The travel industry has been abuzz with chatter about management styles on the heels of an address from Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky at an event hosted by startup incubator Y Combinator in August.
Y Combinator co-founder and investor Paul Graham took to his website to share a write up on “founder mode” versus “manager mode” earlier this month following the event. In the post, Graham discussed Chesky’s take on leading a company as it scales - whether a founder should use the more hands-on “founder mode” or whether “manager mode” - how he’d been advised to run the company while growing it - was a useful method.
“The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken,” Graham wrote.
Graham shared that Chesky said he had been given the commonly-believed advice that founders should “‘hire good people and give them room to do their jobs’” in order to scale - but found it a successful tactic. Instead, he said, Chesky has found success by modeling his leadership after Steve Jobs’ management style - a more hands-on approach.
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To broaden the conversation, PhocusWire reached out to a number of leaders across the travel industry to get their take on the two leadership styles and what really works to lead a company to success in travel.
Answers have been condensed.
Sarah Lehman, CEO of Zartico:
As a veteran of four startups and a two-time founding CEO, I can state unequivocally: the founder vs. manager debate is not just wrong, it's dangerously misleading. Not all input is created equal, and blindly following either the "founder's vision" or "best practices" is a recipe for disaster. Entrepreneurial leadership is the only approach that consistently drives success. It's not a compromise - it's a superior paradigm that renders the old dichotomy obsolete.
I believe the most effective leadership style is entrepreneurial leadership. It's not about choosing between founder or manager mode - it's about transcending both to embody the agility, innovation and strategic thinking that characterizes true entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial leadership works because it combines the best aspects of both founder and manager approaches while adding a crucial element of adaptability. It works because:
- It maintains the innovative spirit and agility of a startup, regardless of company size.
- It incorporates professional management practices where they add value, without being constrained by them.
- It allows leaders to pivot quickly when needed, but with strategic purpose.
- It fosters a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
I've seen it firsthand: startups crumble without the right blend of innovation and professional management. But it's not about hiring a suit to run things. It's about leaders who can:
- Approach running a business with the professionalism that makes it investor worthy while not losing your company’s soul
- Manage cash flow with iron discipline and knowing when to make the right bets
- Maintain laser-focused product vision yet know when to adapt rapidly to market realities
- Listen to diverse input while synthesizing conflicting advice in order to make decisive calls under pressure
It’s about living in the messy middle of leadership.
Tao Tao, co-founder and chief operating officer of GetYourGuide:
I admire Paul Graham’s writing, but I think his “founder mode vs. manager mode” framework misses the mark. I much prefer Peter Drucker’s distinction: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Some founders act like true leaders; others do not. Graham’s essay makes good points about leadership, such as breaking through hierarchy to do what’s best for the business. Good leadership is hard because it requires courage to face one’’s fears and take action despite it. At GetYourGuide, we try to enshrine & democratize good leadership in leadership principles, which anybody - founder or not - can live up to.
For example, one of our leadership principles I value is “choosing growth over comfort,” which captures the essence of learning as a superpower. This trait is vital for founders, especially in the early stages of a startup when it’s their main edge over established players, but many non-founder employees also embody this principle of leadership. Another leadership principle we have is “Acting customer-first, not me-first”, which helps with breaking politics as the organization grows.
Cara Whitehill, vice president of Thayer Ventures:
First off, I think Paul Graham’s piece is ridiculous. He can’t even define what “founder mode” is, other than in opposition to this weird idea that “manager mode” means abdicating responsibility for results and pushing it down the org chart. No good founder OR manager does this. He’s taking one comment from Brian Chesky and trying to spin it up into some trendy leadership philosophy, when in reality Chesky just didn’t run his company very well during that period of time.
Maybe he hired the wrong people, maybe he had the wrong KPIs, maybe he expanded the company too quickly into areas that weren’t viable, or maybe he wasn’t being true to his own instincts for running the business. Secondly, I think there is no one right way to be a leader; the best leaders adapt their management style to the team, market, stage of the company and the competitive climate they exist in – whether they are founders or managers.
I think the best leadership style is adaptive. As a leader, you are responsible for results. Period, full stop. You have to figure out the best way to achieve those results. As a founder in an early stage company with few employees, that means you will be directly responsible for much of the actual work, getting your hands dirty building, selling, hiring and training.
Once you get big enough to have broader teams, you become indirectly responsible for these results, meaning you have to influence other people who are doing the work. That influence can take many forms, and the best leaders know what levers to pull with what employees.
Some require more micromanagement, others more autonomy. Two of the best leaders I’ve ever worked for are Guy Constant, my first boss at American Airlines, and Roshan Mendis at Travelocity (now chief commercial officer at Sabre).
They both led teams of employees from wildly different backgrounds and with a multitude of working styles, but they both knew how to adapt their management style to each of us according to how we worked best to get the best out of us. We were quite successful even though neither of them were “founders.”