If you spend any time on X or any thread where cynical memes circulate, you’ve probably seen posts over the past few days mentioning “founder mode.” Here’s one:
https://www.threads.net/@carnage4life/post/C_eaQAxyIcV
Or maybe it could be something like this:
You may have seen a parody of “Goblin Mode”.
This conversation is related to a recent blog post by Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator and a purveyor of startup wisdom, about how founders like Airbnb’s Brian Chesky often ignore the conventional wisdom about running a company at scale. That conventional wisdom is to hire great people and let them do their thing, but in practice, that often turns into “hiring professional fraudsters and letting them ruin the company,” Graham says.
Of course, he can’t say exactly what founder mode is, because every founder does it differently. But he hopes that one day it will become as widely known as manager mode. In the meantime, his hot takes on hot takes continue.
