> I would guess that previous drafts of this essay had concrete examples

It's always bothered me to no end that PG has his essays read by others prior to posting. This isn't academia (or an application to college or a job application) and he's not writing for a journal and requiring peer review (or comments or suggestions). Fine it's his own style apparently.

Now what would be very interesting is to see some of the reply comments on the drafts of the PG essays (and how extensive they are).

Is it possible this essay about founder mode is itself written in founder mode?

Whatever the "it" is that constitutes a startup's purpose often can't be fully articulated in mission statements, OKRs, core values, etc. Either it's simply ineffable, or it's a metamorphosizing snapshot of the leading edge of a rapid process of discovery. Expecting such an already-abstruse concept to faithfully percolate down a rigid reporting chain is ridiculous, like sending old-English scrolls via carrier pigeon to narrate a live sporting event.

But communication of the "it" still has to happen, if imperfectly. So someone in founder mode would naturally focus on delivering the most faithful and timely version of "it" to the points in the organization where it'll have the most impact and be least susceptible to corruption in transit. Today that might be to a UX engineer. Tomorrow it might be to the board. It's a kind of plate-spinning that aims to reduce skew from the latest version.

You keep speaking of "it". I have had experience with "it". Sometimes it turns out that "It" is this very scary clown show that percolates down into the rest of the organization in a "cover your ass" mentality that is simply based on nothing but personal incentives to not be fired. "It" can indeed be percolated by clowns in the organization in this case.

It could also be survivorship bias. It's easy for a successful founder to say he or she felt it but couldn't describe it, but maybe it was just luck.

I don't know -- I've never worked at a strongly founder-driven company. I'm just trying to figure out what the essay means.

I would argue that being a great operator (what he derides as manager mode) requires setting clear outputs and expectations from who you are delegating to. If your company turns to hell because you've delegated too hands off, that's a sign you aren't skilled enough at delegating. He calls this "founder mode" but this can be done by any highly skilled manager/operator.

Agree