“The Founder’s Dilemmas”

The Harvard Center Shanghai organized a talk and reception with HBS Professor Noam T. Wasserman on February 10, 2015. Professor Wasserman presented findings from his book: The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup.

For more than a decade, his research has focused on founders’ early decisions that can make or break the startup and its team. He developed and teaches an MBA elective, “Founders’ Dilemmas,” for which he was awarded the HBS Faculty Teaching Award and the Academy of Management’s 2010 Innovation in Pedagogy Award. In 2012, his book “The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup” was published by Princeton University Press. Within two weeks, it had become Amazon's #1 book on the Management bestseller list, #1 in New Business Enterprises, and #2 in Popular Economics. Publisher's Weekly called it "seminal," "captivating," and "required reading." The New York Journal of Books called it "the single-most indispensable guide for founders of startups." Among its awards, the Academy of Management named it one of the Top Five Business Books of the Year. The book has been published in 7 languages so far. Both The Founder’s Dilemmas (the book) and Founders’ Dilemmas (the course) provide a roadmap for founders about the most common pitfalls they will face. The book and course integrate Noam’s research results, quantitative data collected over the last decade from 10,000 founders, case studies, and conceptual frameworks.