Founder mode
Everyone in tech seems to be talking about the idea that startup founders should remain hands-on for longer as their companies grow — but does it actually work?
From time to time, the tech and startup world is prone to getting swept up by a buzzy new idea that feels purpose built to go viral on X and LinkedIn. This week, it’s been ‘founder mode’.
It began with a short essay published last weekend by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham. The core idea behind founder mode — or, as our reporter Bronwen Clune called it in this week’s Sweat Equity newsletter, “founder fetishism” — is that common thinking on how startups and companies should be managed as they grow could be all wrong.
Here’s the thinking. In the early days of a startup’s growth trajectory, Graham argues, it is in founder mode, led by a founder-operator who exercises a tonne of agency within a relatively flat structure. They understand the product and usually wear a lot of hats, deeply involving themselves in the minutiae of everything from design and engineering to sales and customer service.
But once a company passes some threshold of growth or size, conventional wisdom dictates that it’s time to bring the adults into the room and establish the systems and structures that will help it scale healthily. At this point it enters ‘manager mode’, and the original founder needs only to hire the right people to run their own turf, and trust them to do it well.
