Our startup is failing because you, the founder, are doing too well.
Date
Sep 23, 2025
Classification
- Startups
#
- Organization/Leadership
Peter Shin / Peter Shin's Startup Thoughts
· English Newsletter for Entrepreneurs Embracing Silicon Valley - https://lnkd.in/gK67Fw_u
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"A Smart CEO Becomes Poison to the Company?" Why Superman Founders Must Become Liu Bei
🫑 3-Line Summary
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A multi-talented "superman" founder who takes on all the work simply because they are better at practical tasks than their employees is likely to eventually become a bottleneck that hinders the company's growth.
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To leap forward as a venture, one must paradoxically become a 'lazy leader,' which means boldly delegating undesirable tasks and establishing a system (documentation, automation) that can replicate the founder's know-how.
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A founder's talents should be focused on solving 'exceptional and complex problems,' such as discovering new businesses or responding to crises, rather than on simple, repetitive tasks, and sharing authority like Liu Bei is an essential condition for survival.
🥦 Insight
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10 '80-point' employees beat 1 '100-point' CEO.
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"I'd rather do it myself than have you explain this." If you are an entrepreneur, this is a thought that crosses your mind dozens of times a day. If you do it yourself, the marketing copy will be more impactful, and sales meetings will be smoother. However, I am sorry to say that this very 'competence' is currently suffocating the company.
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Doing everything by yourself is 'self-employment,' not a 'startup.' The core of scale-up begins with the 'patience' of giving up the CEO's 100-point results and accepting the employees' 80-point results. Instead, the true ability of a CEO (Founder Mode) lies in raising those 80 points to 90 points through systems and manuals.
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Did you spend your precious brain today organizing Excel spreadsheets or creating card news? Or did you spend it worrying about the company's future revenue streams a year from now? You are an architect, not a player. Now, let go of your hands and trust the system. Sometimes, delegation that appears incompetent is the most competent management strategy.
— View original —
Founder, the more successful you become, and the more talent you possess, the harder it is to run a business. Why is that?
From investor relations and sales to even full-stack agentic development, the more of a Renaissance man you are in the current AI era, the more difficult our venture, team building, and systematization become.
In fact, if you are truly outstanding, isn't it only natural that you would have more followers and clients, and be able to run the best business? Today, I would like to talk about this.
To start with the conclusion, at the management level, it causes more trouble than good for you, the founder, to always be smarter than your employees.
1️⃣ The 80:20 rule
Anyone who has participated in group projects in college, especially those who have worked in consulting, will strongly relate to this. It is the "law of group work," which states that 20% of the work is done by 80% of the people; typically, the smartest individuals are bound to lead the largest portion of the project. This is because if a client's project were distributed equally among employees, the probability of our deliverables failing would increase significantly. I don't even want to imagine what would have happened if Steve Jobs had divided the design of Apple products equally. Even Jobs must have thought at countless stages while planning the iPhone 3, "There is no benefit in leaving this to him, so I will do it myself." Smart people are naturally inclined to take on and handle every aspect of a project on their own.
2️⃣ The reason your startup team fails to become a venture.
You, the smart founder, perform most tasks far better than others up to an annual revenue of around 1 billion won. You write marketing copy better than most outsourced workers, handle Excel more fundamentally, deal with investors and customers more logically, and sometimes even appear somehow more handsome in such settings, churning out outstanding results in every practical aspect of business operations. However, as the business becomes more venture-oriented, this Superman begins to panic.
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