The most important job for a startup founder

Many startup founders struggle to get their development team to deliver. Progress feels slow, so they start asking for daily reports and introducing standups to know what the team is working on. It seems like a reasonable way to stay informed. Unfortunately, by micromanaging, they unintentionally force the team to constantly shift their focus.

On Monday, onboarding is the top priority. On Tuesday, they spoke to a promising partner, and it’s really important to build an integration. By Wednesday, they’ve encountered that bug that only they encounter, but it really annoys them, so can you fix it? The founder feels productive; they’ve set the team to work on three items. But the team keeps switching context without knowing what truly matters. By the end of the week, there has been little progress on any of these items, and the main feature they were supposed to build is still pending.

As a founder, your job is to set a clear vision and define what value the company wants to bring to its users. Explain the vision as much as possible to the development team, ensuring they understand the problem you’re solving, and then step aside. Changing focus should only happen for business-critical issues. Not for nice-to-haves, not for “quick wins,” and not for “it would be good if.”