Insurance & Insurtech Strategic Hiring | Recruiting | Build Your Team, Build Your Vision 🎯
Good morning, especially to #founders. Missed the buzz about Brian Chesky's "Founder Mode" speech? And #PaulGraham's essay distilling it? The Cliff Notes thoughts, extracts, and links follow. 🗨️Conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken... people advised him [Brian] to run the company in a certain way for it to scale..."hire good people and give them room to do their jobs." He followed this advice and the results were disastrous.💣💬 Enter #FounderMode. The thesis is that "Founder Mode is not Manager Mode". More from Paul: 🗨️Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it's described that way, doesn't it?... One theme I [PG] noticed both in Brian's talk and when talking to founders afterward was the idea of being gaslit. Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides — by people telling them they have to run their companies like managers, and by the people working for them when they do. VCs who haven't been founders themselves don't know how founders should run companies (❗), and C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world.💬 Sages and snarksters more experienced than I in dissecting management theory, founding startups, and writing viral essays have all boarded the Founder Mode buzz train. Catch some of the chatter in the comments. In the five years that I've been close to the #insurtech founder world, I've watched this play out: 😤the frustrations created when founders and investors don't have a Venn diagram on mission or financial expectation; ❎the bad advice given and taken & ✅the good guidance given and taken; 📈the focus on scaling, on return, on exit leading to 😕diversion from mission and purpose 🙄the stereotype around founders having "bright shiny object syndrome" 💟the community that founders are now creating around best practices, as collectively we enter the next phase of startups. Bobbie Shrivastav, MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM Colby Tunick, PMP Zechari T. Michelle Bothe Judson Norton Sri Ramaswamy Jerry W Willis Chrysa Jones Cassandra "Cassie" Hand-Gallegos, AIC Amrit Santhirasenan Pat West Valkyrie Holmes Jamie Luce https://lnkd.in/eVYAFZkc
Audry Torrence
3mo
https://x.com/search?q=founder%20mode%20&src=typed_query&f=top what the cool kids on X are saying
Audry Torrence
3mo
https://x.com/yanatweets/status/1830728471380902048 (Here’s a clip but sorry - I can't find the entire Chesky speech, feel free to drop it here if you do!)
Michelle Bothe
3mo
Startups have different phases, and the businesses, processes, and leadership need to evolve. 0-1: It’s all about survival. Everyone’s wearing multiple hats, and you’re just trying to get a product that sticks. 1-10 million: Things start getting serious. You’re growing, building out processes, and figuring out how to scale without losing what makes you unique. 10 million+: Now it’s about leveling up. Time to scale the business, the platform, and bring in the experts to take things to the next level.
Sadly - the customers and employees suffer in all this along with the founders that truly care about the mission and vision, especially when placed in situations where they may get forced out! Great post Audry Torrence and can’t wait to look into the founder mode speech. 🥰
Sri Ramaswamy
3mo
Audry Torrence never thought of the many things founders do as “founders mode” decisions, very very interesting. Thank you for the tag! Awesome summary and interview
Chrysa Jones
3mo
Great highlights Audry! The founder community has been immensely helpful in navigating these very real challenges.
Insurance & Insurtech Strategic Hiring | Recruiting | Build Your Team, Build Your Vision 🎯
3mohttps://paulgraham.com/foundermode.html