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Love the conversation. Disagree with the implied conclusion.
I won’t summarize Paul Graham’s essay on founder vs. manager mode — it’s a concise enough narrative inspired by a talk from Airbnb’s Brian Chesky. The implication, though, is that founders succeed as companies scale by staying involved in the details. Graham suggests that they remain close to the product, the customers, and the team. He further implies that “manager mode” means disengagement.
Not only do I reject this conclusion, but I also believe it’s dangerous.
Here is what Mr. Graham misses: Most founders don’t inherently know how to run a company.
It’s the secret we don’t discuss enough in startup circles. Founders are inventors, programmers, mavericks — people who see the world differently, force their ideas into existence, and bend the market to their will. But when that idea starts to take off, they often find themselves gasping for air — struggling with reading financials, building forecasts, planning road maps, leading talent, managing investors, and navigating the steady drumbeat of communication responsibilities that didn’t exist during the early days.
What makes startups unusual is their rapid evolution, shifting from an idea to a global operation in an incredibly short time. What makes founders equally unusual is their capacity to scale alongside their companies, transforming from a solo programmer writing code at 3 a.m. to the leader of a global brand delivering talks at Davos.
But that journey isn’t about “founder mode” or “manager mode.” It’s about learning the skills your company needs at every stage of its evolution. Suggesting a founder can toggle between two states fails to grasp the core issue.
The real issue isn’t a founder versus manager debate; that’s a red herring. There are good managers and bad ones. The best founders bring passion, unique insight, and exceptional skill, and then they learn how to run a company. Some learn through trial and error, others by watching the executives they hire, and still others through advisers and coaches.
The CEO who spends time with the team beyond the leadership group, or reviews key product features, or talks to customers is not in “founder mode.” They are simply a good CEO.
The CEO who hides in their office, engages only with the C-suite, and runs the business through memos and all-hands meetings is not in “manager mode.” They are simply a soon-to-be-fired CEO.
If that was the only issue with Mr. Graham’s post, perhaps I would have left it alone. But there are plenty of places where his opinion and mine diverge.
Let’s start with an obvious one: survivorship bias. Graham seems to count only the bombers (aka startups) that return to the airfield.
Venture capital cemeteries are filled with startups that raised enormous sums only to fail due to highly involved yet ineffective founders. Theranos, WeWork, and FTX are prime examples. Each had founders with their hands firmly on the wheel as their companies crashed spectacularly. Even Y Combinator isn’t immune to failure. Recall Homejoy, Airware, or Boosted — all had their original founder CEOs at the helm through to the bitter end.
Yes, Y Combinator has a long list of successful investments where the original founder CEO remains in the role. Mr. Graham has had a wildly successful career in which he has backed and guided more juggernauts than arguably anyone in the history of Silicon Valley. He also has a history of supporting CEOs who remained in power from inception to exit. Stripe, Coinbase, Dropbox, and Airbnb are all still led by their original founders. But focusing on this subset obscures important nuance — there are counterexamples!
Great revenue growth tends to hide a multitude of sins. But what happens when those sins get exposed? What happens when, despite great revenue growth, the market learns of toxic cultures (Uber), questionable accounting practices (Groupon), unethical dealings (WeWork), lack of regulatory compliance (Zenefits), or outright fraud (Theranos)? We stop celebrating founder mode and quickly look for a professional CEO.
This raises one of the glaring omissions from Mr. Graham’s post. What about startups that brought in the dreaded professional manager?
The market is bursting with examples of founders who succeeded at scale. Founders who failed at scale. Professional managers who took startups to new heights and professional managers who failed spectacularly. All of this misses the point.
I’ve interviewed hundreds of investors and asked each one what makes a great founder. The answer is eerily consistent. They describe talents like “grit,” “tenacity,” “persistence,” “courage,” and “insight.”
Then, when you ask them what makes a great CEO, they instead talk about skills: the ability to lead, manage, forecast, build, recruit, market and sell.
It’s not about “manager mode” or “founder mode.” What matters is whether the founder can learn to become a great leader and manager. The competencies needed to launch a business versus grow a business versus scale a business are not the same.
The best CEOs are consummate students. They seek knowledge everywhere — not just about their market, product, and team, but about their role as leaders. They understand that leadership is a balancing act. They learn when to dive deep into the details and when to step back and trust their people. They know when to guide with a firm hand and when to simply listen. They learn to manage the business from a dashboard while staying grounded in the reality of the day to day.
Great CEOs grasp when to be hands-on and when to trust the systems they’ve built. They can step away from the screen and onto a stage. They don’t just manage individuals; they architect systems, cultures, and visions that endure.
Every day as a CEO is a lesson in adaptability, foresight, and humility.
It’s not a mode. It’s a craft.
(Thank you to Ned Renzi, Leslie Fine, Andrew Hoag, and Jane Hu for their contributions to this piece.)
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Founded in 2015, Enjoy The Work is a San Francisco-based startup advisory firm serving startup founders and CEOs worldwide.
