Murli Ravi

Was chatting with a well-known founder yesterday about the "founder mode" discussion. We were both wondering if people would misinterpret it, and undervalue the importance of hiring great leaders. Steve Jobs, the canonical example of "founder mode", was also gifted at identifying stellar leaders, without whom no great organization gets built. (And we're lucky to have many at Stripe.) To the extent that there's an ostensible tension here (founder-mode micromanagement vs the classic view that one should focus on enablement), this founder pointed out that the lens of domain-specific judgment helps reconcile the dichotomy. • You need to have excellent judgment in your problem area. • You need to recognize the importance of good judgment as a phenomenon. • You need to demand it in others. He argued that many companies and founders fail at (2) and (3). That is, individuals can be effective "people managers", or have strong resumes, or whatever, but just not be deep enough in their domains to be right on the substantive merits of questions within their purview (and unable to recursively detect/insist on that correctness in others, or to elevate and prize it when they see people who do it well). In this conception of things, leaders in "founder mode" naturally enable others when those others have great judgment in their areas. Interestingly, this HBR piece describes how Apple differs from the mainstream by doing exactly this: "Its fundamental belief is that those with the most expertise and experience in a domain should have decision rights for that domain. [...] Apple is not a company where general managers oversee managers; rather, it is a company where experts lead experts." hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is…. It's clear from discussions with leaders at SpaceX and Tesla that @elonmusk's companies do this as well. So, anyway, I wonder if some substantial part of "founder mode" hinges on "building an org around good judgment". [Many obligatory disclaimers apply to this tweet: no single attribute is enough to make for a good leader, no single framework is fully explanatory, etc., but the margins of this tweet are too small to contain them.]