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Liked It “The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman is another book that belongs on every entrepreneur’s bookshelf. It’s excellent. |
Didn’t Like It “I'm listening it in audiobook format.” see full review » see other reviews » |
Newest Reviews
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“New Book, June 2013”
Whitaker Library wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“I'm listening it in audiobook format.”
Michal Nowak wrote this review Saturday, January 26, 2013. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Book 19 of 24 for the year and it's only the end of June! Not getting cocky, but I might need to up the count for 2012. (Assuming the Mayans are wrong about that whole end of the world thing.) So I am not going to count this one because I really don't see me finishing it - so it's not done done. While I do think there is a significant amount of information that I have found very relevant to founding your own business I find this a difficult book to read and assimilate. The book (IMHO) is written very much as an academic paper with never ending references to the source material of 10,000 interviews over many years. So if your an avid thesis reader (or one of those insane PhD-types) you might enjoy the read and extract sufficient information to make this book worth your while. If you are more like me - not that smart and a hell of a lot more practical - I would advise against the purchase or maybe better yet this can be used as one of those skim reading books. While I think the information is relevant as reference I already find the info a little dated. Given the speed with which the two focal industries (tech and bio) change the information from "years ago" (my words) is relevant but questionable. So if you are lured into this book I suggest doing a deep scan of the material before you buy. Obviously this is a limited set of Founder Dilemmas - so I think there is value but maybe not as much as Wasserman thinks.”
Troy Swinehart wrote this review Tuesday, January 22, 2013. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“The author is a well-recognised academic in the area of entrepreneurship. He teaches a particularly popular course at Harvard, and this book appears to be the result of his academic research spanning some ten years. The focus of the book is largely on the people-related decisions that entrepreneurs have to make, such as whether to bring in partners, equity split, governance, etc. Intuitively, those decisions appear to be critical and logical in the context of new venture formation. However, they implicitly assume that entrepreneurs follow a certain venture formation process, and this assumption is not always valid in the context of serial or experienced entreprenerus. Therefore, the book is more applicable to novice entrepreneurs - the ones that follow a check-list approach to start-up, not necessarily to the ones that follow the process validated by repeat entrepreneurs. Overall, I think that the book is a good complement to the raft of literature on new ventures, full of good advice. On the other hand, experienced entrepreneurs are unlikely to face the predicaments implied in this book (e.g., should I form partnerships?) as the essence of serial entrepreneurship make many of those dilemmas redundant. ”
Daniel Vidal wrote this review Monday, January 21, 2013. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman is another book that belongs on every entrepreneur’s bookshelf. It’s excellent.
bfeld wrote this review Sunday, May 6, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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 talking to him briefly, I decided to put it on the top of the stack. I laid on the couch all day yesterday with Amy and the dogs and demolished a pair of books. The Founder’s Dilemmas was the first.
I get asked endless questions about founder dynamics, solo founders, optimal number of founders, equity allocations between founders, roles of founders, alignment between founders, and investor – founder relationships. I’ve been involved in many conflicts between founders, transition in roles between founders, emotional struggles with founders as businesses grow and change, investor conflicts (other than me) with founders, and the list goes on and on and on.
I’ve never seen a book before that was particularly helpful – to a founder – about the wide range of issues a founder will face. There are plenty of books lots with stories, anecdotes, and suggestions, but none that are particularly systematic about going through all of the issues. Noam’s book is the first I’ve read – and he totally nails it.
He covers it three ways – with data, with analysis, and with stories. He’s done a ten year quantitative study that he follows up with his own analysis and then intermixes this with actual stories from a set of founders, including two that I know reasonably well – Dick Costolo (FeedBurner – I was on the board), Genevieve Thiers (Sittercity – we looked hard at investing but ultimately didn’t) and many I know from a distance. As a result, I was able to back test the stories and anecdotes and they were completely factual in contrast to many other books like this where the qualitative stories are embellished to fit either the ego of the participants or the point being made by the author.
Noam systematically marches through all of the major dilemmas I could think of for founders: career, solo-vs-team, relationship, role, reward, hiring, investor, failure-vs-success, founder-CEO succession, and wealth-vs-control. I believe he’ll coin several new reference phrases, including my favorite around wealth-vs-control (“do you want to be king or want to be rich?”) He looks at each of these from all sides (e.g. yes – you can be king and rich, but there are other options that may get you where you want to go faster and with a much higher chance of success) and uses a great blend of data, analysis, and anecdote to make and support his points.
If you are a founder, or considering being a founder, a board member, or an investor, buy The Founder’s Dilemmas right now. One of your goals should be to do everything you can to maximize your chance of success. This book will help a lot and you won’t regret the time you invest in it.”
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