I have a question: What is founder mode, anyway?
It might sound like a dumb question after the tech industry’s nonstop (or ad nauseum, depending on your perspective) discussion about it over the long Labor Day weekend, prompted by an essay written by Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham.
Companies can be run in two ways, "founder mode" and "manager mode," Graham wrote, citing a recent talk by Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky as his inspiration. Founder mode is clearly better, Graham argued—founders should be more involved in the weeds of their companies, not less.
Okay, but what actually constitutes a founder-mode company? Can any company operate in founder mode or is it only for startups? Can a company do founder mode if the founder is lousy—or lazy? And can a business leader toggle between founder and manager mode as easily as switching their phone ringer on or off? Where do women fit into the founder mode equation? Graham never expressly defines founder mode in his essay, and in the more than 72 hours of intense—and occasionally bizarre—online discourse that followed Graham’s essay, the topic seemed to take on a Rorschach test quality as people projected their own ideals onto Graham’s inkblot.
"It’s kind of a rallying cry," said Jeremy Fiance, founder of The House Fund. "There’s an element here that’s about the battle between the public and private markets. There’s a ton of tension between public market financial investors, every VC out there who’s hoping for liquidity, and founders who thought they were going to be able to go public, but haven’t…This came out at a perfect time in which a lot of founders are beat up and looking for permission to unleash their instincts, persist, and get to the promised land."
This is the season for rallying cries, as Silicon Valley’s tech leaders link arms with the like-minded and square up against ideological foes in politics, culture, and anything else. Why not management philosophy too? In that sense, founder mode is more of a vibe than a formula.
And it resonates for a reason. Behind closed doors, I’ve talked to so many founders who have felt pressured to become someone else as their companies grew, sometimes even becoming victims of their own success. Ultimately, the volume on founder mode talk has gotten turned so far up so fast because it’s existential.
"I can certainly understand why [founder mode is] tantalizing to founders, who traditionally always have had difficulty letting go of areas of their business," M13 partner Matt Hoffman told Term Sheet via email.
Rahul Vohra, CEO and founder of email juggernaut Superhuman, echoed this sentiment:
"It was the right message at the right time, and PG [Paul Graham] put into words something that many of us have been thinking about for a long time," Vohra wrote to me.
If there’s ambiguity in the concept of founder mode, that may be a key part of Graham’s point—that we actually don’t deeply understand what makes a successful founder successful. After all, as Graham points out, we haven’t substantially studied how a founder in charge of a rapidly scaling company can maximize their leadership capabilities, along with their startup’s potential. It’s not part of the business school curriculum. It’s something a founder needs to figure out, as Superhuman’s Vohra seems to have.
"I made a big change at Superhuman which made it easier for me to be in founder mode even as we scale, which was to hire a President," Vohra noted. "It is way more joyous, we ship way faster, and it’s unlocking a new level of growth for us."
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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