관료주의 탐색하기: 후기 창업자를 위한 인사이트

후기 창업자는 관료주의를 극복하고 회사를 더 잘 이해하기 위해 적극적으로 참여해야 합니다.

### 관료주의 탐색하기: 후기 창업자의 인사이트
* 🏢 후기 창업자들은 종종 관료주의로 인해 회사의 일상적인 운영과 거리가 멀어져 **조직 내에서 실제로 어떤 일이 일어나고 있는지 파악하기가 어렵습니다.**
* 👥 최근 열린 YC 동문 행사에서 브라이언 체스키는 **회사의 규모에 관계없이 창업자는 관료적 관성에 맞서기 위해 변화를 일으킬 수 있다**고 강조했습니다.
* 📈 이 행사에는 **제품 시장 적합성을 달성하고 중요한 팀을 관리**하고 있는 후기 단계의 YC 창업자들이 모여 그들이 확장하면서 직면하는 공통의 과제를 조명했습니다.
* 🔍 논의된 주요 이슈는 **창업자가 경영진과 여러 계층의 경영진을 고용하면서 단절**되어 실무자가 아닌 '마리오네트'처럼 운영되는 경향에 대한 것이었습니다.
* ⚠ Brian은 기존의 통념에 따라 창업자가 광범위하게 위임하는 경우가 많지만, 이는 **우선순위로 유지해야 하는 고객의 요구와 제품 효과에 대한 통찰력을 잃게 할 수 있다**고 말했습니다.
* ✊ 그는 창업자들에게 경영진에만 의존하지 말고 **개별 기여자들과 직접 소통하여 문제를 파악**하는 등 관료주의를 타파하는 기술을 개발할 것을 권장했습니다.
* 🛠 또한 관료주의가 창업자를 외면하는 일반적인 시나리오와 달리 **창업자의 참여 가치를 인정하는 훌륭한 경영진**을 고용하는 것의 중요성에 대해서도 논의했습니다.
* 💡 궁극적으로 브라이언의 메시지는 분명했습니다. **"회사의 규모와 관료제의 규모는 중요하지 않으며, 창업자가 책임감을 갖고 자신의 경험을 통해 배울 수 있습니다."**라고 창업자들에게 촉구했습니다.

you got to figure out your technique for cutting through the bureaucracy you've built. Yes, to figure out what's going on. I think the really encouraging thing from Brian's talk is that it doesn't matter how big your company is and how big your bureaucracy is; like, you can change it. This is Dalton plus Michael, and today we're going to talk about founder mode. Oh jeez, founder mode. So um, we were at the YC alumni event and um, saw the founder mode talk and more than that, like we've interacted with tons of YC late-stage founders over the year and kind of know um, a lot about what happens when companies get late stage and um, I think a lot of people in the room were really excited. Yeah, yeah, I mean, so to set this up um, we did a special event just for growth stage, late-stage YC founders. Yes, you know, so picture a room, couple hundred people, you know, pretty full y um, all the founders of late-stage, growth-stage YC companies, companies making tens of millions or

hundreds of millions, so not B companies. When you think of YC companies, you may be thinking, Oh, you know, two-person startups. No, not that. These were the folks that have hit product-market fit and who have a lot of employees. And we brought them together to learn from each other and share notes. And, of course, Brian Chesky was one of the speakers that we had there because he is a hero of running a late-stage company and, yeah, going through all sorts of things. And the prompt, as I understand that he was given, was to give a talk specifically tailored for the later-stage companies, right? Like, especially for what you went through with Airbnb. What do people need to hear that are also late-stage founders? Yes, okay, so that's the setup. That it's worth mentioning we were there. Pretty relevant, pretty relevant setup, yes. And I think that the core message that I really think is hard for early-stage founders to understand is that when you're a late-stage founder and you have

to hire executives and then layers of management. It's hard to have a feeling for what's happening in your company. You know, you very quickly hit Dunbar's number, and none of the people include people who are maybe talking to customers or writing actual code or making designs, especially if you don't curate that list well. And there are a lot of people who are slowly starting to feel like, you know, almost like they're operating a marionette, like it's not my own hands and my own eyes anymore doing the work in a company. I'm like so separated, it's hard to understand what's happening. And I think that's a problem that a lot of later-stage founders have. And so that's really kind of, yep, the kickoff was like, Hey, are you feeling like that? Yeah, well, well, again, the context is if you're a later-stage founder. I experienced this at my startup, and I know you did too. It is very typical for your investors and your board to say, Hey, you need a big

management team. You need to delegate, and you need to hire all these experts, and they know better than you, and so you need to stay out of the details. And again, you would never—investors would never say this to a two-person team. So again, to the extent people out there in the world are trying to understand how this relates to their tiny startup, it does not. It doesn't. It's just what you know. If you scale, yes, scaling means hiring executives and delegating major parts of your business and kind of assuming they know better than you because they have a fancy resume, okay? And so the real point Brian was trying to make, and then PG in his blog post, I would argue, was, Hey, this thing that is considered conventional wisdom about how to operate a growth-stage startup seems wrong, and no one's ever talked about that before. G, and I would argue that there's been some critique on this point. I think that critique is accurate. I don't think there's a business book you can find that says, like, You know what the

