I’m inclined to agree. There is an underlying (mostly unquestioned) assumption that surely there must be something actionable to learn from the articulation of the history of other companies. But… maybe not? Just because we can clump a bunch of people and processes together to call it a “company” doesn’t make it the same (or even remotely similar) to any other company! Every company is unique at every point in time and space, and companies are made of people, who are also unique at every point in time and space.
Maybe the scary truth surely is that we are always on our own, and our longing for security and familiarity draws us to a sort of pareidolia - seeing patterns where there are probably none. Add to that a survivorship bias of a few people who succeeded and possibly assign causation to the correlation of having succeeded after following the previously mentioned articulations.
It’s late here! I’ll read this comment once again in the morning and see if it makes any sense or if the HN pitchforks are out for me ;)
Your comment is spot on and way richer than mine. Leave it there, please!
The whole discourse that has exploded around this phrase, and the amount of self-seriousness and dogma about it in this sites comment sections have been really baffling to me. One overconfident billionaire writes an essay about a phrase some speaker had made up weeks before, and suddenly everyone's acting like the concept of "founder mode" is some metaphysical constant, and it's our job to understand its true nature through theological debate.
The only thing to be said is that every company is unique at a unique point in time and space. Very little truly actionable feedback is to be learned from either successes or failures of the past.
You are on your own.