RichardKain

I think the vast majority of businesses are run in "Founder Mode," and maybe the majority of start ups. That's why they don't make it. The books about delegation from the HBS crowd are in some respects a reaction to that default mode.

Chesky and Jobs are obviously managerial outliers for their extreme accomplishment. Anytime one cites Jobs as a guru I'm reminded of an evaluation Bill Gates made about Jobs, to the effect of: entrepreneurs think Steve Jobs was an asshole, so they can be one too. But they're not Steve Jobs.

Even then: Airbnb in Founder or Manager Mode efficacy is very hard to disentangle from Airbnb and Covid. With no Covid, manager mode continues - would it be worse off? Hard to say. Apple has done exceptionally well (at least financially) under Jobs' successor Cook, surely in manager mode.

As other commenters note there are ample examples such as Nvidia (or Valve, Bloomberg, many others) which run as surprisingly flat but scaled organizations.

Fear of the ossifying effects of bureaucracy is a consistent theme in PG's essays for good reason. Finding ways to incentivize/align middle managers with the same urgency a founder has is another. "Founder mode" in the wrong hands drives away other good managers and is perhaps best used in the Ben Horowitz framework of Wartime instead of Peacetime for companies.

But boy I really do wish to have seen the original speech, surely more replete with details that answer my objections. I love the professional liars observation, they are the antagonists to both good founders and good managers.

If the community is interested, you can easily build a custom list of reporters based on keyword searching their articles or twitter accounts at www.BoloHQ.com; there is a 21 day free trial. We have 32,000 profiles, mostly of tech and gaming reporters. We ask people not build massive lists (or, ahem, scrape, as I see in a comment), but have a targeted approach to interested journalists and accordingly build a relationship. E.g., you're a food delivery startup search for that and see the authors that write most frequently, set an email alert, note relationships with colleagues and in general build a communications workflow, not just spam a list, only a small subset of whom may be interested in food delivery startups. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

"Elements of Style" remains the best single volume guide to writing. Stephen King's "On Writing" is fun and a good follow up. I concur with the read great writing and practice a lot tips. But how to practice? It's old fashioned and slower, but try printing out what you're writing and read it aloud. Make edits in pen on the draft. To force the concision Elements recommends is to get a word count on your first draft and try to cut it down by 33 to 50%. Finally, ask friends for help editing. Keeping asking whoever is toughest on you.

Good luck!