greatest CEOs did hard a bunch of Zex and went on vacation. So like I don't actually think anyone is arguing the other side. That's a no one's arguing. No one's arguing that. I think it's much more like oh hiring Executives and Management's hard. Yep. And when you don't do it well you kind of get in this trap. Yeah. And I think a lot of what Brian was trying to do is get people advice and like how do you get yourself out of this trap. Yeah. Well here's a really concrete example or rubric for it. It's just how many layers of management there is relative to how large your company is. I was even reading a an article recently that Amazon's about to do a big reorg. Kind of sounds like it was influenced by founder mode if I'm real. Maybe not. Maybe it's a coincidence. But they're just trying to look at how many layers of management between yes the entry level folks in the CEO and just try to move several layers. And what's hard to

understand when you have an org that's like 2,000 plus people. It sounds so complex, especially because it's a software company. Just knowing what's going on is really hard. Like, just like you would be shocked at the questions that a startup can answer about its users and its products, that a large company, the answers are tricky. And like, I've heard of companies, you know, hiring consulting firms because like, we don't really know how to answer the question, Who are our users? And yeah, let's pay McKenzie to find out who our users are. Yeah, it's really tricky. Um, and like, that doesn't like, it's hard. It's really, really hard. I think the other thing that people don't realize is that when a company gets to these thousands of people, bureaucracy sneaks in. And bureaucracy isn't a government problem, it is an organizational problem. And how many people need to weigh in on a decision? How many people need to approve a decision? How much, how many additional pieces of approvals are created because one bad thing happened?

once yes so there's now all this red tape 'cause this one thing happened 10 years ago. Years of one-off bad thing. This can never happen again. They just pile up yes and then suddenly the things that are important which are you know talking to your users understanding what the complaints coming in from customer service are using your own product understanding how your product fails people like those things. It's it's weird to say it out loud but those things somehow get shoved down the list and it's easy to trust other people like hey I need to manage this bureaucracy and it's your jobs to do what I used to do which is like serve the customers and I think that mentality is is is wrong is very very wrong. It's interesting because you know Parker from rippling came to talk to YC and give a similar talk actually to Brian's talk. He illustrated what he does when a problem gets to his desk and I I love this explanation because he's basically like look if I'm seeing a problem many many people below

me did not fix it right, and he's like sending some message like if a problem is sneaking all the way up the, uh, the chain to get to me, sending some message all the way down and expecting the person at the bottom to like hear it. That's never going to happen. And so he has this technique where he takes every layer of management all the way down to the individual contributor doing the work, and they all together go and talk to the individual contributor and figure out what the hell is going on and how do we fix it. And there's like a subtle message that anyone below him, I could have done that exercise without him, and maybe the problem would have gotten to his desk. And I think that like that's one of many techniques of Founders that Founders use to cut through that bureaucracy and to figure out what the hell's going on. And I think a lot of what Brian's was really saying is that like you got to figure out your technique for cutting through the bureaucracy you've built, yes, to figure

out what's going on, and if people are preventing you from doing that, that you hired. Well, he made an interesting point that he was disinvited from his own meetings at his own company because he was seen as causing problems and not, you know. And so again, this was one of his points, which was the bureaucracy was so big that it was trying to keep me out of it, and it was my own company. Yes. And so again, is this relevant to a two-person startup? No. Is this relevant to a 10-person startup? No. It's a stretch. Okay, I don't think so. No, not even close. No. The kind of dysfunctional setup you have is very clearly for what happens when you have such a large number of humans in your organization. Yes, that the founder is sort of put on the sidelines and told to just stay in their lane and no longer be involved in the mechanics of running their company. And what's interesting is like I would flip it around because I think when you

hire great managers and great executives. You get a very different vibe when you hire great managers and great executives. They understand the power and the authority of a founder, and they often are trying to figure out how to use the founder, use the CEO, to accomplish some goal versus trying to build some Thom or trying to protect the founder from what's really going on. And I think that it's really hard to hire really good executives. Not only are they rare, but there are a lot of big companies that pay a lot of money. And so for a startup, even at 100 million of revenue, what's the likelihood they're going to nail the best executives? Like, it's really, really hard. It's really, really hard. And I think this is why that talk was so relevant to the people in the room. It's like you get people trying to figure out how to manage their kind of B and C-grade executives, and it ain't going well.

