#122: Founder Mode

May 17, 2026 – DevTools Brew #122

I’m Morgan Perry, co-founder of Qovery. Every week, I share the raw, often uncomfortable lessons from building and scaling a tech startup… from 0 to 1, and now from 1 to 10 and beyond.

This edition is about founder mode - not the internet version of it but the uncomfortable one.

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Founder Mode

When founders become too far from reality

I wasn’t really sure what to write about this week.

And a few days ago, during my run in the streets of Atlanta, I randomly fell into Brian Chesky’s interview on Founder Mode and honestly it hit me much harder than expected.

Not because of the “founder mode” concept itself - people are already overusing the term everywhere - but because parts of what he described felt uncomfortably familiar.

Especially this idea that at some point, as companies grow, founders slowly drift away from reality without fully realizing it.

Over the last year at Qovery, my role changed massively.

We went from an extremely small business org to something much bigger very quickly. SDRs, AEs, marketing, partnerships, outbound, enterprise motions, AI GTM, new processes, new reporting structures, new layers, new expectations.

At the same time we were trying to unlock growth again.

And I think somewhere in the middle of all that, I slowly stopped operating in the environment where I naturally create the most value.

I’ve always been extremely founder-doer oriented.
Very hands-on.
Very close to the field.
Customers. Positioning. Deals. Momentum. Signals. Execution. Energy.

That’s usually where I’m at my best.

But when the team grew, I progressively moved into something else:
more management,
more coordination,
more alignment,
more internal complexity,
more abstraction layers.

And without fully realizing it, I started spending more time trying to manage people than staying close to the actual work itself.

Brian said something in the interview that stayed with me:
“You manage people through the work. You don’t manage the people.”

I think I understand that sentence much better now.

And honestly, I think AI is going to make this even more true.

Because the people creating the most value tomorrow probably won’t be the ones sitting between layers of communication.

It’ll be the people staying extremely close:
to the work,
to the tools,
to the craft,
to the customer,
to the actual output.

So yes - the more removed I became from the actual work, the less sharp I became overall.

Less connected to customers.
Less connected to execution.
Less connected to signals.
Less connected to momentum.

And honestly… probably less connected to my own drive too.

That was probably the weirdest realization, beacause from the outside nothing looked fundamentally wrong.

The team was bigger.
The company was evolving.
More initiatives were happening.
More structure existed.

But internally, I could feel I was operating differently.

And I don’t think founders necessarily lose energy because they stop caring.

Sometimes they lose energy because they stop operating close enough to reality.

That distinction matters a lot.

Especially in tech.
Especially during market shifts.
And especially right now with AI.

Because I genuinely think we’re entering one of the biggest shifts our industry has seen in a long time.

Not just because AI changes software but because it changes how companies themselves operate.

Small teams suddenly produce the output of teams 3–5x bigger.
The distance between idea and execution is collapsing.
Information moves faster.
Decisions move faster.
Iteration moves faster.

Which means abstraction becomes dangerous much faster too.

And interestingly, this AI shift forced me to reconnect with something I had partially lost: proximity.

Proximity to customers.
Proximity to the market.
Proximity to execution.
Proximity to signals.
Proximity to the actual work.

Which is why over the last months, I intentionally started operating differently again.

Smaller groups.
Shorter loops.
Less layers.
More direct customer exposure.
More hands-on involvement.
More experimentation.
More speed.

Almost like rebuilding a startup inside the company again.

And interestingly, that’s also exactly what Brian Chesky describes Airbnb started doing internally:
small elite teams,
extremely focused missions,
direct founder involvement,
tight execution loops.

Large organizations naturally drift toward abstraction over time.

And abstraction kills signal surprisingly fast.

I think that’s the real thing most people misunderstand about founder mode.

The best founders are not trying to recover control. Actually, they’re trying to recover reality.

Honestly, I think that’s also why my own energy came back so strongly recently.

For the first time in a while, I feel extremely close again:
to the market,
to the timing,
to the customers,
to the opportunity,
and to the actual work itself.

Exciting times ahead. And probably some of the most exciting since we started Qovery six years ago.

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That’s it for me today and thanks for reading :)

— Morgan

You can reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Ps: Writing this somewhere above the Atlantic with a big thought for the special one - the right person can make even a chaotic period feel much calmer. ✈️🫶

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