“The Founder’s Dilemma”
Dear Colleagues:
Enclosed is an article I think some of you may find interesting. This article by Noam Wasserman has the same title as his book which provides a more in-depth view of his assessment of founders of startup ventures.
Why would this be of interest to you? The answer is that some of you viewing this post may already be investors in startup ventures and, in some cases, you may have a role in a startup. Thus, I’d assume you would want to consider Prof. Wasserman’s observations and insights into how founders bring value to investors and partners in their venture. While there are many books and articles about success and failure of startups, Prof. Wasserman considers only one element of success, namely the founder and how he/she leads a venture.
My own personal experience has so far has involved 3 failures and 3 successes and in the case of the latter, I’ve noticed several things about our founders.
They were successful as CEO’s in leading the venture to an exit
They were either very experienced with past successful ventures or they had sufficient emotional intelligence and awareness in their planning to avoid losing control of their venture by not taking on external funding and new board members; or managing to raise necessary funds without losing control as the leader of the venture.
There is, of course, much more to it than that, but as I have never been a founder I don’t have personal experience. That said, I’ve worked with and mentored many founders, and so, I thought these observations might be helpful for those of you involved in such ventures.
Kind Regards,
Jon “JP” Warner MD
Founder, CSS
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