A guide to the early decisions that can make or break startup
ventures
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 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.
