Ditch the bad startup advice — Founder Mode is the cheat code for thriving in a perpetually changing world.
This week, Silicon Valley has been abuzz with a conversation that’s challenging assumptions about how startups should be run. It all started when Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb, shared a candid take on what went wrong when he followed the advice of well-meaning experts who told him how to manage his company. “Founders feel like they’re being gaslit from both sides — by the people telling them they have to run their companies like managers, and by the people working for them when they do,” shared Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, who amplified the conversation with his post titled Founder Mode. One thing is abundantly clear: professional management is not a panacea for scaling, and it’s threatening innovation in startups. It’s time to wake up.
For those of us who’ve been in the trenches, Chesky’s blunt commentary hit home. In today’s fast-changing world, founder mode isn’t just a way to start a company; it’s the only way to keep it alive and thriving. Yet founders are constantly bombarded with advice from smart, experienced people who, despite their credentials, have never lived through the uncertainty that defines early-stage businesses. These advisors might come from elite backgrounds, but they lack the understanding of what it means to face ambiguous conditions, where decisions are urgent, and the consequences of inaction are high.
To survive and thrive, founders must learn to navigate ambiguity, trust their instincts, and move quickly — even when the data is incomplete.
The Problem with Traditional Startup Advice
Accelerators, incubators and startup boards are full of smart and well-meaning advisors. They hail from blue-chip companies, bringing impressive resumes from venture capital, management consulting and Fortune 500 corporations. If they’ve been classically trained, their degrees focus on management and leadership — and frameworks that work in stable environments but rarely address the ingenuity needed in uncertain markets.
The problem is, most of these advisors have never actually founded a company, joined a founding team, or built a business from scratch. Their experience, while valuable, comes from scaling businesses that are already established, or managing organizations that move in slow, steady increments. The advice they offer is often centered around research and planning, mitigating risks and waiting for perfect data before making a move. In theory, this sounds great. In practice, for startups, it’s disastrous.
When I joined the founding team of my first venture-backed startup, I quickly learned we didn’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect information. Decisions had to be made with maybe 60-70% of the data we would have liked, and we had to get comfortable making choices that weren’t always ideal. This kind of rapid-fire decision-making defines founder mode — moving quickly, adjusting as necessary and learning from failures to improve along the way.
Interestingly, this misalignment of advice doesn’t just happen in tech or venture-backed startups. I own and operate a luxury resort in Fiji, and I constantly get well-meaning advice from guests who’ve never run a hospitality business, let alone one in a foreign country. They suggest changes based on their personal experiences as customers, which is useful feedback, but it’s not always practical for running the operation. I’ve learned to listen for the underlying desire, rather than the solution being offered. Guests want delightful experiences that feel seamless, but as a business owner, I know the back-end systems and processes must work harmoniously to deliver that experience. The guest sees the final outcome, not the complex ecosystem that supports it — just as startup advisors might see the surface of a problem but not appreciate the underlying dynamics.
What is Founder Mode?
So what exactly is founder mode? Well, it’s undefined in this moment, as shared by Graham, “There are as far as I know no books specifically about founder mode. Business schools don’t know it exists. All we have so far are the experiments of individual founders who’ve been figuring it out for themselves. But now that we know what we’re looking for, we can search for it. I hope in a few years founder mode will be as well understood as manager mode. We can already guess at some of the ways it will differ.”
What we can say, is that founder mode is more than just the scrappy, go-go-go attitude that people often associate with entrepreneurs. Founder mode is a visionary mindset that prioritizes speed, agility and risk-taking. It’s about making decisions quickly, often without perfect information, and adjusting on the fly when things don’t go according to plan. Founders in this mode have a clear vision of what’s possible, a deep connection to their customer, and a passion for their product or service. They are constantly iterating based on customer feedback and are not afraid to take big swings — even if it means striking out sometimes.
Contrast this with manager mode, where the focus shifts to maintaining order, building systems and minimizing risk. Of course, systems are necessary to scale, but in manager mode, there’s often a tendency to establish rather rigid processes, prioritize consensus over action and wait for complete data. There’s a fear of moving too quickly. In this environment, there’s often a culturally right way to do things, prioritizing internal politics over winning outcomes.
I saw this firsthand at Intuit when I joined the company twenty years after its founding. The early values of teamwork and collaboration, while admirable, had begun to stifle innovation and progress. At Intuit, you were expected to socialize every decision, ensuring a shared vision. In practice, this meant shopping your ideas around in private, one-on-one conversations, and securing buy-in before presenting anything to a group. By the time you convened the official meeting, the decision was already pre-approved — a rubber stamp. There was no authentic dialogue. For me, this meant long hours spent getting permission to drive the results for which I was responsible. Decisions weren’t made based on agility, speed or even strategic opportunity; they were made based on consensus and comfort. In the startup world, that’s a recipe for failure.
Trusting Your Gut in Founder Mode
Operating in founder mode means getting comfortable with ambiguity. It’s about learning to trust your gut — not in the impulsive sense, but by developing a deep sense of venture intuition. This intuition isn’t built overnight; it comes from repeated exposure to uncertainty, from testing hypotheses and learning from both success and failure. It’s an internal knowingness, a conviction that strengthens the more you operate in founder mode.
The reality is, no one can ever know with certainty which path is right — especially in a startup. Rather than endlessly debating options in search of the “right” answer, savvy founders create small experiments that generate quick feedback. They take action, measure the results and adjust course. Done well, this model of iterative progression can become a competitive superpower. The emphasis is always on learning by doing, not learning by planning.
In founder mode, failure is not the enemy; indecision is. Waiting for the perfect plan, the perfect moment, or the perfect data often leads to missed opportunities. Some founders think they need all the answers before they can move forward. But the reality is, moving forward with incomplete information and iterating along the way is often the only way to succeed. This is especially true in today’s perpetually changing market, where the ground is always shifting.
New Rules for a New Reality
The business environment has changed dramatically in recent years — it’s dynamic, fast-paced and unforgiving of those who can’t keep up. Globalization, hyper-connectedness, shortened product lifecycles, and relentless advances in technology have created a world where constant disruption is the new norm. The old model of slow, incremental change is dead. Today’s companies need to be agile, adaptable, and ready to pivot at a moment’s notice.
In this new reality, founder mode isn’t just for early-stage startups. As companies grow and scale, the need for speed and flexibility doesn’t go away — it becomes even more important. The companies that succeed are those that manage to keep the founder mindset alive, even as they grow larger and more complex. This means constantly iterating, staying close to the customer and ensuring that decision-making remains agile.
Winning the Game with Founder Mode
Companies that operate in founder mode have a competitive edge. The ability to stay agile, innovative and customer-focused gives them an advantage over companies that rely too heavily on traditional management approaches. The business environment is constantly changing, and only those companies that can adapt quickly, experiment fearlessly and move with confidence will thrive.
The bottom line?
Ditch the bad startup advice. Trust your instincts, embrace the uncertainty, and stay in founder mode. It’s the cheat code for thriving in a world where the only constant is change.