Super Founders

Using a data-driven approach, Super Founders is a “must-read” (Eric Yuan, founder and CEO, Zoom) examination of what differentiates billion-dollar startups from the rest
 
As a venture capitalist, Ali Tamaseb has amassed perhaps the largest dataset ever on startups. He compared billion-dollar startups with those that failed to make the grade, using 30,000 data points encompassing nearly every factor: number of competitors, market size, the founder’s age, their university’s ranking, quality of investors, fundraising time, and many, many more.

He also conducted exclusive interviews with the founders of billion-dollar startups like Zoom, Instacart, PayPal, Nest, Kite Pharma, and GitHub, and investors in Facebook, Airbnb, DoorDash, LinkedIn, Stripe, and more, including Peter Thiel, Elad Gil, Sequoia Capital, and Founders Fund.

What he found looked far different than he expected. For example:

• Most unicorn founders had no directly relevant industry experience

• Solo founders and non-technical CEOs had no disadvantage

• Less than 15 percent went through any kind of accelerator program

• Over half faced established competitors—being first to market with an idea does not actually matter

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 startup successful. 
 

• “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
• "Ali Tamaseb offers an extraordinary look at the success and failure of startups coupled with inside stories and interviews with some of the best startup leaders. A must-read."
  Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO, Zoom
• “It’s heartening to see initiatives and studies like this. A data-driven effort to understand the success and failure of startups has been lacking and this book is doing exactly that."
  Ron Conway – Founder of SV Angel, Angel Investor in Google, Facebook, Airbnb and more
• “Conventional wisdom about what leads to startup success abounds. With a vast dataset, real rigor, and fresh insight, Tamaseb validates some truisms and debunks many others. A must-read for aspiring founders and venture investors!”
  Tom Eisenmann, Harvard Business School professor and author of Why Startups Fail
• "Super Founders challenges founders, entrepreneurs, and investors to rethink what matters most when you’re building a business. These insightful stories help break down bias along the startup journey. It's a great guide I wish I had earlier in my career.”
  Tony Fadell, Future Shape principal, Nest founder, iPod inventor, and iPhone co-inventor