WSJ: Live Chat: Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Start-Up

Noam answers a variety of founding questions in this live exchange. To Read More

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Blog archive

Accelerated vesting

Unlocking Your Golden Handcuffs: How Common is Accelerated Vesting on Change of Control?

Appearances

7/8/13: Mass Challenge Incubator (Boston, MA)

Board of Directors

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: Founder-CEO Succession Cases

Board problems: Even numbers? Multiple founders?

“Do I Have an Effective Board of Directors? (How Can I Tell??)”

Building a Board: Composition by Company Stage

Building a Board: The Impact of Company Stage

Building a Board: Mentorship? Monitoring?

Careers

Read Startup Life!

Kauffman Sketchbook

Introductory Case

Harvard Business Online: “Don’t Wait Too Long to Become an Entrepreneur”

Co-Founders

The Quick Handshake: A Valuation Penalty?

Salary Inequality Among Co-Founders: How Common?

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: “Building the (Founding) Team” Case Studies

Introductory Case

The Idea Premium: How Much (Equity) is Your Idea Worth?

A Second Look at “Idea People” as CEOs: Should vs. Do

Idea People and Their Initial Roles Within Founding Teams

Board problems: Even numbers? Multiple founders?

Neverland, or Dictatorship?

Founding with Friends, Founding with Strangers?

Compensation

Access Free Compensation Data for Participating in the 13th Annual CompStudy Survey - Deadline: June 30, 2020

4 Top Myths About Start-up Pay

Salary Inequality Among Co-Founders: How Common?

CompStudy Highlights: “Live Tweets” from the Webcast

Just Launched: 10th Anniversary Compensation Survey

The Gender Gap in Startups, Part 2: Compensation

The Gender Gap in Startups, Part 1: Women in IT and Life Sciences Ventures

This Friday: Entrepreneurial Compensation Webcasts

Looking for Private-Venture Compensation Data? (2008 Version)

Next Tuesday: Start-up Compensation Webcast

Looking for Solid Compensation Data (2007 version)?

New Items on Entrepreneurial Compensation

Golden Handcuffs and Vesting: Initial Interpretations

Golden Handcuffs: Summary of Vesting Data

Golden Handcuffs and Vesting: Early Analyses

Update: 2006 Entrepreneurship and Compensation Survey

Looking for Solid Compensation Data?

Founder Discounts in “Working Knowledge”

“Founder Discount” Paper: Coming to an AMJ Near You

3 Tidbits from the “Emerging Ventures” Conference

Executive Compensation and the Founder Discount

Equity Issues

Is Dead Equity Crippling Your Company?

Fear vs. Greed at Facebook

The Gender Gap in Startups, Part 2: Compensation

Unlocking Your Golden Handcuffs: How Common is Accelerated Vesting on Change of Control?

Equity-Split Results, Part 2: Implications for Team Stability

Equity-Split Results, Part 1: When Do Teams Split Equally?

Golden Handcuffs and Vesting: Initial Interpretations

Golden Handcuffs: Summary of Vesting Data

Golden Handcuffs and Vesting: Early Analyses

Equity Split

Is Dead Equity Crippling Your Company?

Fear vs. Greed at Facebook

The Quick Handshake: A Valuation Penalty?

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: “Building the (Founding) Team” Case Studies

New: “A Note on the Legal and Tax Implications of Founders’ Equity Splits”

The Idea Premium: How Much (Equity) is Your Idea Worth?

Equity-Split Results, Part 2: Implications for Team Stability

Equity-Split Results, Part 1: When Do Teams Split Equally?

Splitting the Pie: Jumping the Gun?

Splitting the Pie: Founding Team Equity Splits

3 Tidbits from the “Emerging Ventures” Conference

Exit Decisions

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: Franchising, The Full Life Cycle of a Venture, and Exit Decisions

Financing

The Quick Handshake: A Valuation Penalty?

Founder-CEO Succession

Avoiding The BlackBerry Blues: Know When To Fire Yourself

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: Founder-CEO Succession Cases

New Article in Harvard Business Review: “The Founder’s Dilemma”

Hiring Into — and Demoting Into? — Executive Positions

Yahoo’s New Founder-CEO

Interview about Founder-CEO Succession

Bridge CEOs, Revisited

Doomed CEOs and Bridge CEOs

Nike, Cyberposium, and Jim Estill: 3 Takes on Founder-CEO Succession

3 Tidbits from the “Emerging Ventures” Conference

After the Firing: Initial Research Questions

Founder-CEO Succession

Franchising

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: Franchising, The Full Life Cycle of a Venture, and Exit Decisions

Gender Gap

The Gender Gap in Startups, Part 2: Compensation

The Gender Gap in Startups, Part 1: Women in IT and Life Sciences Ventures

Hiring

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: New-Venture Hiring Cases

Investors (and Managers) as Headhunters: Sources of New-Venture Executives

Hiring Into — and Demoting Into? — Executive Positions

Hiring Frustrations: Can Goliath Work in a David-Venture?

Upside-down VCs, Part 3: Synthesis of Comments

Upside-down VCs, Part 2: The Costs Versus Benefits of Junior Hires

Upside-down VCs, Part 1: The “First Morning” That Sparked It

HR 101: Hiring and Scaling Challenges

Idea People

The Idea Premium: How Much (Equity) is Your Idea Worth?

