Founder Mode vs. Manager Mode with Believe’s Denis Ladegaillerie - Trapital Summit

Flying high and diving deep

At our summit, both Denis and EMPIRE founder and CEO Ghazi referenced the need to “fly high and go deep” when running their companies. It hits at the balance of founder mode and manager mode.

Now, we’re a few months away from the initial buzz from Paul Graham’s essay and the exhausting discourse it created. Instead of debating one or the other here, let’s discuss their relevance in music and entertainment.

At the major record labels, the incentives for their leadership do not line up with founder mode. Their executive teams are compensated by market share, chart performance, and quarterly performance. These companies are designed to be run in manager mode. The music companies that can truly decide between founder and manager mode are the standalone streaming services like Spotify, independent record labels, and live music companies.

The more polarizing leadership debate in music is whether a CEO is a “music person.” Are they a “creative” or a “suit”? Did they “come from music” or “come from outside”? Every leader gets put into a bucket, and much of the journalism about them is done through this lens. I even hear it about Trapital! I wish I had a dollar for every time someone told me, “But you’re a tech guy,” or something similar.

Regardless of where a leader in music comes from, there needs to be a focus on internal alignment. They run vastly different business lines that all need to operate together—recording, publishing, distribution, radio, merch, and more. Without effective communication and leadership, these areas can operate in silos and create issues. The goal for most artists is to maximize distribution and reach. They want to be present on legacy mediums like radio and emerging platforms that are on the cusp of breaking out. Each part of the company needs to talk to each other to make that happen, which needs to stem from the person at the top.

People, strategy, execution

When I pitched our Summit topic idea to Denis, he sent me back a video from Apple CEO Tim Cook who explained his three focuses on how he runs the company:

“I spend almost all my time on people, strategy, and execution. Most everything else falls from those. If you have the most brilliant people, wicked smart people who collaborate well together. In our case, we’re all about products, so our strategy is very product-oriented. And if you’re executing like crazy, there are some things that still arise, but if you get those three right, the world is a great place.”

A lot of “founder mode” believers may look at Steve Jobs’ return to Apple in 1997 as the ultimate founder mode story arc. There’s literally a movie about it. But “manager mode” believers may point at Cook's growing Apple from its $350 billion market cap in 2011 to a $2.5 trillion company today. Again, there are success stories on both sides of the debate.

At the Summit, Denis also talked about the hundreds of hours he has spent understanding algorithms and AI tools to make sure he fully understands the landscape. That taps back into the founder mode mentality. AI has too much potential influence in music for that work to be delegated passively.

Denis and I also talked about how he navigated Warner Music Group’s acquisition attempt, Believe’s plans to spend hundreds of millions of Euros on potential acquisitions in 2025, and more. You should listen to the full episode here.

Chartmetric Stat of the Week

On November 20, Spotify announced that Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga's “Die With A Smile” became the fastest song to hit 1 billion streams. I was surprised. I heard the song when it first came out, but I’ve yet to hear it outside that much. Not the way I’ve heard “Not Like Us” or “Espresso” everywhere. And that may be because I live in a bubble… called the U.S.!

Only 18% of “Die With a Smile” Spotify streams (around 200 million) came from the U.S., compared to 46% from the U.S. (over 420 million streams ) for Kendrick Lamar’s diss track.