The tech world is buzzing with discussions about “founder mode” this week, but not everyone in Silicon Valley feels they can fully adopt this management approach.
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, recently gave a talk that prompted Paul Graham, co-founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, to publish an essay on Sunday about founder mode. He described it as a hands-on method of running a company, rather than relying heavily on delegation to a few direct reports.
Chesky joined the conversation after numerous social media reactions to the concep t.
“Women founders have been reaching out to me over the past 24 hours, expressing that they don’t feel allowed to operate in Founder Mode like men can,” he said in a post on X. “This needs to change.”
In response to a question about what he meant by “permission,” Chesky provided a screenshot of a Business Insider article from 2020 that read, “The fall of the girl boss is actually a good thing.” (The story revolves around a number of female founders who resigned over claims of a hostile workplace.)
Additionally, Chesky retweeted female entrepreneurs who claimed that women who engaged in founder mode had been fired as a result.
In his essay on founder mode, Graham described it as the opposite of “manager mode,” which he noted is the typical approach for most companies. He explained that the concept of manager mode is to “hire good people and give them the freedom to do their jobs,” but in reality, it often leads to “hiring professional fakers who end up running the company into the ground.”
Chesky, who co-founded Airbnb in 2008, shared in another X post that he was inspired to embrace founder mode by Jony Ive and Hiroki Asai, both formerly of Apple. He also mentioned that founders who exemplify many of the principles of founder mode include Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and Elon Musk.
