Paul Graham has written a great new essay called Founder Mode, which argues, in summary that great founders have hired great executives and it’s no

"Founder Mode" in context - by Sam Gerstenzang

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2024-09-03 12:30:03

Paul Graham has written a great new essay called Founder Mode, which argues, in summary that great founders have hired great executives and it’s not worked. Instead the thing that works is “founder mode” which is direct involvement and oversight, of what would be typically called micromanagement. He argues we should, manage more “like Steve Jobs and and less like John Sculley,” citing Jobs’ annual ‘top 100 people meeting’ which crossed reporting lines as evidence of Job’s unique founder approach.

First, let me tackle one core problem of Graham’s essay: tremendous sampling bias. It’s possible that these extraordinarily great, craft oriented founders who have built important companies are right. But my guess is actually that the same micromanagement bias has made them so successful has made them not as successful in hiring great people.

The great people I know don’t want to be micromanaged. Actually, it’s a bit more specific than that: they want tremendous agency, high autonomy AND they want to have great leaders who are pushing them to be better in specific, high context ways. You can call that micromanagement but I think it’s actually something different.