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The Founder′s Dilemmas - Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup (The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship)

  • Jan 17, 2021
  • Noam Wasserman
  • 898 responses.

The Founder s Dilemmas Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face Should they go it alone or bring in cofounders hires and inves

  • Title: The Founder′s Dilemmas - Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup (The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship)
  • Author: Noam Wasserman
  • ISBN: 9780691149134
  • Page: 486
  • Format: Hardcover

    • Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face Should they go it alone or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business More than just financial rewards are at stake Friendships and relationships can suffer Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venturOften downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face Should they go it alone or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business More than just financial rewards are at stake Friendships and relationships can suffer Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin The Founder s Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team Drawing on a decade of research, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them He looks at whether it is a good idea to cofound with friends or relatives, how and when to split the equity within the founding team, and how to recognize when a successful founder CEO should exit or be fired Wasserman explains how to anticipate, avoid, or recover from disastrous mistakes that can splinter a founding team, strip founders of control, and leave founders without a financial payoff for their hard work and innovative ideas He highlights the need at each step to strike a careful balance between controlling the startup and attracting the best resources to grow it, and demonstrates why the easy short term choice is often the most perilous in the long term The Founder s Dilemmas draws on the inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, while mining quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders People problems are the leading cause of failure in startups This book offers solutions.

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    About "Noam Wasserman"

    1. Noam Wasserman

      Noam Wasserman Is a well-known author, some of his books are a fascination for readers like in the The Founder′s Dilemmas - Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup (The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship) book, this is one of the most wanted Noam Wasserman author readers around the world.

    898 Comments

    1. The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman is another book that belongs on every entrepreneur’s bookshelf. It’s excellent.I met Noam for the first time last week when I was at HBS. I was on a panel of VCs (me, Mike Maples Jr Kate Mitchell, and David Frankel) talking to a room full of HBS alumni who are VCs. Noam and I had exchanged several emails over the past few months and he sent me a review copy of the book but it got lost in my infinite pile of books to read. After seeing him and talkin [...]

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    2. My expectation for The Founder's Dilemmas was pretty high as a result of having just read several of Professor Wasserman's publications, including "Stewards, Agents, and the Founder Discount: Executive Compensation in New Ventures."The book explores key decisions faced by startup founders throughout the life of a company from pre-founding, funding options, initial team and transitional hires, salary negotiations, board management, to exit. I especially liked Wasserman's explanation around the n [...]

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    3. Um ótimo apanhado do que startups passam nos primeiros anos. O autor trabalha em cima de um banco de dados de milhares de empreendedores e empresas entrevistados ao longo de anos, para chegar em um cenário bem explicado ao longo do livro. Quem cria uma empresa precisa se decidir desde o começo o que quer priorizar: controle ou lucro. Quanto mais priorizar continuar dono da empresa e ter controle sobre decisões, menos ela tende a valer a longo prazo. E se quiser fazer dinheiro, vai precisar a [...]

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    4. Founders’ Dilemmas is a second year M.B.A. elective course at Harvard Business School; based on doctoral research paper.It is full of research results and statistics which makes it a bit hard to stay focused, never the less; it is really good!

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    5. If you are thinking about founding a business, or you are a founder of a business, I highly recommend checking if your library has this book. From Harvard Business School, Wasserman has studied the social and economic dilemmas and decisions of start-up founders for 10+ years, and in this book he gives us exquisite data on the results. Wasserman focuses on tech start-ups and businesses in the life sciences, but this book applies to all business founders if you read around the tech details and loo [...]

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    6. The Founder’s Dilemmas – The Answer is “It depends!”The Founder’s Dilemmas is at the same time a fascinating and frustrating book. Fascinating because it’s providing very seldom seen (and mostly unknown) data about founders and high-tech start-ups. Frustrating because it is also seldom providing answers to the dilemmas founders may face. It took me the full reading of the book to finally understand that the answer Wasserman provides is that there is no best solution for a founder fac [...]

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    7. Quite instructive book about different stages of startup development with plenty of examples and statistical data.The central theme of the book is so called RICH or KING dilemma. Which refers to two basic types of founders - motivated to get profit (RICH), or motivated to control and creation (KING).Of course there is a middle point to which author refers as "Ideal entrepreneur".The book is longer than it could be, however I'd recommend it for reader who would want to dig deeper in this area. An [...]

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    8. “The Founder’s Dilemmas” comes recommended by relevant authors Brad Feld, Eric Ries and my former classmate Jeff Bussgang, all of whom really know what they are talking about.It’s rigged up as a parallel structure between serious statistical research and anecdotal stories that are meant to guide you, the entrepreneur, in the early decisions that stand to influence the future success of your business.So you get told “Evan next decided he would only hire junior developers via Craigslist [...]

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    9. One of the best book for startup makers and persons who want to start working with startups. A lot of great examples are described in this book. For example, Twitter, FeedBurner, Odeo, Blogger and other successful startups histories. I read this book twice: in English and in Russian. (in English)-------------------------Одна из лучших книг для начинающих ИТ предпринимателей и тех, кто хочет начать работать с стартап [...]

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    10. В книге ученого из Гарварда представлены результаты научных исследований американских высоко-технологичных и биомедицинских стартапов. Подробно рассматриваются вопросы мотивации учредителей, анализа имеющихся и необходимых для создания компании ресурсов (человеческ [...]

