"For the past two months, Americans have watched as two extraordinary and polarizing figures -- Donald Trump and Elon Musk -- have worked as a team to reduce the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy.
Behind all the criticism, praise and blame heaped on the Department of Government Efficiency, a question lurks: How is it possible that these two men, who barely knew each other before the presidential campaign and who are separated by a quarter-century in age, are able to get along and agree on what to do and how to do it?
The answer is that both men are business founders, with a founder's mindset and style. This sets them apart from their political counterparts, including many past Republican presidents. It also makes it easier for them to work with other founders, from Silicon Valley tech leaders to cryptocurrency entrepreneurs to venture capitalists.
A founder's approach to business sharply contrasts with the manager mentality that often overtakes companies as they grow in size and complexity. In their book "The Founder's Mentality," Chris Zook and James Allen describe founders as driven by "bold mission," "bias for action," "aversion to bureaucracy" and "relentless experimentation."
A founder is famously, even notoriously, hands-on. He wants to know everything about his corporation from top to bottom. He insists that every aspect of the business reflect his original big vision -- one of "limitless horizons," according to Messrs. Zook and Allen -- and is impatient with anyone or anything that stands in the way of that vision.
Founders are biased toward decisive, even disruptive, action. Mr. Musk's biographer sums up the Musk business philosophy as: "Take risks. Learn by blowing things up. Revise. Repeat." For the typical founder, problem-solving is a priority. He must constantly look for ways to innovate to lower costs and beat the competition. This means a founder is generally risk-tolerant rather than risk-averse, and he doesn't like to back down when facing pressure.
Founders also hate to delegate, just as they hate unnecessary costs. They prefer to work through small, trusted teams -- hence the importance of loyalty -- and are continually asking subordinates and colleagues, "What have you done for us lately?" In other words, how are you advancing our vision? If you lose a founder's trust, it can be hard to win it back.
Managers define leadership differently. They like to build consensus and oversee incremental change instead of pushing what President George H.W. Bush called "the vision thing." They pride themselves in delegating and see managing a "team of rivals" in their cabinet or boardroom as necessary to their job. Mr. Trump's Republican predecessors, even Ronald Reagan, generally operated in this "manager" mode -- even as the federal government and the power of the administrative state continued to grow on their watches.
Mr. Trump's career reflects his founder mentality. He broke out from his father's real-estate business in Brooklyn and Queens to build a skyscraper empire in Manhattan. He relied on a small team of trusted subordinates to carry out his big vision.
In his first term, Mr. Trump brought his founder mentality to the White House but became frustrated when he ran into delays while trying to work with people governed by the manager mindset. In his second term, he found a suitable ally in Elon Musk, who built both SpaceX and Tesla.
Every startup founder asks: "Why are we doing this?" That's a question very few politicians, Republican or Democrat, have asked about our federal government. But it's the question Messrs. Trump and Musk have been asking, and acting on, since Inauguration Day. The result is a serious rethinking of how the federal government should operate.
Amid the radical changes they've wrought -- not only through DOGE-initiated agency reform but also in crypto and artificial-intelligence policy -- they've found natural allies among other founder types, including David Sacks, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
It's fair to say we've arrived at a kind of founders revolution, a time when leaders are applying entrepreneurial principles to government. Whether Messrs. Trump and Musk achieve their aims will depend on many factors, including many outside their control.
Whether they succeed or fail, their approach -- like that of other founders in history, including America's Founding Fathers -- will inevitably inspire as well as alienate. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote to James Madison, "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and is as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." That's the same spirit we're seeing from Messrs. Trump and Musk as they press ahead with their vision.
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Mr. Herman is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of "Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II."" [1]
1. Trump and Musk Share the Founder's Mindset. Herman, Arthur. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 27 Mar 2025: A15.
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