Founder Mode - Paul Graham  ## Metadata - Author: **Paul Graham** - Full Title: Founder Mode - Category: #articles - URL: https://paulgraham.com/foundermode.html?_bhlid=b72db019fa7e6822f00e0b0d11fb17c465973f93 ## Highlights - Their advice could be optimistically summarized as "hire good people and give them room to do their jobs." He followed this advice and the results were disastrous. So he had to figure out a better way on his own, which he did partly by studying how Steve Jobs ran Apple. So far it seems to be working. Airbnb's free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j7e9pt37sc3qws17hz1j9cgc)) ## New highlights added September 10, 2024 at 6:45 PM - Whatever founder mode consists of, it's pretty clear that it's going to break the principle that the CEO should engage with the company only via his or her direct reports. "Skip-level" meetings will become the norm instead of a practice so unusual that there's a name for it. And once you abandon that constraint there are a huge number of permutations to choose from. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j7ea6tjz0geh3kxww8hjv117)) - For example, Steve Jobs used to run an annual retreat for what he considered the 100 most important people at Apple, and these were not the 100 people highest on the org chart. Can you imagine the force of will it would take to do this at the average company? And yet imagine how useful such a thing could be. It could make a big company feel like a startup. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j7ea82x18p0z4t8ss9pdrcgf)) - Indeed, another prediction I'll make about founder mode is that once we figure out what it is, we'll find that a number of individual founders were already most of the way there — except that in doing what they did they were regarded by many as eccentric or worse. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j7ea9mk62zr3jc7g44cm92r4))