(2024-09-19) Perri My Thoughts Onfounder Mode And Why Its Dangerous

Melissa Perri: My thoughts on "Founder Mode" and why it's dangerous. I had dinner with a few Product Leaders in Berlin the other night that turned into a discussion on how they can work better with founder CEOs. This has always been a tense subject, and I’ve seen a lot of friction firsthand between these two groups. Now, I’m worried this article is going to make it worse.

Scaling brings a new set of challenges. The focus shifts from gaining those first customers to growing and keeping a large user base. Product offerings must expand, and operations need to run efficiently at a much larger scale. Innovation still is critical, but it can't come at the expense of the core business that's now supporting hundreds or thousands of customers.

Graham's article critiques the common advice given to scaling founders: "hire good people and give them room to do their jobs." I see founders misunderstand this all the time. They think this means they should get out of the way and let everyone make all the decisions. “Bubble up” strategy from the teams! But when you do this, you are not providing any context. That is not strategy

Founders here will typically focus on creating a lofty, exciting vision. This vision can be super vague

You need a clear business strategy that explains how to focus the company to reach this vision. How do we prioritize? Without this, companies devolve into siloed fiefdoms

Without this alignment, I see a common pattern. A founder CEO, yearning for the dopamine hit of early-stage success, begins to chase new "innovations" at the expense of the core business. They distract teams with shiny new projects

When metrics start to decline, they often blame the product team for lack of innovation, failing to recognize that their own actions have contributed to the company's struggles.

The truth is, founder CEOs don't inherently know how to be CEOs of large organizations

The most successful founder CEOs, like Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, actively learn and adapt. They surround themselves with experienced leaders (like Sheryl Sandberg) and are open to evolving their leadership style

The ones who are not successful... they play the blame game. They constantly point fingers to others in their organizations for the failings on their part. "It's sales fault!" "Our product managers suck!" They sow discord and competition in their c-suite, and they do not want to evolve with the new role

As companies scale, the role of experienced product leaders becomes critical.