Are You Running Your Business — or Is It Running You? How to Escape 'Founder Mode' and Learn to Let Go How the shift from doing to leading unlocked growth and scale.
By Karim Alam Edited by Kara McIntyre
Key Takeaways
- Founders often become bottlenecks due to their inability to delegate, with 58% struggling to let go of control, according to Harvard Business Review.
- Shifting from micromanagement to empowering teams and building systems can lead to increased productivity, creative freedom and company scalability.
- Delegating and trusting in a team's capabilities not only accelerates company growth but also enhances the well-being and focus of the founder.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
In my early days as a founder at Sakani, wherever there was a decision to be made, it had to go through me — and that was dangerous.
I was involved in every operational process, product flow and social media caption — blurring the line between chief executive officer and chief everything officer. At first, it felt like a commitment to setting the standard and protecting the product. But the more I stepped in, the more people stepped back — and in the process, I became the company's bottleneck. That's when I realized I was stuck in founder mode.
A study published by Harvard Business Review found that 58% of founders struggle to let go — a reflection of how deeply personal their companies become. An investor in the study notes that founders have "... Known the business since the beginning and have played many roles and worn multiple hats. That's not scalable."
Related: How 'Founder Mode' Can Actually Fail Your Business — and What You Should Do Instead
Stuck in 'founder mode': How doing more yields less
My first instinct was to double down and do more. Cue the Silicon Valley trope: if we were not in the office at 3am with empty pizza boxes and the low hum of computer fans surrounding us, were we really doing this right? So, I doubled down on 'more': more hours, more emails and more features. As I dove deeper into each stream, I found myself immersed in tasks that were not mine and observing meetings that did not need me. And like a self-fulfilling prophecy, I found myself in the office one night at 3am 'helping' the technical team fix a broken flow — with an empty pizza box on my left and a dazed Nicole (cofounder) on my right. I thought to myself: "This can't be right."
I was working harder than ever and somehow holding us back. As Victor Lipman explains it on Psychology Today, micromanagement does four things to hold your organization back: it undermines autonomy, stifles creativity, dampens motivation and reduces productivity. That night forced a confrontation I had been avoiding: I had to stop being the company's chief everything officer.
Out of 'founder mode': How doing less yields more
To get out of Founder Mode, I had to adopt a new mindset — and fast. Basically, I needed to make sure that the team played to their strengths by building systems around them that would enable their vertical to scale. We started with the engineering team. At the time, we were operating with a hybrid outsourced model — where I spent a lot of time bridging the gap between the product and technical streams. We got rid of the hybrid model and we hired an engineer with unicorn-scaling experience to lead both verticals. Initially, the transition was painful — but the return on investment was through the roof. The new team took full ownership and managed both streams end-to-end, aggressively improving the platform.
We replicated the same modus operandi across other streams by asking three questions:
- Is this stream delivering real outcomes?
- Where is it breaking or misaligned?
- What would unlock this owner to run at full speed?
We quickly figured out where the blockers were and what needed to change — clearing the way for team members to operate freely from a place of creativity. As Harvard Business Review puts it, scaling isn't about replacing founder mode with manager mode — it's about building systems where both can complement each other and help the company reach its full potential.
Related: Why 'Founder Mode' is Not a One-Size-Fits-All Solution to Leadership
Unlocking growth and scale
The payoff on Sakani was huge. I became less essential to the day-to-day and more effective where it mattered. I had clarity and could finally focus on what I did best: building strategic partnerships and raising capital for our next stage of growth. We closed our funding round. The team scaled. Execution got sharper and faster.
But more importantly, people started stepping up. Decisions were made and roadblocks were cleared without my involvement. The team didn't just move quicker, they moved with confidence — because they had clarity, ownership and autonomy. That cultural shift made the company healthier. And it made me healthier, too — I had more time to reinvest into the parts of my life or business that mattered.
And with that, my chief everything officer arc came full circle.
Letting go might sound scary at first. You might worry that things won't get done as well or move as fast. But instead of spending your time fixing everything, spend it on building trust, enabling your team members and giving them the space to figure things out. Over time, the company will get stronger — as well as the people inside it.
So if you're stuck in founder mode, start by asking yourself this: Are you running the business, or is it running through you?
