👔 In defence of manager mode
Founder mode is always better than manager mode — as long as the founder is a visionary and the manager a hack. But it's not always that simple.
There is a famous story about a research group tasked during World War II with figuring out how to reduce US Air Force casualties. Seeing that returning planes had wings riddled with bullet holes, the group figured extra armour on those wings would reduce the number of aircraft destroyed. But they figured wrong.
The thing to do, mathematician Abraham Wald reasoned, was to armour the parts that didn’t have damage. Planes with mangled wings made it back, while those with destroyed engines didn’t. To find insight they had to consider the aircraft they couldn't see.
It is an episode synonymous with survivorship bias, and one I've thought about a lot while reading the discourse around founder mode.
The term has come into vogue thanks to an essay written by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham. There are two ways to run a company, he wrote: founder mode and manager mode. Founder mode broadly means being closely in touch with all aspects of how the business functions. Management mode, meanwhile, is best encapsulated by the good ol’ “hire people and give them space to do their job” adage.
