| Both the examples cited here, Airbnb and Apple, have been through difficult times as a result of "manager mode failure". In other words, "founder mode" worked after a failure of "manager mode". Yet, would Apple even had continued to exist to this day had Steve not been fired? From the essay, one thing is obvious, "founder mode" looks very different for a 20 person company than it does for a 2000 person company. > Obviously founders can't keep running a 2000 person company the way they ran it when it had 20. There's going to have to be some amount of delegation. Where the borders of autonomy end up, and how sharp they are, will probably vary from company to company. They'll even vary from time to time within the same company, as managers earn trust. So founder mode will be more complicated than manager mode. But it will also work better. We already know that from the examples of individual founders groping their way toward it. The question that I have is, "is it possible for a founder to discover what 'founder mode' is for a 2000 person company, without going through some form of 'manager mode' as the company scaled from 20 to 2000"? What would be even more interesting is comments from founders/employees of startups where "founder mode" persisted as the company scaled up from 20 employees. Were these companies successful? Do they continue operating successfully? |