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    12. Coming in to starting my own company, I figured there had to be right answers. A right way to do things. And if you did things just in that manner, your chances of success would be significantly higher.Boy was I wrong, and this book is what highlighted it. Compiled from the author's extensive research and data set of thousands of startups since the start of the millennium, he is able to draw conclusions about the dilemmas founders face, the possible paths, and what kind of outcomes they lead to. [...]

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    13. Interesting but overrated. It is very specific to only a few startup types, it stretches statistics too much at times and, while its main idea is great and worth remembering, it could have been explained just as well in half the page number or even less.

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    14. This is a great addition to data-driven literature that can truly help entrepreneurs. It covers basics every entrepreneur should be aware of, like the perils of setting things up the wrong way at the beginning. But rather than just being the pontifications of someone who has been there done that, it's real data, showing the probabilities of things working out well or poorly depending on choices made during the founding process. Along with Founders at Work, Four Steps to the Epiphany, and Venture [...]

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    15. Very good book, easy to read given the topic. Mostly based on research, and where not, is clearly stated.The book covers a lot of grounds for startups from co-fouding, to hiring first people, getting investors, and selling the company. The book goes over the decisions founders will face and how they affect long term value or control of the company.I would not recommend an eBook. There were a lot of footnotes and end of book notes, some of which I felt were really important. Having the book in eB [...]

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    16. This is probably a great book for someone thinking of starting a company, but useless for someone who has. And even then, it should have had a lot more information. It presented problems, but very few useful tools for solving them.

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    17. If you are looking for a comprehensive guide to being a founder, this book is NOT it. The author removes the day-to-day decision making and industry-specific decisions in favor of more general, long term but high impact decisions that tend to be neglected. This makes the book sound bland, since the drama and epicness of being a founder are surgically removed, but I would recommend any serious founder-to-be to take a good look at this book prior to starting anything.On the negative side, the book [...]

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    18. Absolutely deserved the 5 star rating. This book delves into three chapters where it begins with Founding Team Dilemmas (should you found alone, equity splits, etc.) and ends with Hires and Investors (Which hires to get onboard and which investor would best suit your goals). This is a perfect solution to the trial and error you'd have to go through to figure this information out. In addition, the author references so many research articles it's unreal, and he always looks at both sides of an arg [...]

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    19. A book which answers very well some questions entrepreneurs may have at the beginning of their journey. It is great to read it then to better understand the consequences of some early decisions on the later stages of a business. I liked the examples backing up suggested resolutions - even though I felt they were very repetitive throughout. For a book talking about beginners' pitfalls however, I felt it ignored one of the most basic advice anyone can receive, which is the waste of time.I found th [...]

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    20. An interesting book to induce thinking about founding a company.The quantitative analysis is interesting and quite to the point. It becomes tedious to read after some point, but the book is short enough to complete before getting to dull with quant talks.I appreciate and recommend reading the conclusion as an excellent summary of the whole book. The conclusion also scopes the book very well (North America, high-tech and life science domains), with warnings on generalizing the results too freely. [...]

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    21. Noam is the expert when it comes to founders and what makes them successful (or not). He is a pioneer in identifying the dilemmas that founders encounter and his writing is a "how to" for anyone considering founding or who has already founded a business. I've never met a founder who couldn't benefit from this book. Everything he has written is backed by extensive research. The facts speak for themselves.

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    22. This is a good book for founders of tech or life science companies who are planning to use investor funding. Yes, that's pretty specific. And if that's not you, probably not worth your time. But if it is you there is a wealth of case studies and principles to help you decide how to allocate equity, defining your role as a founder, etc. Ultimately, he focuses on the tension between being king (having control over the company) and being rich (making as much money as you can).

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    23. I think this would be a good book for someone who is considering starting a company. It will force you to think about a lot of issues that will inevitably come up. However, I did most things "right" during start-up (according to the book), but some of the issues I've encountered in the actual running of the business were not really addressed here. It was also very geared towards tech start-ups, so much of the information was irrelevant to my situation.

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    24. It’s a must read for anyone working on startups where they are either founders or close to founders circle. It gives some facts about different issues you can anticipate so that either you resolve or anticipate. There is no right or wrong. It gets you to the node of resolving before it happens than to catch you with surprises. Don’t n Ed to read all sections but your relevant sections. Author talked a lot about 2-3 startups across the book. Still I felt happy reading it.

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    25. Very good book. Quite academic in structure and content so be sure to concentrate well on each concept to gain maximum value -- parsing each sentence carefully and grasping the implications in multiple contexts may take time / digestion, especially for those not themselves serial entrepreneurs or academics in the field.

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    26. This was a very relevant book, on a relevant subject, and the author surely did proper research. So I am sad to say that I found it a struggle to get through. I don't think there is a single page in this book I didn't have to read twice.

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    27. Must read for first time entrepreneurs. Many issues discussed seem unintuitive at first. The observations shared are extremely valuable and enable informed decisions about important internals of startups.

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    28. A really useful book for anyone in a startup or thinking about it. There are a lot of scenarios that are discussed that are often not thought of when decisions are being made. I would recommend this book.

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    30. It's sometimes difficult to tie academic research to a topic as emotionally driven as founding. Noah does a good job and his frameworks for evaluating major decisions are helpful.

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