From Operator to Founder: What Changes and What Doesn't

On my last day as SVP Operations at ARRI, I had an org chart, a budget, and a team of 90. On my first day as a founder, I had a co-founder, a Google Doc, and the uncomfortable realization that nobody cared who I was.

The disorientation is real. But what surprised me wasn't what changed — it was what didn't.

The instinct to structure problems before solving them? Still useful, maybe more so. The habit of documenting decisions? Essential when you have three co-founders and no institutional memory. The ability to read an organization's informal power structure? Turns out that works on four people too.

What changed: the tolerance for ambiguity has to go from "moderate" to "extreme." And the feedback loop goes from quarterly board reviews to "did anyone sign up today."