Reflection on Founder Mode from a former founder, now hired manager

Twitter has blown up over the last few days after Paul Graham released his post on Founder Mode, which refers to a private talk that Brian Chesky, the founder of AirBNB, did at a Y Combinator dinner.

I had to read the post three times before I went from feeling pissed on by Paul Grahams’s lovely directness to reflecting on my journey from founder to manager (VP Product and Engineering), how my management style has been influenced by Manager Mode and how many founders I have seen struggle with the wasteland between Founder and Manager mode.

A wasteland

I agree with Paul and Brian that Founder Mode is magical and not developed enough, and I agree that there are superpowers in it that we need to set free, but I don't think the most harmful between the two is Manager Mode. In my experience, it’s way more dangerous when founders don’t work on expressing and fixing their leadership style.

You end up in a wasteland between the two modes where the founder is unhappy, frustrated and hates what their job turned out to be. You have a team of hired professional managers who end up frustrated and without authentic leadership from the founder, they need, but it does not stop there; it’s a wasteland that you will drag the entire organisation into. This feels like micromanagement, constantly changing directions and resulting in a loss of trust in the founder and the leadership.

Manager Mode can work, and Founder Mode can be amazing, but the middle ground will kill your company.

Be mindful of your leadership style

So, dear founders, you need to actively work on discovering your leadership style. It does not need to be anything written in a book; it can be something you invent in the same way you are inventing your product. However, fairly early in your scaling journey, you need to be able to express what your leadership style is to ensure alignment with the leaders you bring on.

I do not think anybody at Apple was in doubt about how Steve Jobs led, but in almost all companies I have worked at as a hired gun, people have been in doubt about the founders’ leadership style, involvement, and expectations. I have seen founders approve new features with little feedback, only to delete all the code and rebuild the feature over the weekend, damaging the team’s confidence when they return Monday to see their work gone. This action destroyed all opportunities to provide candid feedback that could have raised the bar for the entire team, which led to a lot of trust loss that week.

I have also seen founders who lost the ability to make decisions after hiring a top-notch leadership team. They became too distant from the front-line staff and customers, causing the entire company to become a gridlock.

I agree that founders should use the superpowers hidden in how they can lead, but it all stands on being mindful and aware of their leadership style. I also (very subjectively here) think that former founders are often the best leaders (and PMs) you can hire in the scaling stage. We know what it is to be a founder, and we know how to lead as founders in our teams.

If you are unsure how to define or even discover your leadership style, I encourage you to seek wisdom from a leadership coach. I have both seen others and grown immensely myself from working with someone a ton more knowledgeable than myself. The truth is also that I have not been aware of my leadership style (and lack of it) while being in the trenches of startup life; I have only had the ability to discover that while working as a hired manager.

After reflecting on Founder Mode, it’s time for me to figure out what that means for my day-to-day management style in my current role, where I report to the founders but am a hired gun. Hopefully, more on that later.