OMFG. Can we talk about "Founder Mode" for a moment?
If you haven't seen YC-founder Paul Graham's treatise on management for scaling startups... it's... special.
Graham is light on details about what Founder Mode is. But, man, does he succinctly state what Founder Mode *isn't*:
"Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it's described that way, doesn't it? Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground."
I've been shaking my head about this for four days now.
Scaling a company is WAY harder than starting a company.
A successful early stage company requires one exceptional founder to identify an opportunity and, through force of will, bring a viable solution to market. And, to be clear, that work is incredibly hard.
A successful scaling company requires five to ten world-class executives working on tandem to execute on the founders' vision.
Ask any VC and they'll tell you how hard it is to find even one exceptional founder. A founder has to find exceptional executives OVER AND OVER again.
The secret to success isn't saying "screw executives" and trying to do it all yourself. The secret is to make hiring and leading executives your full-time job.
Seriously, Paul Graham is wrong here, and he's feeding into the worst instincts of every startup founder who gets frustrated because recruiting and leading is hard.
This is the literal job of the Chief Executive Officer.