Topic
Founder Mode
Every resource in the archive tagged with founder mode.
25 resources
EssayDon't Fuck Up the Culture
Brian Chesky
Apr 2014 · 3 min read
Why culture matters more than anything else — the letter Chesky sent the entire Airbnb team in 2013.
EssayCEOs Should Tell It Like It Is
Ben Horowitz
Jul 2010 · 11 min read
CEOs who hide bad news destroy trust and prevent their best people from solving hard problems.
EssayMaking Yourself a CEO
Ben Horowitz
Oct 2012 · 12 min read
Being a CEO requires mastering unnatural skills, especially the foundational practice of giving honest, authentic feedback.
EssayManaging Your Own Psychology
Ben Horowitz
Mar 2011 · 16 min read
Managing your own psychology is the hardest CEO skill, harder than organizational design or hiring, because everything wrong is your fault.
EssayHow Things Get Done
Sam Altman
3 min read
Things get done through focus on two or three priorities and strong personal relationships.
EssayBillionaires Build
Paul Graham
Dec 2020 · 15 min read
Becoming a billionaire requires building something people genuinely want, not exploiting them.
VideoKeith Rabois on how to identify great talent
Keith Rabois
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
How to spot great talent: expand each person's responsibilities until they break.
VideoSteve Jobs explains the importance of both thinking and doing
Steve Jobs
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
Why the people who change industries are thinkers and doers in one person.
EssayWhat's The Most Difficult CEO Skill?
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
No essay prose was present in the provided resource.
EssayHiring Executives
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
The hard decisions and strategies for hiring and promoting executives as your company scales.
EssayWhy We Prefer Founding CEOs
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Founding CEOs outperform professional CEOs because they're more committed to the company's mission and better able to navigate uncertainty.
EssayHow to Minimize Politics in Your Company
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Strategies for reducing destructive internal power dynamics and factionalism in growing companies.
EssayThe Struggle
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
No essay body was included in the scrape.
EssayPeacetime CEO / Wartime CEO
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
No essay prose was included — only navigation, bio, and a list of other content titles.
EssayFast
Patrick Collison
7 min read
Collison's single sharpest juxtaposition of what humans used to be able to build versus what we now accept.
EssaySuper-Successful Companies
Sam Altman
5 min read
The defining traits of founders whose startups become extremely successful.
EssayResearchers and Founders
Sam Altman
1 min read
The common traits that distinguish the best researchers and founders, from problem taste to persistence to an action bias.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 9: How to hire a professional CEO
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 1 min read
Don't hire a professional CEO if no one on your founding team can do it—sell instead.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 16 min read
How to hire, manage, promote, and fire executives at a startup, with specific guidelines for each stage.
EssayThe Top Idea in Your Mind
Paul Graham
Sep 2022 · 10 min read
Most startup problems repeat across companies, so the key to advising founders is helping them focus on what actually matters most.
EssayRelentlessly Resourceful
Paul Graham
Mar 2009 · 4 min read
The defining quality of a successful startup founder is relentless resourcefulness.
EssayFounder Mode
Paul Graham
Sep 2024 · 5 min read
Founder mode—how founders run companies—works better than manager mode, the standard advice they're given.
EssayMaker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
Paul Graham
Jul 2009 · 5 min read
Two incompatible ways to use time: the maker's schedule and the manager's schedule.
EssayDo Things That Don't Scale
Paul Graham
Jul 2013 · 19 min read
Why successful startups succeed by doing manually unscalable things first, like recruiting users one at a time.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 1: Why not to do a startup
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 10 min read
The emotional, logistical, and interpersonal reasons why starting a company is much harder than most people realize.