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Founder Mode

by Kevin Henrikson

Founder Mode is a weekly newsletter for builders—whether it’s startups, systems, or personal growth. It’s about finding your flow, balancing health, wealth, and productivity, and tackling challenges with focus and curiosity. Each week, you’ll gain actionable insights and fresh perspectives to help you think like a founder and build what matters most.

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AI isn't about building bigger models. It's about wiring intelligence into real businesses where it creates measurable value every day.
Featured Post

​Founder Mode Episode 63 -​ Fake AI vs Real AI

Fake AI vs Real AI Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, Jason and I sat down without a guest to talk about what we've been seeing firsthand in AI. After attending an industry conference, one thing became obvious. A lot of companies say they're doing AI. Very few can explain how. When I started asking one simple question, "What's your stack?", the answers told me everything I needed to know. Some executives couldn't answer. Others admitted their "AI" was actually teams of people...

8 days ago • 3 min read
Founders don't win by avoiding failure. They win by surviving it. Learn why resilience beats hype with Sahib on Founder Mode.

Be A Cockroach, Not A Unicorn with Sahib Anandsongvit Pretty Good AI is hosting a live webinar next week that I think many of you will find useful. Most healthcare AI pilots fail. Industry estimates say only about 5% ever make it into full production. On Tuesday, June 30, at 12:00 PM PDT, we're sitting down with Jeannine Spagna and Sami Badra from Clearway Pain Solutions, a 100+ location specialty practice running athenaOne, to talk about how they successfully rolled out voice AI across their...

15 days ago • 3 min read
Joe Speiser shares lessons on arbitrage, building on rented land, community, AI adoption, and finding overlooked opportunities.

Don't Build On Rented Land with Joe Speiser Practices spend money generating leads, but lose patients because no one answers the phone, follows up fast enough, or handles intake after hours. We're doing a 45-minute session on how top healthcare practices are using voice AI to capture and convert more patients 24/7. Live Webinar: June 25, 2026, at 12:00 PM PDT You'll see: Where healthcare practices lose revenue after the lead is generated A live AI-powered patient intake and scheduling demo...

22 days ago • 3 min read
20 Founder Mode conversations revealed one truth: AI didn't change the fundamentals. Trust, distribution, and customers still win.

Best of Founder Mode III Welcome back to Founder Mode! Every 20 episodes or so, Jason and I like to step back and ask a simple question: What are the patterns? Not the headlines. Not the AI announcements. Not the latest tools. The patterns. This batch surprised us. The lesson was not that AI changes everything. The lesson was that the fundamentals matter more than ever. Trust. Distribution. Services. Customer conversations. Showing your work. The founders who broke through were not chasing...

29 days ago • 3 min read
Scott Francis shares lessons from building through cloud, mobile, automation, and AI, and why process still beats technology trends.

AI Can't Explain What It Did with Scott Francis Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, we sat down with Scott Francis, founder of BP3 and longtime operator, consultant, and builder. Scott spent nearly two decades helping companies improve business processes through multiple technology cycles, including mobile, cloud, automation, and now AI. We talked about why process matters more than technology, how AI changes software development, what founders get wrong about hiring, and why some...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Eric Ries joins Founder Mode to discuss mission drift, governance, and why successful companies become vulnerable to corruption.

How To Be Incorruptible with Eric Ries Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, we sat down with Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and his new book, The Startup Way. But this conversation was different. It was not about finding product market fit. It was about what happens after. We talked about mission drift, governance, trust, and why some companies slowly lose the thing that made them special in the first place. One line from Eric stuck with me immediately: “The more successful...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Brent Csutoras breaks down Reddit, trust, and why real human voices matter more than polished marketing in 2026.

Why AI Loves Reddit Most with Brent Csutoras Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, I sat down with Brent Csutoras, who has spent nearly two decades inside Reddit and other online communities. He has seen what works, what fails fast, and what brands keep getting wrong. The big idea was simple. If you want to trust online, stop acting like a billboard. Start acting like a real person inside a real community. That hit home for me. I also kept coming back to a point I made in the...

about 2 months ago • 3 min read
How Jose built a 14-year shipping startup by solving a problem most businesses ignored and turning hidden refunds into revenue.

Hire Attitude, Not Experience with Jose Li Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, we sat down with Jose Li, founder of 71 Pounds. He built a business around something most companies completely ignore: shipping refunds. At first, it sounds simple. If FedEx or UPS delivers a package late, you get your money back. Except almost nobody actually claims it. Jose spent years inside FedEx before realizing there was a huge opportunity hiding in plain sight. Companies were leaving billions of...

about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Founders don’t fail from lack of effort. They fail from lack of focus. Here’s how sleep, speed, and saying no actually drive performance.

Sleep, Listen, Say No One of my companies, Search Engine Journal, runs webinars for customers that generate millions in revenue. We decided to open up that playbook. We’re launching a 4-week live cohort starting next week to teach how to actually make webinars work. Not theory. You build it live. By the end, you’ll have: Your webinar Landing page Email sequence Follow-up system All done. If you’re a Founder Mode subscriber, I want to give you 50% off. Use code: FOUNDER50 Spots are limited,...

2 months ago • 3 min read
Kevin shares how Pretty Good AI treats AI as a required skill, why output gaps are growing, and how founders should rethink hiring for leverage.

The Talent Litmus Test of the AI Era Welcome back to Founder Mode! I’ve changed my mind on something pretty fundamental. AI is no longer optional. For a long time, I thought of it as a skill. Something nice to have. Something you could layer on top of a strong team. Now I see it differently. If someone is not using AI, they are not operating at the level the business needs. And as a founder, that forces a hard decision. The Gap Is Too Big to Ignore At Pretty Good AI, we see the output gap...

2 months ago • 3 min read