The Founder's Dilemmas

What motivated me to read this?

I came across this book while looking for good readings for startup founders, I am glad, I found this book. It has some great insights around extreamely difficult decisions that a founder has to take in different stages of the company and how their decisions later affect the startup and future startup decisions.

What are my top 2-3 learnings from the book?

• Startups are fights against odds, and it takes a while to figure out things, understand the long term consequence of early decisions that you take while building a startup. Many of them will be irreversible in nature, and will become death nail for the startup if not taken right. some of them are like founding solo vs other cofounders, finding co-founders from family, friends or colleagues, when to raise founds, who should become the CEO etc.

• While taking the foundational decisions for a startup it's must to keep the worst possible outcome in mind. It's better to be aware of it and keep it mind while taking decisions.

• Easy decisions at the foundational level are more likely to bad decisions, taking right decisions which are fair to all stakeholders involved, is quite challenging, its better to confront the challenge and take a decision which is required for long a term survival of startup.

• Startups require three types of resources: human capital, social capital & financial capital. You are always choosing between wealth creation & control. As you acquire these resources, you have to sacrifice either wealth creation or control of the startup.