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Super Founders
- What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups
- Narrated by: Dean Temple, Catherine Ho, Jason Culp
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Super Founders uses a data-driven approach to understand what really differentiates billion-dollar start-ups from the rest - revealing that nearly everything we thought was true about them is false!
Ali Tamaseb has spent thousands of hours manually amassing what may be the largest dataset ever collected on start-ups, comparing billion-dollar start-ups with those that failed to become one - 30,000 data points on nearly every factor: number of competitors, market size, the founder’s age, his or her university’s ranking, quality of investors, fundraising time, and many, many more. And what he found looked far different than expected. Just to mention a few:
- Most unicorn founders had no industry experience
- There's no disadvantage to being a solo founder or to being a nontechnical CEO
- Less than 15 percent went through any kind of accelerator program
- Over half had strong competitors when starting - being first to market with an idea does not actually matter
You will also hear the stories of the early days of billion-dollar start-ups firsthand. The book includes exclusive interviews with the founders/investors of Zoom, Instacart, PayPal, Nest, Github, Flatiron Health, Kite Pharma, Facebook, Stripe, Airbnb, YouTube, LinkedIn, Lyft, DoorDash, Coinbase, and Square, venture capital investors like Elad Gil, Peter Thiel, Alfred Lin from Sequoia Capital and Keith Rabois of Founders Fund, as well as previously untold stories about the early days of ByteDance (TikTok), WhatsApp, Dropbox, Discord, DiDi, Flipkart, Instagram, Careem, Peloton, and SpaceX.
Packed with counterintuitive insights and inside stories from people who have built massively successful companies, Super Founders is a paradigm-shifting and actionable guide for entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone interested in what makes a start-up successful.
Critic Reviews
“This is perhaps one of the most comprehensive and well researched studies by an insightful venture capitalist ever done on startups and investments. I highly recommend it to all MBA and business students as well as everyone interested in startups and venture capital.” (Ilya Strebulaev, Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business)
"Super Founders dissects startups from every single angle, just like the best investors do. It provides an unparalleled lens for angel investors, VCs, and startup founders to analyze startups, and includes riveting exclusive interviews for anyone interested in understanding how billion-dollar companies happen." (Keith Rabois, general partner at Founders Fund, investor in YouTube, Airbnb, Palantir, Lyft, Yelp, and LinkedIn)
"Ali debunks myths and misconceptions of great founders. His work encourages us to play our own game on our way to becoming the next Super Founder." (Alfred Lin, Partner at Sequoia Capital, investor in Airbnb, DoorDash, Houzz, and more)
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What listeners say about Super Founders
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- An All time Amazoner!
- 12-13-21
Great book
This is an amazing book that provides data-driven insights into building a billion dollar company. The examples, interviews, analyses are spot on.
My only suggestion is to add an “accompanying PDF” to the audible for charts.
4 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 09-20-21
review
cool concept for a book what the content was sub par. felt the delivery was a bit boring and the content not very revealing of anything I would actually be looking for.
2 people found this helpful
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- Andrew Opala
- 09-07-21
Summation of various insights
This book is not so much about super founders as an overview of the current investment market. Many of the insights have been known for several years. Does not touch on founder birth order, or VC follow on funding impact or hiring culture at the growth phase.
1 person found this helpful
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- Gold Darr Hood
- 08-27-21
A useful dive into the data behind the ideal
It is very striking that most VCs say they invest in founders, but in this data driven economy, this work is one of the first deep survey explorations into the founders behind billion dollar companies. I am very appreciative of the detail, objectivity, and clear statements of assumptions and context limitations included. Most definitely worth reading/listening to whether you are an investor, founder, or curious soul.
1 person found this helpful
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- Michael Stein
- 07-31-21
A super book
As an angel investor and budding venture capitalist, I found this book to be are full of valuable and interesting information about The most important topics relevant to starting and growing a business, especially where is the founder wants to grow the business to be valued at hundreds of millions to more than $1 billion. The audio performance by the main and secondary narrators is also quite good. I would definitely recommend this book to friends.
1 person found this helpful
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- Austin
- 07-03-22
Solid book, insights and stats
I had mediocre expectations for this book and it surpassed them. I’ve already recommended it to a few people and would definitely share it with ambitious founders and those looking to raise capital.
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- Olivia
- 06-26-22
Inspiring, as well as informative.
As someone without a tech background, it was an extremely interesting listen in regards to the history of funding and founding of some of today’s well known companies.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-03-22
Must read
The book is a must read for every new entrepreneur. It dispels so many myths that may stop you on your road to success.
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- wayne
- 05-01-22
clarity at its best!
very informative and insightful. if you are starting a company or presently running one you can learn a lot from this book.. love it
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- Alex Lawrence
- 04-13-22
Go for it
Must read to dispel myths on super founders. Go for it!!!!You will like it.
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- Fred
- 04-21-22
Bit disappointed
Given the breadth of the study that underpins the book, I was expecting greater depth of insight.
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- edanesh
- 08-15-21
highly recommended!
Super Founders by Ali Tamaseb is truly a fantastic myth-buster about unicorn startups...the audiobook is well narrated and enjoyable too.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-23-21
Great book
Highly recommended read.
Informative and helpful, especially the sections with interviews from various founders. Excellent.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-01-22
Data has the answers
Data driven approach which helps the author illustrate an understanding of both sides of the VC industry. Well worth the read.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-30-21
Start-ups
Very inspiring book using factual analysis. It makes me have a rethink about my strategy.
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- Anonymous User
- 10-15-21
Alexis review
Get it! Read it! Study it! If you are involved in any way in a tech startup or other, this is your resource for pure facts and knowledge on all aspects. This book changes the game! And puts you in it!