From Start-Up to Grown-Up: David Heinemeier Hansson — Operating With a Founder's Instinct

And I think it's so important as part of decision making, just knowing, okay, here's the downside, the potential downside. Am I willing to kind of accept, to use your word, and I would almost say surrender to that possibility before you do something this drastic.

It's, it's where that founder, I was about to say, call it founder mode. Maybe that's even trademarked now. I don't know. And also, I don't know, I think it, it means everything to everyone right now in both negative and positive connotations. And let's not even use that word. But this both founder instinct and privilege to take that kind of decisions, that was not what I saw being taken from most professional managers who were professional CEOs. They were like, you know what, I'm not gonna die on this hill. Like I might be on the, on the, on the spike tomorrow if I pick that, like I'm gonna get thrown under the bus by my board or whatever activists, whatnot. So I also felt like, do you know what? If Jason and I in this capacity as basically owning the business outright, just having a couple of small minority co-owners who don't have any power on it, if we are unable to say like, you know what, this is nonsense. This is, it's not just silly, it's actually bad and we don't want it.

Who the hell else can do anything?

So I kind of felt like a little bit of weight on that, that this idea that we don't have to ask anyone for permission. You also have to use it when it counts. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel good about myself afterwards.