Growth Teams should stay in a Founder Mode.
Okay okay, I know there was a ton of controversy about 'Founder Mode'… but hear me out.
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This post was was co-written with Yue Zhao. Yue is an executive coach who helps women and minority leaders accelerate their careers and reach the C-suite. You can find her at www.yuezhao.coach. Previously, Yue was the CPO and CTO at Fuzzy Pet Health, PM manager at Meta, and the first PM at Thumbtack.
What's This "Founder Mode"?
Founder Mode is a mindset where teams operate with urgency and a scrappy, all-hands-on-deck approach, as if they were still in the early stages of a startup. In this mode, hands-on creation is prioritized over managerial duties. This means founders/execs/managers are directly involved in building, problem-solving, and making swift decisions. In fact, it’s generally framed as the opposite of the Manager Mode that most company leaders operate in, where the focus shifts to organizing teams, planning, and overseeing operations.
Founder Mode is pretty much the opposite of business-as-usual: instead, you're skipping over hierarchies, chatting directly with every product manager, engineer, designer, and/or analyst—chasing after those wild, "what if we tried this?" ideas. It's recently come up because of Brian Chesky’s new approach at Airbnb, but it was also how Steve Jobs steered Apple and how Elon Musk juggles, well, everything.
Founder Mode isn’t applicable to all companies or teams (you can’t run infrastructure or customer support that way). However, in a world where markets flip overnight and new tech pops up faster than you can say 'annual recurring revenue,' having some teams in your company stay in Founder Mode isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore; it’s essential.
In a world where markets flip overnight and new tech pops up faster than you can say 'annual recurring revenue,' having some teams in your company stay in Founder Mode isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore; it’s essential.
Founder Mode in Growth
Founder Mode isn't just for founders anymore—and there’s one team that should be in Founder Mode, all-day, everyday: growth team.
Unfortunately, not everyone gets this. Oftentimes, startups bring in a VP of Growth and assemble a growth team when they're ready to scale a product that has momentum. They’ve got Product-Market Fit, they’ve got a bunch of fans… Time to scale up a stable, Manager-Mode-friendly growth operation, right?
Wrong.
I firmly believe growth teams need to stick with that scrappy, founder mode to really crush it.
When growth teams switch to autopilot and rely too heavily on scaling activities, which usually lead to smaller-scale optimizations, they hit a performance plateau. Yes, other teams—sales, customer service, marketing, engineering—might be shifting into scaling mode, setting up processes, and all that jazz. But growth teams? They need to stay nimble, keep those lines of communication open across all levels, and keep fostering that out-of-the-box thinking.
What’s going on here?
What gives? Why is this approach so essential for growth teams?
The key to all of this is growth's need for constant innovation.
Let’s start with Product: no company can find Product-Market Fit in Manager Mode. Founder Mode is critical for finding that initial traction. Manager Mode, by contrast, is how most scaling businesses operate. At that stage, the focus shifts from innovation and differentiation to scalability and automation. Companies in Manager Mode aim for slow, steady, incremental gains.
If you work in Growth, you can’t escape this reality—while your colleagues in Marketing or Sales are probably cruising in the stabilizing comfort of Manager Mode, Growth teams can’t. Even the Product team typically only needs to innovate and find new horizons every 5 years or so, allowing them to enjoy Manager Mode for extended periods. In contrast, Growth teams have to innovate quarterly. Your company relies on you to continuously drive the innovations that fuel ongoing growth, so you can’t operate like everyone else.
The challenge with Growth is that it rarely fits into Manager Mode because markets, channels, and customer expectations evolve too quickly—constant innovation is required. Whether it's launching new channels, introducing fresh growth loops, or reinventing customer journeys, that’s all part of the work in just one year. While scaling efforts are necessary, they must be balanced with continuous innovation. This is partially because Growth teams are always battling stagnation (see Andrew Chen’s article on the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs), especially when aiming to accelerate or maintain a high-velocity rate. Funnels and loops inevitably decay over time, channels get saturated, and once you've captured your core market, you'll need to expand to broader audiences that may be less aligned with your value proposition—leading to lower intent and new challenges.
Keeping Your Finger on the Pulse
The devil is in the details—or, in our case, in the data anomalies, subtle user feedback, and constant market shifts that could signal big opportunities or looming threats.
Say your user sign-ups suddenly spike. Awesome, right? Time to pop the champagne! But hold on a sec—without diving into the details, you might miss that these new users are all coming from a country you don't even operate in (yet). Maybe someone wrote a blog post about your product in that region. If you're not paying attention, you could miss the chance to capitalize on this unexpected wave.
On the flip side, maybe you notice a small but steady decline in user engagement. If you're not close to the details, you might brush it off as ‘seasonality’. But dig deeper, and you might find that a recent UI change is causing confusion. Oops! Time to course-correct before it turns into a full-on nosedive.
Staying close to the details also means being hands-on with customer interactions. Ever called up a disgruntled user to ask what's up? It might feel a bit like dialing into awkward-town, but the insights you gain can be pure gold. Plus, customers appreciate when you show you care—just maybe don't call during dinner time.
In Founder Mode, you wear many hats—sometimes all of them at once. You're the strategist, the analyst, the customer service rep, a designer, a copywriter, and even an engineer. Embracing the details helps you make informed decisions quickly, adapt on the fly, and stay ahead of the competition.
Because in the fast-paced world of growth, those who sweat the small stuff often end up making the big things happen.
Well-Behaved Growth Teams Rarely Make History
In the growth game, focusing on optimizations or copying the competition is a fast track to mediocrity. Now, don’t get me wrong: using best practices deployed by your competition is an excellent way to get started. It will get you to the baseline, but will not get you to a hyper-growth/category leader space.
So, what's the move? Be bold, be creative, and don't be afraid to zig when others zag. And understand that the best ideas will not come from you. They’ll come from your colleagues and customers. Being in Founder Mode will help you find them—because if you are in the trenches with these people, you will hear all sorts of solutions. And it is your job to find those awesome hockey stick ideas by talking and listening to… everyone.
Look at how some of the big players did it. Uber didn't start by trying to out-taxi the taxis; they offered luxury rides at high-visibility events, turning heads and setting themselves apart. Airbnb created a community between hosts and guests, making the experience more personal than any hotel stay. Dropbox gave away extra storage when users referred friends, turning their user base into a marketing machine.
Wrapping It Up
Like it or not, Growth teams have to stay in Founder Mode. The sooner you can embrace this reality, the better—it will keep you sharp, agile, and ready to tackle whatever the market throws your way. It's about diving into the details, fostering open collaboration, and embracing ideas that might seem a little out there.
So let's keep pushing boundaries, asking the tough questions, and not settling for "good enough." After all, in the fast-paced world of growth, the only constant is constant change.
And hey, if all else fails, there's always the option of adding more cat memes to your marketing strategy.
Just kidding. (But am I?)
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Edited with the help of Jonathan Yagel.