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I've worked with founders and they're great at getting stuff off the ground and have tremendous passion. This is the 'honeymoon' phase. However once things st

I've worked with founders and they're great at getting stuff off the ground and have tremendous passion. This is the 'honeymoon' phase. However once things start picking up and the company is becoming less and less of a startup the they can be the greatest hindrance to achieving the 'next' level as an organization. They are usually set against formality and structure, which they perceive as as impediment to attaining their vision. This is the 'old ball and chain' phase. Of course, this is from my direct experience.

spottybanana 6y ago
Or, the founders goals were fulfilled and the founder just loses interest in developing the organisation further. The organisation has different meaning for different people, the founder might be just totally disinterested in getting the company to the "next level".
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
This is a well-known phenomenon in the VC world. From the outside, it looks like evil VCs are just trying to take over the company, but often the company outgrows the founder’s comfort zone. Many founders are successful precisely because they micromanage every detail of the product and execution, leaving no room for inefficiencies. As you said, this can be effective for getting things off the ground. However, past a certain scale the micromanagement physically cannot work. There aren’t enough hours in a week for the CEO to have a hand in every significant decision on every team. Good CEOs learn how to scale themselves, build trusted org structures, delegate responsibility, and focus the CEO on the things that matter most. However, many founders just don’t enjoy this. They founded a company not because they loved sitting at the top of an org structure, delegating all of the fun work to middle managers. They liked being in the thick of it, fighting fires and calling shots. So that’s what they cling to, to the detriment of the company. Nobody likes to be micromanaged. Having a micromanaging founder at the helm of the company extends the micromanagement to every level, with an added multiplier of the micromanager having absolute control over the company. There is no pushing back, no changing teams to escape it. You either commit to the micromanagement, or you leave the company.
- kelvin0 6y ago
  Exactly, that's why I left. It was unbearable for me to see we were consistently pushing half-baked features out of the door with technical debt piling up. Also seeing your colleagues being baffled at supporting customers with new features no one has ever told them about, deployed in production. I'm all for move fast and break things (sometimes), but this cowboy, shoot from the hip was unsustainable, we simply could not keep up with developing new features and shipping them ad-hoc with barely any support. A lot of burnout in that org also.

spottybanana 6y ago

Or, the founders goals were fulfilled and the founder just loses interest in developing the organisation further. The organisation has different meaning for different people, the founder might be just totally disinterested in getting the company to the "next level".

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

This is a well-known phenomenon in the VC world. From the outside, it looks like evil VCs are just trying to take over the company, but often the company outgrows the founder’s comfort zone. Many founders are successful precisely because they micromanage every detail of the product and execution, leaving no room for inefficiencies. As you said, this can be effective for getting things off the ground. However, past a certain scale the micromanagement physically cannot work. There aren’t enough hours in a week for the CEO to have a hand in every significant decision on every team. Good CEOs learn how to scale themselves, build trusted org structures, delegate responsibility, and focus the CEO on the things that matter most. However, many founders just don’t enjoy this. They founded a company not because they loved sitting at the top of an org structure, delegating all of the fun work to middle managers. They liked being in the thick of it, fighting fires and calling shots. So that’s what they cling to, to the detriment of the company. Nobody likes to be micromanaged. Having a micromanaging founder at the helm of the company extends the micromanagement to every level, with an added multiplier of the micromanager having absolute control over the company. There is no pushing back, no changing teams to escape it. You either commit to the micromanagement, or you leave the company.

kelvin0 6y ago
Exactly, that's why I left. It was unbearable for me to see we were consistently pushing half-baked features out of the door with technical debt piling up. Also seeing your colleagues being baffled at supporting customers with new features no one has ever told them about, deployed in production. I'm all for move fast and break things (sometimes), but this cowboy, shoot from the hip was unsustainable, we simply could not keep up with developing new features and shipping them ad-hoc with barely any support. A lot of burnout in that org also.