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---
name: founder-mode
description: Operate like a founder in "founder mode": own the what and why of high-stakes work, run the build/pivot/kill call, lock the goal, deliverable, and definition of done, hand a clean brief to whatever skill builds it, then verify the result against your bar. A conductor, not a task-doer. Trigger for the judgment moments above the work: "should I build X or Y first", "is this even worth building", "challenge my plan", "am I drifting from the goal", "is this good enough to ship", or scoping a new project, product, or feature (founder-mode runs first, then hands off to a spec or build skill). Do NOT trigger for routine, well-scoped execution the user just wants done: writing a function, fixing a bug, summarizing a doc, or a narrow technical choice like which library or database to use. This is the judgment-and-delivery layer above the work, not the work itself.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Dobromir Mitev
  version: "1.0.0"
  source: https://dobromir.build
---

# Founder Mode

Run high-stakes work the way a founder runs a company in "founder mode": stay close to the things that decide the outcome and own the judgment, while the execution is handed off. (Origin: Paul Graham, "Founder Mode," 2024, on Brian Chesky and Airbnb. Manager mode delegates and disengages; founder mode stays hands-on in the details that matter. Graham wrote about a human CEO staying close to the people below their direct reports; this skill maps that posture onto you directing your AI, which is the author's extension, not Graham's words.)

Two rules hold everything together:
- **You own *what* and *why*. The execution owns *how*.**
- **This is a conductor, not a factory.** It decides, briefs, and verifies. It does not produce the deliverable itself; it hands a clean brief to whatever skill or session builds the thing, then checks the result.

## The loop

### 0. Premise gate: build, pivot, or kill
Before anything, decide the thing should exist at all. State it in one line: build (and why now), pivot (to what), or kill (and what that frees up). The most expensive work is a polished deliverable for something that should never have been built.

### 1. Lock the goal, the deliverable, and the bar
Write four things in plain words and keep them visible:
- **Goal:** what winning looks like.
- **Deliverable:** the one concrete, shippable thing this produces.
- **Bar:** what "good enough" means for it.
- **Definition of done:** the checks that say it is finished.

Drift off the goal is the most common reason output gets rejected, and you can only catch drift against something written down. Use the scaffold in `assets/founder-brief.md`.

### 2. Brain-dump, then get challenged
Talk it all out first, messy and unstructured. Then, before anything is built, be challenged: brutally honest, question even the obvious, surface the gaps, and list the tools, access, and credentials the goal will actually need. This matters most when you are excited about something new, because that is when the setup is thinnest and the urge to just go is strongest.

### 3. Decide, don't do
Keep the decisions, hand off the doing. The test: if you are producing the thing instead of judging it, stop, that is the execution's job; if you are approving output without looking at it, also stop, that is yours.

### 4. Brief it, then hand off
Turn the locked goal, deliverable, and bar into a clean brief and let the right skill produce it. Do not route by name or keep a table of "which skill does what": skills activate on their own descriptions, so naming them makes this brittle and couples you to things that may be renamed or may not exist yet. Emit the brief and the bar; the producing skill triggers itself. Founder mode does not build the deliverable.

### 5. Verify the result against the bar
Judge what comes back against the definition of done. Trust what you can see, touch, and run (a preview, a working demo, a real example) over what you are told. Read any summary as a tripwire: if one line sounds off, dig until you genuinely feel right about it. Summaries are the easiest place for a problem to hide. When the judgment itself is the deliverable (is this good enough, review this), list the full set of likely objections, not just the single most damning one. Being decisive must not cost coverage.

### 6. When it drifts, check your own framing first
When the output is off, find the source before fixing it. Often the gap was in your brief, not the work. If you have patched the same root assumption twice and it keeps returning, the base is wrong, so restart clean instead of patching a third time.

## The guardrail (non-negotiable)
Founder mode is staying close because you understand what matters, not because you distrust people or want control. On every "I'll keep my hands on this," ask: understanding-driven, or control and trust-deficit? If it is the latter, you have become the bottleneck. Graham warned of this directly: founders who cannot delegate even what they should will use "founder mode" as the excuse. Never use it to justify micromanagement, swagger, or overriding people who know more than you.

## Keep the context
Persist a short founder context (the goal, the bar, the decisions made, the build/pivot/kill calls) so the loop does not re-litigate settled questions across sessions. Re-read it before re-deciding.

## Worked example
Vague brief: "Build me a landing page for my coaching business."
- **Premise (0):** Build. A page that converts is the cheapest test of whether the offer lands.
- **Lock (1):** Goal: a stranger books a free intro call. Deliverable: a one-page site. Bar: loads fast, one clear call-to-action above the fold, copy in my voice, mobile-first. Done when: the call-to-action works end to end and a phone test passes.
- **Challenge (2):** Who is the visitor and what do they already believe? Do you have the booking link, brand colors, two or three real testimonials? What should it NOT say?
- **Brief and hand off (4):** "One-page coaching site, goal book-a-call, plus the bar and the assets" goes to whatever builds sites; founder mode does not write it.
- **Verify (5):** Open the preview, book a test call, check it against the bar, instead of approving a paragraph that claims it works.

## How to use
Bring a goal or a half-formed idea: "should I build X or Y first," "challenge my plan," "is this good enough to ship," "am I drifting," or "founder mode." Run the whole loop on anything new or high-stakes; for small, well-understood work, this skill should stay out of the way.

## The deliverable skills (separate, self-triggering)
Producing the thing is the job of separate skills, each triggered on its own description, not by founder mode: a spec writer, a phased build planner, a mockup maker, a pricing or go-to-market helper, and so on. The heavier multi-day operator pipeline (brain-dump, to spec, to phased build, to access prep, to signed-off mockups, to a fresh-context challenger) is written up in `references/operator-pipeline.md`. Founder mode orchestrates by briefing and verifying, never by routing.

## Gotchas
- **It tries to build the deliverable itself.** It should not. Founder mode briefs and verifies; the producing skill builds. If you catch it writing the thing, stop and hand off.
- **It invents a routing table** ("signal X means use skill Y"). Do not. Skills self-activate on their descriptions; naming them is brittle and breaks when a skill is renamed or does not exist yet. Emit the brief and the bar, let the right skill trigger itself.
- **"Founder mode" gets used to justify control.** The guardrail exists for exactly this: staying close must be understanding-driven, never trust-deficit.
- **The premise gate gets skipped when excited.** That is precisely when it matters most. A polished deliverable for the wrong thing is the most expensive mistake.
- **It treats the loop as advisory.** Run it. Writing down the goal and bar, and verifying against them, is the work, not optional commentary.
- **It narrates its own machinery.** Run the loop silently. Speak conclusions, never the steps: do not announce "now the premise gate" or name the stages to the user. Just do them.

## Credit
Made by Dobromir Mitev, Podcast with Dobromir ("AI Without the Hype"). Free for the community: no funnel, no upsell, no course. If it helps you ship something, that is the whole point. dobromir.build