I'm gonna keep this one short because if I end up writing more than Paul Graham himself, God help us all 😂
How It All Kicked Off
So here's what went down 👇
On September 1st, Paul Graham posted something on X (formerly known as Twitter 😉). And guess what? It blew up. Like, really blew up. This post you're reading now? It's all because of that "Founder's Mode" thing everyone's talking about.
We got pretty excited too. So we:
Watched some videos (one was pretty cool)
Talked about it ourselves - Check it out here if you want to watch, or here if you prefer listening. [Spotify’s here]
Manager Mode vs. Founder Mode: What's the Deal?
Turns out, there are two ways to run things:
Manager Mode
Picture Airbnb when it was just getting big. They've got their thing going, and now they need to grow. More people, more problems, right?
The usual advice? "Hire smart people and let them do their thing," at least that's what Paul Graham says in his essay. Sounds good, doesn't it?
Well, hold up. Graham talked to a bunch of founders, and guess what? They felt like they were being messed with by this advice.
The Manager Mode Problem
Founders are stuck between:
Big-shot consultants telling them how to run things
The smart people they hired also telling them how to run things
Graham (and us) were like, "Why's everyone giving these smart founders such bad advice?" Turns out, most of this advice is about "how to run a company you didn't start" 😂
Where This Comes From
Get this: a lot of this management stuff comes from way back in the Industrial Revolution. When machines couldn't do everything, they got people to do the boring, repeat-after-me jobs. Managers just had to make sure people did the same thing every day and got better at it.
Fast forward to now, and it's pretty much the same old story – just with fancier words.
Now, About This Founder Mode
Paul Graham says there's no handbook for this - even business schools don't know it's a thing. What we know about Founder Mode is just from founders figuring it out as they go.
But one thing's for sure: it's not about hiring bossy managers to tell everyone what to do. Graham found out that a lot of these "great hires" are just really good at faking it, and they might run your company into the ground.
The Steve Jobs Thing
Graham talks about how Steve Jobs used to take the 100 most important Apple people (not just the big bosses) on a yearly trip. They'd go off and do their thing (whatever that was). And Jobs kept doing this every year.
Was it a good idea? Who knows? But Steve Jobs thought it was worth doing again and again, so maybe he was onto something.
So What Is Founder Mode, Really?
Honestly? We're still trying to figure it out. But it looks like it's about doing things differently from all those old-school management ideas. It's about using that special founder magic to run things.
As we learn more about this, we might end up rewriting this post.
Stay tuned – this Founder Mode thing is just getting started.
That's it for now, folks. Have an awesome weekend! 🏖️
Catch you later! 👋
I love your thumbnails for the newsletter :D They are so original!