My last project was my first experience working directly with the founder on a regular basis. And I feel like it was a massive culture shock.
Before you start working directly with founders, most of your bosses understand your field and the work you do. A founder often doesn't. They are intensely focused on outcomes but may misunderstand or undervalue the process needed to produce them.
What this leads to in terms of communication is that you have to argue for your work all the time: justify the process, connect it to results, and explain why their brilliant shortcut simply won't work.
Dealing with "founder logic" is uniquely frustrating at first. From your perspective it is obvious that content takes time to gain traction and start attracting traffic, because that is how you have seen it work throughout your career. However, from their perspective, if content is good, people will immediately like it, so there should be an immediate result. And from their perspective, this logic is ironclad.
If you think about it, though, it isn't incompetence. Founders are responsible for the entire company, but you cannot expect them to be experts in every function of the company. And how do you make sure that the idea you don’t really understand isn’t about to ruin the company you’ve spent years carefully building? You question it, of course.
In the end, I think it forces you to become a better expert. Instead of simply accepting that "this is the way it has always worked," now you have to figure out why it always works that way.
When working with founders, just knowing your job isn't enough anymore. You have to spend a considerable amount of time explaining your reasoning to someone outside your field clearly enough to give them a reason to trust your judgment.
Have you ever worked directly with founders or stakeholders? If yes, was it a culture shock? If not, did I just scare you? 😄
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Придумал бонусную плюшку, как попрактиковаться с языком. Пишите ваши ответы в комментах на английском, и я по нескольким комментам дам фидбек в плане языка. И мне будет интересно ваши мысли почитать, и вам будет полезно потренироваться их выражать, и вы получите подсказки, что можно делать лучше в плане языка.
Капец, последние 2 дня я win-win выдаю как печатный станок 😅
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1August 5, 2026 55 12 1
