Founder 是干细胞

Today I heard Ben explain founder mode with a brilliant metaphor. If a company is a human body, the CEO is the brain, thinking about direction and making decisions. The CFO is the heart, controlling cash flow so the company stays alive. And the founder? The founder is a stem cell. I laughed when I heard it, because it is so precise. A stem cell can become any organ, it can repair itself, and it goes wherever there is a problem. If it finds cancer cells, it destroys them without hesitating. A founder needs that ability and awareness: go personally wherever there is a problem, temporarily lead whichever department is rotting, and fire toxic people yourself rather than waiting for an HR report or a dashboard alert. Founder isn't a title but a state, an instinct, a habit of being wherever the problem is. This is especially true early on, when nothing is stable and everything is an experiment; a founder who only wants to be a strategist in meetings can't be saved. In the morning you're customer service, at noon you're fixing the warehouse, in the afternoon you're in a product meeting, at night you're live-streaming with users. Once the company has a mature organisation you can focus on certain functions, but from the moment you are a founder, you must live on the front line, solve problems, fight decay and repair the system. That isn't romance. It's reality.