profile

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.

PostsLinksRecommendations
How Jose built a 14-year shipping startup by solving a problem most businesses ignored and turning hidden refunds into revenue.
Featured Post

​Founder Mode Episode 56 - Hire Attitude, Not Experience with Jose Li

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...

6 days 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,...

13 days 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...

15 days ago • 3 min read
AI isn’t infinite anymore. Compute is scarce, access is controlled, and founders need new strategies to win in the next phase of AI.

Fire Your Worst Customers Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, Jason and I went deep on something that most founders are feeling right now but not fully understanding yet. AI isn’t just getting better. It’s getting constrained. Computing is limited. Access is being controlled. And the companies building the best models are starting to choose who gets in. We talked about Anthropic, token economics, enterprise adoption, and what founders should actually do about it. This one is less...

20 days ago • 2 min read
Kevin shares how Pretty Good AI unlocks 10X growth by removing repetitive work, automating systems, and focusing on scale instead of effort.

The 10X Effort vs. 2X Growth Trap Welcome back to Founder Mode! Lately, I’ve been thinking about something that feels backwards at first. Growing 10X is often easier than growing 2X. There's a popular book by the same name. I didn’t believe that for a long time. It sounds like something you read in a book and ignore. But once I saw it inside Pretty Good AI, it started to click. When you aim for small growth, you protect the system you already have. When you aim for massive growth, you are...

21 days ago • 3 min read
AI is changing finance from dashboards to decision-making. Here’s how reasoning, trust, and context will define the next wave of money tools.

AI as a Financial Co-Pilot with Shain Noor Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, we sat down with Shain Noor, founder of Silvia. He is building what he calls a personal CFO powered by AI. Not another dashboard. Not another budgeting tool. Something that actually helps you think. We talked about why most finance tools fall short, how AI changes decision-making, and what it takes to build trust when real money is involved. This one felt different. Let’s get into it. 1. Finance Tools...

27 days ago • 3 min read
Why small teams move faster without hierarchy. Kevin shares lessons from Pretty Good AI on ownership, speed, and direct communication.

The Myth of the Flat Organization Welcome back to Founder Mode! I don’t care about your title, and neither should the person sitting next to you. That’s something I’ve come to believe more and more while building Pretty Good AI. We’re a small team. We’re moving fast. We’re building in a space that changes every week. And the fastest way to slow all of that down is to start worrying about who reports to whom. I’ve seen this pattern repeat. The moment people start asking about structure, things...

29 days ago • 4 min read
AI is powerful but often wrong. Learn how to treat AI like a junior employee, build better systems, and avoid costly mistakes.

Founder Mode Episode 52 - Grab A Shovel Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, it was just Jason and me. No guest. No script. We talked about something we’re both dealing with right now. AI is getting more powerful, but it’s also getting weirder. Sometimes it helps a lot. Sometimes it confidently does the wrong thing. And the tricky part is that the mistakes feel worse than human mistakes. Let’s get into it. 1. AI Mistakes Feel Worse Than Human Mistakes When a person messes something...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Kevin shares how Pretty Good AI uses transcripts and data to uncover hidden workflow gaps and why designing for reality beats designing for assumption

Customers Don’t Know Their Own Process Welcome back to Founder Mode! There is a question we ask every customer at Pretty Good AI. “How does this work today?” And almost every time, we get a clean answer. Clear steps. Logical flow. Everything sounds organized. Then we turn the system on. And within a few days, that clean story falls apart. The Story vs The System When people explain their workflow, they describe the ideal version. It is how things should work.It is how they believe things...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Courtney Spritzer explains the difference between an audience and a real community, and how founders can turn trust into a business.

Turning Audiences Into Businesses with Courtney Spritzer Welcome back to Founder Mode! In this episode, we sat down with Courtney Spritzer. She is the co-founder of Entreprenista, a platform built to help women entrepreneurs grow through real connection, support, and visibility. We talked about the difference between an audience and a real community, how to turn attention into a business, and why in-person connection still matters so much. This one was a practical conversation about what it...

about 1 month ago • 4 min read