If I were to rebrand Founder Mode, I would suggest Back To Basics Mode or First Principles Mode.
What strikes me about Founder Mode is that what it's really about, is cutting through the cruft of process and structure in a company, and getting back to the core of what made it exist in the first place.
When you go all the way to first principles, you go to the founding of the company. That's why Founders are so well suited to pull off this shift of priorities and reorganizing of a company. When you reflect on the founding of a company, you realize that there are only a few things that really made it take off in the first place:
- Building a great product
- Getting the word out there
- Taking care of customers
That is, for me, what I would boil down the business to. That's all we focused on at Buffer in the first few years. Down to the fact that the first few roles were engineers, designers, content marketers and customer support folks. The fact that we truly had focus on those things and not much else, is why we gained traction and grew rapidly.
Over time, as a company grows, you have to add structure and processes just in order to manage a larger group of humans in service of the vision and goals. And with more people, management becomes a meaningful aspect of many peoples' roles. The structure and processes can sometimes get in the way of what really matters in making a business successful.
And when you end up with more structure and process than you need for the stage you are at, it can truly become debilitating. That's why part of Founder Mode has been flattening the organization and the Founder really getting back into the details.
That's where I'd add a fourth item to the list:
- Designing a great company
At a certain size, you need to be intentional about how the company is designed and structured to achieve great outcomes.
When I reflect on the last few years, I've gone through my own version of Founder Mode. But I'd describe it as Back To Basics Mode or First Principles Mode.
This shift hasn't been about me; it's been about us as an organization reminding ourselves of how we made something out of nothing in the first place. And really getting to work on building a great product, getting the word out there about it, and taking care of our customers.