Whats is Founder Mode?

A relentless, deeply involved management style. It’s laser focussed hands-on mentality drives founders to push their vision forward during the early stages of building companies.

It’s seizing opportunities and creating something from nothing with limited resources.

Paul Graham, co-founder of Y-Combinator, wrote a piece recently titled “Founder Mode” here. It outlined a clear distinction between how founders should lead companies versus traditional managers.

Airbnb founder Brian Chesky triggered debate this month claiming successful companies require the founder stay closely connected to its core functions, even after scaling. This contrasts with “Manager Mode,” which encourages delegation, pyramid hierarchy and operational distance. Bosses’ vs Employees!

In my case as an architect (designing buildings) parachuting into tech as a first-time founder without a business MBA, no access to capital or wealthy relatives. This is equivalent to swimming across the English Channel without a wetsuit into Europe and hiking to Everest Basecamp wearing flip flops carrying a camel on your back. And that’s just the commute to the starting blocks.

The upside, 4 years corporate experience at one of the UK’s top residential architectural practices, designing multi-million pound projects like this from spas, one off homes, 40 unit extra care apartments like this and masterplans. Working side by side key stakeholders, clients, planning authorities, surveyors, structural engineers, m&e, to white van site meetings offered a baptism into corporate manager mode beauracracy.

“Founder Mode” requires strong leadership in every aspect of a company, wearing multiple hats from product, dev, marketing, to customer support. Startups require a magician, a hustler and a do’er, someone who will grab the bull by the horns. A solo founder must be all three of these.

You’re the lead singer, the tambourine guy and the hype man, on tour 365 days a year.

Being an architect in Founder Mode prepares you to pitch in an elevator or a rush hour train to an investor with 50 people watching. Then show up 24 hours later with a fully designed functional feature, strategy and presentation.

Am I qualified to share an opinion at 41?

I have bootstrapped @mipic_app from a market stall in Liverpool to global print platform and seven figure Tech Venture with customers in 80 countries by utilising “Founder Mode”. miPic Shareholders include lead investors of Starling Bank / Addepar and exited founders from the UK and US who sold their own companies from $30m up to $500m.

Back in 2009, I visited an art shop every other Saturday to ask the old Irish owner about his frame mouldings, pricing and paper types. He gave me a nickname:

“You’re a rottweiler with a bone, relentless.”

This was Founder Mode DNA years before I knew it existed.

I see this more as ‘instinct’ than a user manual or mindset to teach. It combines vision and urgency, intense obsession and hands on problem solving to go from zero to 1. Are you fast, creative, resourceful, agile, and most importantly resilient?

Founders don’t just simply ‘manage’ and clock out at 6pm, we are required to fight in the trenches and navigate challenges in real time 24/7. My most creative moments historically come during these intense chapters.

Founder Mode is similar to the role of an Architect. We draw the first line, create the masterplan with thousands of moving parts but must know every detail down to the millimetre. My 10 years in architecture was a great foundation for building miPic.

If you admire the achievements of Steve Jobs, Brian Chesky, Zuck, Elon, Jeff Bezos, Whitney Wolfe, Larry Ellison and Jack Dorsey – this group are my references and who operated in “Founder Mode”.

Founder Mode refuses to accept rejection. Just 3 months after quitting my job, I arrived at Virgin HQ for a 9am founder day during grey torrential rain, soaking wet 💦 . Reception told me the event was cancelled, but I refused to leave – until I was dry after some stubborn light hearted humour with security. The lady on recepetion saw our company logo and said “they’re gonna luv it, go upstairs and wait. I’ll see if anyone can speak to you” 4 weeks later, I was standing in front of Richard Branson pitching miPic live on TV to win an innovation award.

There is no luck or secret sauce in Founder Mode other than maniacal persistance and your ability to embrace the rain.

Founder Mode energy and vision is impossible to replace with standard corporate management practice. Paul Graham noted many founders report that when they attempt to shift into a more detached hands off, managerial role, they feel like they are “gaslit” by Venture Capitalists into hiring ineffective “yes men” executives, which often damages companies.

I experienced this first hand. One pre-seed investor insisted we hired a portfolio engineer, whom he titled “the best engineer he had worked with”. This proved disastrous and my most regrettable decision as CEO agreeing to it. It created direct comms between shareholder and exec engineer into our team.

Other team members complained about being blocked by the engineer who split our codebase into a new language to suit their own resume. Software releases went from three times per week working with me directly to every two weeks. Delivery estimates extended with this ‘recommended hire’ who shipped buggy features before being released.

