Thoughts on this "founder mode" situation?

I'm surprised how much this idea has blown up on Twitter, but Paul Graham is the Jesus of the startup world, so anything he says has instant credibility. Also, "founder mode" is such a punchy name :)

I like the idea of founder mode as a founder, but I wouldn't like it as a Big Tech employee. Caring about the details when you're small and intimately aware of the problem space (as an early-stage founder) makes a lot of sense to me.

However, in Big Tech, where you have multiple products and amazing smart people around you, I feel like founder mode is harder to put into practice. For a high-ownership employee, I also wouldn't have wanted a manager who was a big adherent to founder mode.

Founder mode as a concept is great (I'm really glad that it blew up outside of the startup world), but as the name suggests, it really only applies to early-stage startups. As Rahul mentioned, if you're a manager in a bigger tech company, the only way you can survive is to aggressively delegate and focus more on the bird's eye view. You can't get your hands dirty with everything.

In contrast, a lot of weak founders go into that aloof managerial mindset way too early. The classic example is early-stage founders hiring a big sales team, well before they reach PMF (product-market fit). When you're early (pre-seed, seed, early Series A), you should be the salesperson as the founder. Figure out that sales playbook and value proposition end-to-end and make a ton of sales - Only after that can you scale the operation and become more of a manager.

Anyone here working in startups going "founder mode"?

🙋‍♂️

There is a reason why Rahul and I still meet up with Taro community members - We're happy doing things that don't scale as long as it lets us better understand our users and deliver the best experience.