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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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Learn how hidden multipliers, customer interviews, and small product improvements create lasting business growth with insights from Jason Cohen.
Featured Post

​Founder Mode Episode 68 - The Profit Whale with Jason Cohen

The Profit Whale with Jason Cohen Welcome back to Founder Mode! Most founders think growth comes from working harder. But after talking with Jason Cohen, I came away with a different conclusion. The biggest gains usually come from finding the few things that create outsized results. Jason has spent decades building companies, investing in founders, and studying what separates businesses that grow from those that stall. His new book, Hidden Multipliers, is all about finding those overlooked...

5 days ago • 3 min read
Founder Anthony Ng Monica explains why health is a founder's biggest competitive advantage and how simple habits outperform burnout.

Stop Chasing Plan A with Anthony Ng Monica Welcome back to Founder Mode! Most founders think burnout is part of the job. I used to think that too. But after talking with Anthony Ng Monica, I kept coming back to one idea: Your business can only perform as well as the person building it. Anthony has built and exited a global company. Today, he helps founders improve their health without stepping away from their businesses. This wasn't a conversation about six-packs or biohacking. It was about...

12 days ago • 2 min read
AI isn't the moat anymore. Learn why systems, taste, and connecting AI to real business problems create the biggest advantage.

You Are The Bottleneck Welcome back to Founder Mode! AI is moving faster than ever. Every week there's a new model. Every month there's a new startup claiming it has the next breakthrough. But after recording this episode of Founder Mode, I came away with a different conclusion. The companies that win won't necessarily have the smartest AI. They'll have the best systems around it. As Jason and I talked through everything happening over the past week, one pattern kept showing up. The real...

19 days ago • 3 min read
AI isn't the moat anymore. Learn why founders should build the nervous system, not the brain, and where the real AI opportunity exists.

Default Alive Without VC Money Welcome back to Founder Mode! AI is moving so fast that it's easy to focus on the wrong thing. Every week there's a new model. A new benchmark. A new company claiming to have the smartest AI. But after this conversation, I don't think that's where the real opportunity is. The founders who are winning aren't building a better brain. They're building a better nervous system. They're connecting AI to real businesses, real workflows, and real customer problems....

26 days ago • 3 min read
AI isn't about better models. It's about better systems. Learn where the real opportunity is and how founders can build lasting advantages.

Better Or Just Busier? Welcome back to Founder Mode! Last Thursday, Jason and I skipped the guest list and talked about what we've actually been seeing inside companies that use AI every day. One conversation from the past week kept coming back to me. I asked several companies one simple question: "What's your stack?" Most couldn't answer it. Some said, "That's a question for our CTO." One company that claimed to be AI-powered turned out to be two outsourced call centers manually passing WAV...

30 days ago • 3 min read
AI isn't about building bigger models. It's about wiring intelligence into real businesses where it creates measurable value every day.

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...

about 1 month 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...

about 2 months 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...

about 2 months 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...

2 months 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...

2 months ago • 3 min read