Leadership Advice That Breaks in Startups

Many of the world’s top CEOs are also the founder. And they don’t lead the way most leadership books tell you to.

They practice something I call Founder Leadership.

You’ve probably heard of founder-led sales, founder-led product, or founder-led marketing.

The key idea is that founders have a unique role to play in a high-growth company—and their agency is critical.

Yet, a lot of traditional advice assumes leaders should ‘step back’ and give up that agency.

For example, in big companies, you’re encouraged to manage by objectives and get out of the way.

And in small companies, you’re told to work on the business, and create processes and checklists that run without you.

As a founder, you’re sandwiched between these two philosophies, and neither fully applies.

When you treat your business as if it were a big company or a small company . . . it breaks.

This is because the pace of change is too fast, and the stability you’re aiming for just isn’t there.

So good Founder Leadership is about staying hands-on and shaping the outcomes that matter most—instead of being reduced to setting targets or engineering processes.

The best founders independently arrive at the same conclusions about how to lead while maintaining a healthy level of agency.

And they manage to do this without burning out.

It’s crazy to me that there’s still nowhere you can learn this stuff. So I’m thinking about creating a training on Founder Leadership.

And I have a question for you:

If you could sit down and ask me any two questions about it, what would they be?

I’d love to hear from you.

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Originally published Dec 18, 2025, last updated Jul 19, 2026.