You Ship Your Founder

A hypothesis of mine is that products are a direct reflection of their founder(s). As an individual deeply engrossed in self-awareness and curious about consciousness, I’m interested to see if this hypothesis is true.

Nothing qualifies me to ask how a founder is reflected in their product. I spend half my year studying the unique programming of my own brain and the other half utilizing sociology and phenomenology to understand how human consciousness has developed.

In my remaining time, I support crypto companies in consciously shaping their product departments. It is not easy to see where a founder is reflected in their product, and I find it is an art I am just beginning to peer into.

“You ship your org chart” is a well-known saying (especially when your org chart is a mess). So why isn’t “you ship your founder” also a saying? After all, the founder made the org chart.

I think of it as a fairly unsophisticated triangle. The individual builds the organization; the organization builds the product. Some inter-dependency must inevitably exist.

To what degree is there an interdependency between a founder and their product? In what ways specifically does this interdependency exist? Are the weaknesses of a founder more represented than the strengths? If a strong co-founder exists, what traits win out to be represented in the product?

On a deeper level, I’m also asking: What if an individual, by knowing their own programming, could begin programming products that are not bound to their personal identity or internalized beliefs?

Through a series of conversations with experts, my goal is to start with a hypothesis that “a founder is represented in their product” and discover if this true, and if so, in what ways.