The problem with hiring “corporate professional fakers” as Paul Graham calls them, they jump jobs every couple of years for that salary increase and say absolutley anything in Board Meetings and interviews to appear great, land the title, yet there is lack of real hunger to build a great product (unless their own) and do what’s best for the company’s long term future and founder vision.

Remaining intimately close to the action as CEO and decision-making is critical, bypassing layers of organisational bureaucratic fluff to connect with the do’ers directly. Steve Jobs was famous for “skip-level” meetings with employees working within small pods, retaining their startup DNA.

Founder Mode works best for Creatives or highly Technical founders, offsetting time to reduce the expense of building product without using ‘guns for hire’. In our case, 1 product owner (me), 1 full stack (Ash) developer and 1 IOS engineer (Shab) working evenings for 18 months on a $10,000 budget was our warmup. Retaining 1 product owner covering Dev with 1 Senior CMO and mid-level assitance works well with teams up to 15. Growing above 20 demands more delegators, less technically aware of the details.

Founders must be connected to the customer experience inside-out. I designed our UX & UI in 2014 with one assistant by studying every screen and button of marketplaces Ebay, Amazon, Etsy, Redbubble and printing services like Photobox before sketching hundreds of app screens on graph paper with a pen ✍️.

Without top-level oversight, founders run the risk of quality and standards dropping to the tolerance of it’s PM’s who’s goal is to ship and hit a deadline. It’s fundamentally critical for founders to resist the shift and not delegate absolutely everything until far beyond Series B when teams become large armies.

Reading Brian Chesky’s take on founding Airbnb from their early cereal hustle to a scaling unicorn in a hands on way, echoed by Pauls knowledge at Y-Combinator provides insightful and thankful perspectives of my own journey decisions.

My vision for miPic is to become The Internet’s Print Button, (watch the video) combining social commerce with retail store galleries next door to Apple. I’m going to have to spend more time around founders like these, some steps ahead who have got the t-shirt hiring experienced senior exec operators who have built from early stage to scale and not joined a company at the lunch buffet and Friday yoga class bonding stage.

NOTE: Founder Mode – is not a catch all strategy to operate indefinitely, there are pitfalls. Striking balance is essential, 70% Founder Mode thinking versus 30% Manager Mode in practice, feels appropriate to maintain a driving force of innovation and tenacity from startup phase to scale and growth.

Founder Mode is a superpower that can turn a vision into reality, it creates moments of magic like nothing else. I’ve lived it first hand.

It’s encouraging Paul Graham predicts that as more founders adopt this mode, it will become more accepted and recognized as a valid management approach in growing companies and less labelled “micro management”, in reality is more atone to ‘relentless execution’.

Disclaimer: The photoshoot we did (not AI) for miPic mimicking Apple’s famous Steve Jobs pose is something which architects are notorious for in their portrait photos. The turtle neck pose is satire and homage to my profession. 

Founder Mode Drawbacks:

• Life Balance – Doesn’t exist. We work 12-18 hour days plus weekends. Comparing yourself to a friend who does a 9-5 and takes 2 hour lunch breaks, is a quick way to depression.
• Sacrifce: during Pre-Seed and Seed stages I’ve been homeless twice, lived out of a suitcase for 18 months and barely paid myself appropriate salary.
• Delegation – I was clear on day one I didn’t want to code. I’m a generalist, I don’t care how it’s built so long as it’s efficient, repeatable and someone else on the team can easily pick up.
• Your Body – Knowing when to sleep, how long to rest. Exercise 3 times a week is essential. Maintain focus and clarity, limit time spent drinking and definitely stay away from drugs. 
• Investor alignment – Operator experience and value add, network affects alongside the long-term vision. Avoid all attempts of shareholder hires.

Positives:

• Agility & Pivot – quick decisions are essential unencumbered by bureaucracy or complex decision-making processes, allowing the company to grab opportunities as they arise.
• Resourceful – Do more with less, find creative ways to stretch budgets, maximize productivity, and leverage resources to full potential. Staying lean mentality helps get through tough conditions.
• Problem Solving – firsthand knowledge of the challenge and tackling it  directly through deep understanding of the company’s inner workings.
• Customer Centric – Attuned to the needs of users and customers and tweak products or services rapidly based on feedback. Closeness to both the product and the end user enables the company to deliver real value.
• Grit – High levels of resilience and determination to push through obstacles, setbacks, and uncertainties, which can be critical during moments of chaos.
• Culture building – Set the tone by instilling a sense of urgency, passion, and creativity in the team, alongside incentive which becomes part of the company’s DNA. A strong culture can attract and retain talent aligned with company values and goals.

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