Jonathan Lowenhar, co-founder of Enjoy The Work, explains the difference between authentic founder intuition and reactive decision-making disguised as 'founder mode.'
“Intuition comes from, in my point of view, A deep understanding of self and the capacity to get quiet and be well resourced. Meaning you've slept well and you've eaten well and you have enough love in your world. And I think what founder mode can confuse is my intuition says I should just do this job for them and fire these three people. That's not intuition. That's reaction. That's a fear response.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jonathan Lowenhar
Insight
Lowenhar: Founders Must Negotiate with Corp Dev Asynchronously or Lose
“Second, they are way better at negotiating than you. So, any time dealing with a superior negotiator, the only thing you can do to try and even the scales is move the negotiation async. So founders repeat after me. I'm talking to you directly now. You will say…”
Jonathan LowenharDec 5, 2024▶ 39:04How a great founder becomes a great CEO | Jonathan Lowenhar (co-founder of Enjoy The Work)
Insight
Lowenhar: Optimizer executives will fail if hired to build playbooks from scratch
“In those cases, I only would want to bring on an architect if they'd been an architect before. If they'd only been an optimizer, they are going to fail because they've never written playbook from scratch.”
Jonathan LowenharDec 5, 2024▶ 58:38How a great founder becomes a great CEO | Jonathan Lowenhar (co-founder of Enjoy The Work)
Insight
Lowenhar: Top CEOs Calibrate Between Founder Mode and Manager Mode
“It's not manager mode is bad. It's the greatest CEOs know when to calibrate which one is needed.”
Jonathan LowenharDec 5, 2024▶ 11:51How a great founder becomes a great CEO | Jonathan Lowenhar (co-founder of Enjoy The Work)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Lowenhar: Most Bay Area CEOs fail at planning due to lack of experience
“Most CEOs are really bad at planning, and that's because there's this little known secret in the Bay Area. Most CEOs never run a business before.”
Jonathan LowenharDec 5, 2024▶ 18:50How a great founder becomes a great CEO | Jonathan Lowenhar (co-founder of Enjoy The Work)
Insight
Lowenhar: Startup Acquisitions Are Driven by Internal Champions, Not Companies
“You don't sell to a company. Magic box is about finding the person. You're finding the champion on the other side. The person who has motivated for their own reasons, career, money, reputation, what have you, they see the fantasy, they fall in love.”
Jonathan LowenharDec 5, 2024▶ 31:23How a great founder becomes a great CEO | Jonathan Lowenhar (co-founder of Enjoy The Work)
Insight
Lowenhar: Feigning competitive buyer pressure early harms startup acquisition deals
“And in magic box, founders are eager to do the same thing, thinking that competition will improve their deal size. When in fact, I think more often than not, that is a negative signal until the very end of the dance.”
Jonathan LowenharDec 5, 2024▶ 41:11How a great founder becomes a great CEO | Jonathan Lowenhar (co-founder of Enjoy The Work)
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.