Paul Graham, founding father of the renowned startup accelerator Y Combinator, coined a latest term this week that has taken social media by storm: founder mode.
IN article published on September 1 AND advertised on X over Labor Day weekend, Graham separates the “founder module” from the traditional “manager module” route, noting key differences in management style and organizational structure. Graham X’s post has more than 21 million views at the time of printing.
Founder mode means the CEO works with employees across the organization, not only their direct reports. A startup, at the same time as it grows into a large company, is less hierarchical; the CEO might, for example, hold “level-skipping” meetings with employees. Graham gave a real-world example of Steve Jobs hosting an annual team-building event for what he considered the 100 most significant people at Apple—no matter where they were on the corporate ladder.
Meanwhile, manager mode is less hands-on and involves more delegation. Founders can grow and effectively run corporations without going into manager mode, Graham said.
“Hire good people and give them the space to do their jobs,” Graham wrote. “Sounds great when you put it that way, doesn’t it? Except in practice, judging by founders’ accounts, it often turns out to mean: hire professional frauds and let them run the company into the ground.”
Graham cited the example of Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who tried to follow the conventional wisdom of “management mode,” hiring good people and letting them do their jobs.
“The results were disastrous,” Graham wrote.
Chesky had to change to a different management style, “founder mode,” and explained in an interview Last 12 months, founders had many benefits over managers: They oversaw every step of the company-building process from start to complete; they grew the company, so they may rebuild it; and they’d permission to rebrand the company or make major changes.
This is it: @bchesky in founder mode.
Three reasons founders are different from managers:
1. Being a biological parent
2. Full permission to make changes
3. Knowing find out how to rebuild a business photo: twitter.com/VhuQ70B8FK— Yana Welinder (@yanatweets) September 2, 2024
In the days since Graham published his essay, the social media world has begun to explore what meaning in fun and insightful ways. One post drew a comparison between micromanagement and founder mode.
Founder Mode photo: twitter.com/LWOlaFq4UJ
— ST (@seyitaylor) September 2, 2024
In other posts by female company founders, the query arose: Can women even be in founder mode?
Chesky wrote on X earlier this week that female founders had been reaching out to him after Graham published an essay about how they were unable to run their corporations in founder mode in the same way as men.
“This has to change,” he wrote.
Remember when female founders played founder mode and all got canceled for it?
— Sara Mauskopf (@sm) September 3, 2024
This was the first time this had happened to me—I used to be being labeled a “toxic leader” in headlines when I used to be forced to make the same, often unpopular, decisions as my colleagues without criticism.
For them it’s called Founder Mode and it’s celebrated (its own name! With its own merch! And trademarks… https://t.co/rF0IM1huy3
— Sophia Amoruso 3.0 (@sophiaamoruso) September 5, 2024