── ── Strategy
Founder Mindset
A specific cognitive mode for running an early-stage company — different from manager mindset (optimizing known systems) and employee mindset (executing within fixed scope). Founders search for the system itself under conditions of extreme uncertainty, asymmetric risk, and personal execution bottlenecks. The two load-bearing disciplines: Default Alive or Default Dead (Graham 2015) and doing things that don't scale (Graham 2013).
How it works
Run the Founder-Mode Audit: Default Alive math → avoiding-the-hard-thing → don't-scale-yet → personal-stress check.
1. Compute Default Alive vs Default Dead. Take current revenue growth, expense growth, and bank cash. Will the company reach profitability before cash runs out without raising? If yes → Default Alive. If no → Default Dead. Re-run quarterly minimum. Founders systematically misclassify themselves as Default Alive when they are Default Dead. 2. Name the hard thing you are avoiding. What specific painful action has been on your list for > 2 weeks? Difficult customer call, needed firing, co-founder misalignment conversation. Write it down. Schedule the action within 7 days. 3. Check what you are scaling prematurely. Hiring, automation, infrastructure, or paid acquisition that requires something underneath to be proven first but isn't yet. Common: VP of Sales before founder has closed 20+ deals; paid acquisition before organic conversion is solid. 4. Check what you are not doing that doesn't scale. Who would you talk to personally? Which customer would you visit physically? The unscalable thing the founder is not doing is often more diagnostic than the strategy on the slide deck. 5. Personal stress / pattern check. Avoidance · delegation to nobody-in-particular · excessive meeting attendance · comfort-seeking on optimization tasks. Name which pattern is present. Naming is the first move. 6. Founder-mode action selected. From steps 2–5, pick ONE action for the next 7 days you have been avoiding. Not three; one. 7. Re-run weekly until shipped. Schedule for every Monday — without the ritual, the avoidance pattern reasserts within ~10 days.
When to use it
- user says 'founder mindset' or 'founder mode'
- asks 'default alive or default dead'
- says 'do things that don't scale'
- says 'am I avoiding the hard thing'
- is deciding whether to hire/fire/pivot/raise/cut burn at an early-stage company
- feels comfort-seeking creeping in
When not to use it
When the decision is routine and reversible, applying a formal method costs more than it returns.
Worked example
Paul Graham's Essays and the YC Portfolio (2005–2024)
A worked example. Not Silicon Valley folklore — Graham's essays are publicly published primary sources, and YC portfolio data is publicly disclosed.
Install this skill (free, MIT)
npx skills add deciqAI/knowledge-skills