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Founders, Keepers
Why Founders Are Built to Fail, and What it Takes to Succeed
Table of Contents
About The Book
Every founder is a time bomb waiting to explode. Why? Because the same personal attributes a founder needs to launch a startup will invariably blow it up. Successful founders learn how to defuse their worst impulses and build durable companies. But most don’t.
For founders, investors, and academics alike, Founders, Keepers is the distillation of a lengthy collaboration between Rich Hagberg, Silicon Valley’s “CEO Whisperer,” and his client Tien Tzuo, founder and CEO of Zuora. Steeped in nearly 40 years of research in leadership psychology, it delivers a Swiss Army knife of mental models and practical tools that will give founders a much better chance of making it to the next level of success.
This sharp, lively guide gives readers insights into:
- The three pillars of leadership every founder needs to be successful
- How certain personality traits can lead to fatally flawed decisions
- Common blind spots, including the default tendencies and leadership styles that often undermine success
- The key factors that differentiate successful and unsuccessful founders
- Why founders often frustrate their investors, partners, and employees—and what to do instead
It’s a difficult but unavoidable truth: in order to grow a startup, you have to grow as a person. Founders may be unable to account for all the complexities entailed in scaling a company, but they can learn how to account for themselves. Founders, Keepers offers the way forward.
Product Details
- Publisher: Matt Holt Books (June 17, 2025)
- Length: 240 pages
- ISBN13: 9781637746912
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Raves and Reviews
“This master class in how to build a startup would have helped me avoid some of my biggest professional mistakes—I just wish it had come out years ago!”
—Jonathan Seelig, Cofounder, Akamai
“Founders, Keepers is the mirror every founder needs. It provides the frameworks that we as leaders need to grow with our companies. It’s nice to find a book that takes the theoretical and makes it generally applicable to real life.”
—Matt Tait, Cofounder and CEO, Decimal
“Rich and Tien write with the clarity of having worked with some of the best founders. They brilliantly capture the internal struggles and strengths of founders and show the path to success.”
—Mårten Mickos, former CEO, MySQL and HackerOne
“Founders, Keepers shows just how hard it is to be a founder and do the most insane thing imaginable—create something out of nothing. Calling on 40 years of research and unique wisdom and full of practical and actionable solutions, this book is required reading for founders who want to take their companies and themselves to the next level.”
—Maynard Webb, Founder, Webb Investment Network; Director, Salesforce and Visa
“Founders, Keepers helped me to understand my own leadership style, to have the humility to admit where I fell short, and to learn and adapt as quickly as my startup grew. From a naive visionary to a manager of relationships and execution—nine years into my startup, I'm still here."
—Richard Mabey, Cofounder and CEO, Juro
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