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Paul Graham, founder of the popular startup accelerator Y Combinator, coined a new term this week that’s taking social media by storm: “founder mode.”
in Article published on September 1st and Published on X Over Labor Day weekend, Graham pointed out key differences in management styles and organizational structures, distinguishing between the “founder mode” and the traditional “manager mode” route. Graham’s X post had been viewed over 21 million times at press time.
Related: An IBM engineer turned founder explains how to build a multi-million dollar company
Founder mode means that the CEO interacts with employees throughout the organization, not just his or her direct reports. Startups, even as they grow into large companies, have loose hierarchical structures. For example, the CEO can have “top-tier” meetings with employees. Graham gave the real-life example that Steve Jobs hosted an annual retreat for the 100 most important people at Apple, regardless of their company hierarchy.
Manager mode, on the other hand, involves less direct intervention and more delegation of authority to others. Founders can grow their companies and run them effectively without switching into manager mode, Graham said.
“Hire great people and give them the space to work,” Graham writes. “Explained like this, it sounds great. But in reality, judging by report after report from founder, what it often means is hiring professional con artists and having them ruin your company.”
Related: $36M Tech CEO shows you how to start your dream business this weekend
Graham gave the example of Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who tried to follow the traditional “manager mode” wisdom of hiring great people and letting them do their jobs.
“The results have been disastrous,” Graham wrote.
Chesky explained that they needed to shift to a different “founder mode” management style: In an interview Last year, we learned that founders have many advantages over CEOs: Founders own every part of the company creation process from start to finish, they can restructure because they’ve grown the company, and they have the authority to rebrand or make significant changes to the company.
This one: Follow In founder mode.
Three reasons why founders and managers are different:
1. Biological Parenthood
2. Full authority to make changes
3. Know how to restructure your company pic.twitter.com/VhuQ70B8FK— Yana Welinder (@yanatweets) September 2, 2024
In the days after Graham published his essay, the social media world began exploring its meaning in humorous and insightful ways, with one post comparing micromanagement to founder mode:
Founder Mode pic.twitter.com/LWOlaFq4UJ
— ST (@seyitaylor) September 2, 2024
Other posts by female founders address the question: Can women be founders?
Cesky I wrote to X Graham said female founders have been reaching out to her since she published an essay earlier this week in which she said women can’t run companies as founders in the same way as men.
“This needs to change,” he wrote.
Remember when a female founder went into founder mode and they all got cancelled?
— Sarah Mauskoff (@sm) September 3, 2024
The first thing that happened was that headlines portrayed me as a “toxic leader” when I had to make the same – and often unpopular – decisions that my male colleagues made without criticism.
For them, it’s called Founder Mode, and it’s celebrated (it’s a proper noun! It even has its own merch! And a trademark…). https://t.co/rF0IM1huy3
— Sophia Amoruso 3.0 (@sophiamoruso) September 5, 2024
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