follows that "manager" CEOs and senior leaders are often hired into a role with different incentives that relate far less to them caring about the product, customer, or business, and more to the movement of specific metrics. In these cases, centralized decision making can lead to deterioration of a product experience to the point of irrelevance. This list might include Scott Thompson (Yahoo), Dennis Muilenburg (Boeing), etc.
I don't believe it is anything inherent to a "founder" or "manager." Simply put: centralized decision making can be effective in an organization where the centralized decision maker has the insights and is close enough to the customer and market to make good decisions. It can be massively detrimental if the person is detached from the customer and market.
It is just the case that a founder happens to be much more likely to be close to the customer and the market than a hired leader, and likely has much more of a desire to be so.
This might be wrong, but it has tracked in my career so far. I've seen great managers, horrible managers, great founders, and horrible founders. The only thing that has been consistent is that the great ones are _far_ more likely to deeply understand the customer they serve and the product they build than the bad ones.
by neilv on 10/17/24, 1:16 PM
For those people who interact with many early startup founders, what rates of poor behavior (e.g., oblivious, abrasive, arrogant, narcissistic, coked-up) are you seeing in the last few years?
by xiphias2 on 10/17/24, 2:21 PM
Actually there isn't even 2Y option in Google search, so the author should explain why he chose that time horizon (my guess is just to make a negative article).
by rogerkirkness on 10/17/24, 12:06 PM
by nine_zeros on 10/17/24, 12:22 PM
Yet, when given the freedom, these middle-managers themselves abuse it to micromanage their own reports via measures for stack ranking, butts on seats, # of commits, or other such BS proxy metrics.