Founder Mode Checklist

Brian's Founder Mode Checklist

Do you want to run the company according to "the founder mode" used by Brian Chesky? Here is a checklist to help you get started:

• CEO/CTO should think themself of chief-product officer, and they should be in involved product development a lot
• every PM should know what any other product team / (any other PM) is doing
• every leader should be an expert in what they are doing - there should be no only people managers (=your only responsibility is "the people", not the domain) → imagine a firechief not knowing how to put down the fire → you have to know subject you own
• you should aim to have as few as possible people in teams (aka growth slowly, don't be reckless)
• five teams should do one thing, rather than one team doing five things
• do launches → ship every day, every hour, but pack it into the story
• team should use data, but they should also use research and intuition → you cannot delegate understanding → you have to understand what your measurements mean → intuition comes from the understanding
• engineering and design should report to the founder → don't have design under your product team
• PMs should be a combination of art and science → don't have purely technical PMs and vica versa
• marketing and engineering should be interconnected
• keep as few layers as possible between CEO/CTO and other people
• every direct of your direct should implicit dotted line to you → treat every direct as your own (don't conflict with direct, but you should know what their people are doing)
• everyone should row in the same direction, otherwise why the hell are they in the same company?

This "checklist" is based solely on Brian's tips from an interview with Lenny

This article was originally published on https://craftengineer.com/. It was written by a human and polished using grammar tools for clarity.

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