A Second Look at “Idea People” as CEOs: Should vs. Do

Idea People and Their Initial Roles Within Founding Teams

Investors

Salary Inequality Among Co-Founders: How Common?

Investors (and Managers) as Headhunters: Sources of New-Venture Executives

Due Diligence on Your Investors, Revisited

“Investor/Entrepreneur Value Expectation Gap”: A Postscript (Entrepreneur-Investors)

“Investor/Entrepreneur Value Expectation Gap”: Part 3 (Entrepreneur vs. Investor)

“Investor/Entrepreneur Value Expectation Gap”: Part 2 (Entrepreneur Results)

“Investor/Entrepreneur Value Expectation Gap”: Part 1 (Project Overview)

Due Diligence As a One-way Street

Nike, Cyberposium, and Jim Estill: 3 Takes on Founder-CEO Succession

Thanksgiving Dinner … With Your Investors

Building a Board: Composition by Company Stage

Building a Board: The Impact of Company Stage

Building a Board: Mentorship? Monitoring?

Latest Column

Google “Campus by the Book” Live Hangout

The Economic Times: Start-ups fail because of people problems

Stanford E-Corner: Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series

WSJ: Live Chat: Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Start-Up

Financial Times: The Case Study - When Founders Step Aside

The Free COO on Spreaker Radio with Donald Landwirth

HuffingtonPost: Beware the Perils of Entrepreneurial Passion

CBIA Business Minute – “The Founder’s Dilemmas”

NYT: A Harvard Professor Analyzes Why Start-Ups Fail

Financial Times Live Web Panel

WGBH Boston: Radio Interview with Noam

Bloomberg/BusinessWeek: ‘People Problems’ Sink Most Startups

WBEZ Chicago: Radio Interview with Noam

Fear vs. Greed at Facebook; by: Noam Wasserman for Inc.

Avoiding The BlackBerry Blues: Know When To Fire Yourself; by: Noam Wasserman for Forbes

Kauffman Sketchbook

Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?; by: Noam Wasserman for Wall Street Journal

4 Top Myths About Start-up Pay; by: Noam Wasserman for Inc.

MBA Course Content

Kauffman Sketchbook

Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: Franchising, The Full Life Cycle of a Venture, and Exit Decisions

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: Founder-CEO Succession Cases

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: New-Venture Hiring Cases

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: “Building the (Founding) Team” Case Studies

Introductory Case

Course Overview for “Founders’ Dilemmas”

Press Coverage Section

Reid Hoffman Cites Noam’s Research in a Recent Post

Brad Feld: FeldThoughts blogs a Review of The Founder’s Dilemmas

Eric Ries’ Startup Lessons Learned: Founder’s Dilemmas — Equity Splits

BostonInno: 5 Founder Lessons From a Decade of Data on Startups

New York Journal of Books Reviews Founder’s Dilemmas

Forbes: HBS’s Noam Wasserman Brings Moneyball to Start-ups

Joel On Software (Blog of Joel Spolsky): The Founder’s Dilemmas

Avoiding Founder Failure: 26 Quick Tips and Real Data

Publisher’s Weekly: The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

PEhub: HBS’s Noam Wasserman on Cofounders, Equity Splits, and Reality Distortion Fields

Rich vs. King

Fear vs. Greed at Facebook

Rich vs. King, Around the World

Your Thoughts on Achieving Rich&King?

New Article in Harvard Business Review: “The Founder’s Dilemma”

“Rich vs. King” in HBS’s Working Knowledge

“Rich versus King”: Best Paper Proceedings Version

“Rich versus King”: Charts and Impressions

“Rich versus King”: The Core Concept

Roles

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: “Building the (Founding) Team” Case Studies

A Second Look at “Idea People” as CEOs: Should vs. Do

Idea People and Their Initial Roles Within Founding Teams

Neverland, or Dictatorship?

Serial Entrepreneurs

“Founders’ Dilemmas” Course: Franchising, The Full Life Cycle of a Venture, and Exit Decisions

The Perils of Being a (Successful) Serial Entrepreneur

Uncategorized

Read Startup Life!

Founder Cases in the News: Evan Williams (Twitter) and Apple

“Administrivia” Corner: This Blog is Now Email-enabled

Looking for (Movie) Suggestions: Your Favorite Founder Scenes?

A Look Back, A Look Forward … and a Request

Upcoming Posts: Summer 2006

Upcoming Keynote: October 12th in Boston

Preview of Upcoming Posts

A Note on My Research Approach and Data

VC Organizations

Upside-down VCs, Part 4: Other Factors, and Performance Implications

Upside-down VCs, Part 3: Synthesis of Comments

Upside-down VCs, Part 2: The Costs Versus Benefits of Junior Hires

Upside-down VCs, Part 1: The “First Morning” That Sparked It

Vesting

Is Dead Equity Crippling Your Company?

Fear vs. Greed at Facebook

Unlocking Your Golden Handcuffs: How Common is Accelerated Vesting on Change of Control?

Golden Handcuffs and Vesting: Initial Interpretations

Golden Handcuffs: Summary of Vesting Data

Golden Handcuffs and Vesting: Early Analyses