Cautious co-founder Casey Mackrell has had a big week. First, he was married. Then he went viral.
At a wedding reception, Mackrell had to quickly give a colleague access to a code that could only be unblocked on his laptop. His fellow co-founder Torrey Leonard captured the moment, taking a photo of Mackrell finalizing his pull request. He was staring at his computer in a ballroom filled with flower arrangements and fairy lights, with friends and family dancing in the background.
Leonard posted a photo of his co-founder on LinkedIn along with a devotional quote. A video of the founder coding at his wedding went viral, sparking awe and outrage.
Some commentators have declared that they will never work with Thoughtly because the founders have proven through their images that they cannot delegate. Others said Mackrell’s wife should file for an annulment. But the real story behind the image isn’t as bad as it seems.
“At this very moment when the picture was taken, Casey needed to push something to the server. His laptop had code that his colleagues needed access to,” Leonard told TechCrunch. “For 30 seconds, Casey clicked a button. Just log in, click the button and you’re done. And you can see people smiling in the photos.”
Leonard does not provide context for Mackrell’s use of the computer for less than a minute. But that’s exactly what made his post so clickable. The idea of a founder spending hours coding at his own wedding is absolutely crazy. What actually happened isn’t that terrible.
Leonard’s post sparked a lot of discussion in the startup community because it is an extension of the existing discourse around ‘founder mode’, a concept coined by Y Combinator founding partner Paul Graham. And beyond Silicon Valley, there was a post that became the bait for a great deal of outrage.
“Last year we were hanging out in SF and we were talking to friends in restaurants and bars and Casey was on his laptop. Because it’s SF, everyone else was too, right?” Leonard said. “I think this founder-mode mindset is very inspiring for a lot of people in tech.”
But beyond the tech bubble, what founders see as commitment may be seen as a lack of work-life balance.
According to Graham, you can run a company in one of two ways: founder mode or manager mode. In founder mode, the founder must be directly involved in everything the company does. When founders start delegating, they go into manager mode, which Graham argues can reduce a startup’s success.
Both Graham’s essay and Leonard’s LinkedIn post received mixed feedback. While some people found Mackrell’s implementation of “entrepreneur mode” motivating, others were surprised by the lack of work-life balance.
“Publicly, all the comments we’ve gotten have been very negative. We’ve been on 4chan, we’ve been on Reddit. Obviously, people who represent communities outside of tech frankly didn’t like it,” Leonard said.
LinkedIn posts, which can range from satirical to delusional, are usually taken out of context and posted on other platforms. One particularly successful post, in which an entrepreneur declared what he learned about B2B sales while proposing to his fiancé, was posted as a joke, but the post itself developed into a new meme.
Dozens of commenters said Mackrell’s wife should immediately call off their marriage. Others said they would avoid working with Thoughtly because they disagree with what it means to work on weddings.
“Over that time, I’ve received thousands of emails, LinkedIn DMs, and text messages from founders I know, unicorn founders I don’t know, Fortune 500 CEOs, and top investors from all over Silicon Valley and around the world. , ‘let’s go. ‘I’m on your side,’ Leonard said.
Mackrell is currently on his honeymoon with his wife and could not be reached for comment. But according to Leonard, his wife didn’t mind him bringing out his laptop at the wedding. But perhaps the company should look for ways to avoid situations like this in the future, where only one in 15 employees can solve a particular problem. But Paul Graham would probably disagree.
