This does resonate but I don't think it's necessarily a "founder" vs. "manager" thing. I've seen at least one company that was not successful under its founders and where a hired CEO took it to the next level. That hired CEO operated closer to what you'd call "founder mode". Both these companies grew to multi-billion dollar valuations and would have likely never gotten there without hiring a CEO and both executed really well by any measure.
I've also seen founders that weren't really at a level where they could "founder mode" and micromanaged things badly. Those founders are the ones that tend to apply the bad advice pg discusses and who can't really tell the difference if they've hired a good or not so good person and whether they're doing a good job or not.
I totally agree that you need people with the ability to hold the big picture in their head. This can be the entire company but it can also be one product or project within the company. Trying to construct this picture out of pieces in multiple people's heads is vastly inferior and is a factor in the failure of projects/products and companies. You can't separate vision/what/how across people.
What I don't think we want to take away from this is that the founder is always right or that you shouldn't hire good people and let them do their job. I don't think these two statements are accurate. The "founder" (or manager) does need to make sure that things come together, i.e. you don't have engineers building the wrong things. But you do need good people and you do need to let them do their job.
I agree that the labels Paul used already carry meaning that confuses what I think Paul is really trying to point out. I also agree that it's really hard to tell whether someone is capable of leading in "founder mode", and to what degree.
Ray Dalio describes these people as "Shapers", and maybe using a new term is the right way to go.
So putting this term to work, Paul's point is that the best way to run a company when the leader is a shaper isn't going to be the same as when the leader isn't a shaper. And to your point not all founders are Shapers and not all Shapers are founders.
I've also seen founders that weren't really at a level where they could "founder mode" and micromanaged things badly. Those founders are the ones that tend to apply the bad advice pg discusses and who can't really tell the difference if they've hired a good or not so good person and whether they're doing a good job or not.
I totally agree that you need people with the ability to hold the big picture in their head. This can be the entire company but it can also be one product or project within the company. Trying to construct this picture out of pieces in multiple people's heads is vastly inferior and is a factor in the failure of projects/products and companies. You can't separate vision/what/how across people.
What I don't think we want to take away from this is that the founder is always right or that you shouldn't hire good people and let them do their job. I don't think these two statements are accurate. The "founder" (or manager) does need to make sure that things come together, i.e. you don't have engineers building the wrong things. But you do need good people and you do need to let them do their job.