Being Founder-Like

For decades, the founder's journey was clear: find an idea, get to product-market fit, then hand the company to a professional (read: MBA) to run. That worked well outside of tech, where succeeding required an operating muscle more than an innovation one. But as technology moved to the center of the economy, founder-led companies — Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon — became the norm, because tech businesses need to keep changing, and founders have the strongest innovation muscle.

I saw this firsthand with my own startup. I sold it to a large e-pharmacy player and left after two years. I was good at building new products but needed work on scaling — and when I left, the company's innovation muscle crumbled even as its execution got great.

So what actually separates a founder from a good leader? Four things, I think: customer intuition built from hours spent with early customers; a willingness to make non-consensus, risky bets; an outsized ability to align people around a vision; and incentives — founders have more skin in the game, both financially and reputationally, so they take the long view.

None of this means only founders can act like founders. Anyone — including an outside CEO — can be 'founder-like' by following these four principles. Reid Hastings at Netflix and Satya Nadella at Microsoft are probably the best examples: both took big, bold, non-consensus bets despite not having founded the companies they ran.