{"id":12703,"date":"2024-09-20T13:35:47","date_gmt":"2024-09-20T13:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=12703"},"modified":"2024-09-20T13:35:47","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T13:35:47","slug":"want-to-get-into-founder-mode-you-should-be-so-lucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=12703","title":{"rendered":"Want to Get Into Founder Mode? You Should Be So Lucky"},"content":{"rendered":"


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It\u2019s also true that when one of those groundbreaking companies matures and faces challenges, a founder has a unique ability to make bold moves and stick to the original vision when others urge a less risky course. There are certainly cases where companies struggled when founders were replaced by managers. Remember Yahoo? And of course there\u2019s Apple, where the founder returned and restored the company to its former glory and beyond.<\/p>\n

But there are abundant counterexamples as well. Apple isn\u2019t exactly struggling under Tim Cook. And consider Microsoft<\/a>. Its CEO since 2014, Satya Nadella, had been a company lifer, slogging away in various divisions since 1992. Not a founder, nope. But he\u2019s taken the company to new heights. Though Bill Gates is still revered at Microsoft, no one in the company wants him back at the top.<\/p>\n

And god knows, there are plenty of cases where it wasn\u2019t management fakers but stubborn founders who drove a company into the ground. My guess is that Travis Kalanick might have benefited from listening to stodgy managers. His replacement, a management type of dude, has made Uber profitable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fact is, not everyone is Brian Chesky, and no one is like Steve Jobs. The vast majority of companies never take off, and instead fade into ignominy. Very few founders get to the point where investors demand that they retain adult supervision to manage growth, because only the rarest of companies get to that point.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fun to talk about founder mode, maybe for the same reason that some of us read Ben Horowitz\u2019s founder-porn texts with our noses pressed to the window. Founder mode, which Graham predicts will one day get its closeup in management texts, really applies only to the most exceptional founders, the ones Steve Jobs once described as \u201cthe crazy ones.\u201d Their companies aren\u2019t called unicorns for nothing.<\/p>\n

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