The Founder's Dilemmas
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The Founder's Dilemmas
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Narrated by:
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Mark Mosely
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By:
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Noam Wasserman
About this listen
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 10,000 founders. People problems are the leading cause of failure in startups. This book offers solutions.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2012 Princeton University Press (P)2012 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
What listeners say about The Founder's Dilemmas
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Shashwati
- 01-03-21
Excellent book.
The book is perfect for all new founders.
Narrator is just perfect.
The audio file is easy to understand and has a right pace.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Colin
- 18-09-18
good listen
made me think a lot about what way i should take my start up and the best way of getting what i want from my start up
thanks
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- D. J. Wilkinson
- 31-07-13
Vital and interesting but...
Really interesting base material and research into the problems and issues faced by founders and entrepreneurs. Based on wide-ranging research there is a lot of useful information for entrepreneurs and founders. This book should be a No.1 blockbuster book, but it isn't.
The problem is that is that the writing and narration is so boring it is a real struggle to get the gems contained in the book out. I had to listen to it in small chunks otherwise I realise I just zoned the drone out. A lesson in how to turn interesting and vital research material into boring and unappealing drudgery. I had lecturers like this!
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 23-12-12
An Invaluable Resource
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Its mixture of hard data analysis and case studies allows you to take in the information and see how ito interpret it when faced with your own dilemmas. I particularly liked the discussion around how to hedge against the possible downside that comes with certain choices. A must for anyone wanting to start their own business.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Selby
- 10-03-22
A Wealth of Founder Knowledge
A really useful guide for any founders looking to learn about and, hopefully, avoid the pitfalls that inevitably lay ahead in your high growth journey!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lisa
- 22-05-16
Very useful when starting a startup
Pleasant narrator, easy to follow. Clear and precise illustration of connections and pitfalls of the various decisions startup founders have to take.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 07-01-23
Founding my first review
Quite actionable for entrepreneurs starting up a business. Helpful food for thought when considering roles, responsibilities and rewards of co-founding. Dives deep into the main 2 motivations for a start up: wealth or control. Very informative on how to navigate Venture Capital firms and what impact they will have on equity splits in the future. The section on CEO and founder succession was decent.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 23-05-21
Pretty Dull
I'm an avid reader but found this impossible to wade through. There's no overarching narrative and it reads more like an academic paper and summary than an interesting business book
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 21-01-22
Not great
Some interesting points but not enough to justify a book. Could have been shorter and still contained all the same information
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