will you should be so lucky to have this problem. This is the problem you want. This is great. Yes, yes, I will say this. I think one of the threads that this took, which I found weird, was it changing it from a conversation about Executives and management versus founder CEO to a conversation about Investors versus a Founder CEO, which was weird. It was kind of like, Oh, at the board, we know what to do, and the founder is not doing it. I thought that was kind of a weird take on it, but I think if you're an investor commenting on Founder mode, maybe it's easiest to just make yourself the main character. Yeah, I didn't get that either, honestly, but that wasn't actually part of the like, there was no point in the conversation where it was like, Oh, my investor told me to do this, and I disagree with it. Like, that was irrelevant. And I do think that like, if your investors are telling you what to do, you have a problem. It's just, it's different than this. There's a different

there's a different name for that problem. Yeah, it's a different problem. Has nothing to do with this. Any idea that goes viral and gets popular. Yeah. Becomes a sort of like Rorschach test where everyone sees in it. Yeah. Their own thing and they inadvertently. A lot of. I saw a lot of projection. Yes. Where you could kind of tell. Yes. Who. Uh. Yeah. Who was a little triggered by some of this stuff because I think they may have saw themselves in it. I don't know. It was. It was fascinating to watch all of the. Yeah. The news cycle about this because I feel like I learned a lot about people's. Yeah. Minds that they didn't mean to reveal by their reaction of the founder mode essay. Yeah. Well, and it was so weird because it was kind of like I didn't realize this would be a conversation for Twitter at all. Exactly. And so I think this is a good. A good tip for just consuming the news or consuming things on Twitter in general, which is to realize when something gets sufficiently viral, it

gets decontextualized from the person that said it and what the context was and just turns into like basically a flame War. You click whatever a clickbait flame War about whatever your preferred topic is. Yes, you know, oh gee, here's something that's getting viral. Let's weigh in on it with my preferred thing that I'm mad about. Yes, I remember when the essay first went out being like, Oh, everyone's going to weigh in on this. You could just tell that this is going to be one of those things. So remember, friends, don't fall for the clickbait, I guess. Yeah, yeah, fake news is fake news. And I do think that if you're one of the very, very few Founders who do have this problem, you should talk about it. You might be surprised at other people having this problem. And like, I think the really encouraging thing from Brian's talk is that it doesn't matter how big your company is and how big your bureaucracy is, like, you can change it. Y and uh you

can start running your company again. Well, the key thing is he was saying this was my fault. He wasn't passing the buck. The point of the story is I made a mistake. Learn from me. Don't do what I did. It wasn't to blame people working at Airbnb. Only one person messed up. Yeah, right. And he was owning it. That was the message. Yeah, all right. Great chat. Sounds good. Thanks. [Music]

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후기 단계 회사의 창업자 모드 탐색하기

창업 후기의 창업자들은 임원을 채용하고 관리 계층을 구축하는 과정에서 관료주의와 회사 운영에 대한 감각 상실로 어려움을 겪는 경우가 많습니다.

업무와 단절된 느낌으로 인해 마리오네트처럼 운영된다는 느낌을 받을 수 있습니다.

최근 열린 YC 동문 행사는 후기 창업자들이 모여 서로의 경험을 공유하고 배우는 자리로, Brian Chesky의 강연을 통해 이러한 리더들이 직면하는 공통의 어려움을 다루었습니다.

스타트업을 확장하려면 업무를 위임하고 전문가를 고용해야 하는데, 이는 어렵고 복잡할 수 있습니다.

경영진과 경영진을 고용하는 기존의 통념이 항상 효과적인 것은 아니며, 이는 비즈니스에 잠재적인 함정으로 이어질 수 있습니다.

기업이 성장함에 따라 관료주의가 슬그머니 들어와 의사 결정과 조직의 역학 관계를 이해하는 것이 점점 더 어려워질 수 있습니다.

관료주의가 조직에 미치는 영향

관료주의는 과거의 실수로 인해 시간이 지남에 따라 누적되어 고객 참여와 문제 해결에서 멀어지는 결과를 초래할 수 있습니다.

리플링의 파커처럼 효과적인 리더는 문제 해결 과정에 모든 계층의 경영진과 개별 기여자를 참여시켜 문제를 해결합니다.

이러한 접근 방식은 전통적인 계층 구조에 도전하고 관료주의를 타파하여 창업자가 회사 운영의 메커니즘에 적극적으로 참여할 수 있도록 하는 것을 목표로 합니다.

훌륭한 경영진을 채용하기 위한 도전

스타트업의 성공을 위해서는 훌륭한 관리자와 임원을 채용하는 것이 매우 중요하지만, 이는 매우 드물고 어려운 일입니다.

대화는 종종 경영진 관리에서 투자자와 창업자 CEO 간의 역학 관계로 전환되어 혼란스러울 수 있습니다.

창업자 모드 토론의 바이럴 특성으로 인해 다른 사람들의 다양한 해석과 예측이 이어졌고, 각자의 반응과 사고방식이 드러났습니다.

클릭베이트의 영향과 책임감의 중요성

클릭베이트는 종종 맥락을 벗어난 논쟁과 온라인 불꽃 전쟁으로 이어집니다.

브라이언은 비슷한 문제에 직면한 다른 창업자들도 같은 문제에 직면할 수 있으므로 목소리를 내도록 독려합니다.

브라이언의 강연의 핵심 메시지는 실수에 대한 책임을 지고 회사의 규모에 관계없이 변화가 가능하다는 것을 인식하는 것이 중요하다는 것입니다.