Culture Can Make or Break Your STARTUP A great culture enables you to create an unassailable competitive advantage. It helps you to attract and keep your talent, create happiness in the workplace, increase your people's engagement with their work, drive high performance, and attract investors and customers alike. You improve your odds of growing a successful and sustainable business because your people are aligned with your vision, they know what to do without you telling them, and they move heaven and earth to make the impossible possible. Your startup's culture is more important than your funding, your products, or your marketing, because it underpins all those elements. It can't be left to chance. This is the book that will help you to develop the culture of resilience and adaptability your startup needs to thrive in an era of disruption and uncertainty.

Bringing hard data to the way we think about entrepreneurial success, this bold call to action draws on the latest scientific evidence to dispel the most pervasive startup myths and light a path to entrepreneurship for those eclipsed by the hype. When you think of a successful entrepreneur, who comes to mind? Bill Gates? Mark Zuckerberg? Or maybe even Jesse Eisenberg, the man who played Zuckerberg in The Social Network? It may surprise you that most successful founders look very different from Zuckerberg or Gates. In fact, most startup origin stories are very different from the famous "unicorns" that have achieved valuations of over $1 billion, from Facebook to Google to Uber. In The Unicorn's Shadow: Combating the Dangerous Myths that Hold Back Startups, Founders, and Investors, Wharton School professor Ethan Mollick takes us to the forefront of an empirical revolution in entrepreneurship. New data and better research methods have overturned the conventional wisdom behind what a successful founder looks like, how they succeed, and how the startup ecosystem works. Among the issues he examines: Which founders are most likely to succeed?Where do the best startup ideas come from?What's the most foolproof way of securing the funding needed to take a company to the next level?Should your sales pitch really be something out of Hollywood?What's the best way to grow and scale your company and create a thriving culture that won't hinder expansion? Mollick argues that entrepreneurship is too important, both for society and for the individuals who start companies, to be eclipsed by the shadows of unicorns. He shows we can democratize entrepreneurship—but only by following an evidence-based approach that puts to rest the false narratives that surround it.

You’re only a startup CEO once. Do it well with Startup CEO, a "master class in building a business." —Dick Costolo, Former CEO, Twitter Being a startup CEO is a job like no other: it’s difficult, risky, stressful, lonely, and often learned through trial and error. As a startup CEO seeing things for the first time, you’re likely to make mistakes, fail, get things wrong, and feel like you don’t have any control over outcomes. Author Matt Blumberg has been there, and in Startup CEO he shares his experience, mistakes, and lessons learned as he guided Return Path from a handful of employees and no revenues to over $100 million in revenues and 500 employees. Startup CEO is not a memoir of Return Path's 20-year journey but a thoughtful CEO-focused book that provides first-time CEOs with advice, tools, and approaches for the situations that startup CEOs will face. You'll learn: How to tell your story to new hires, investors, and customers for greater alignment How to create a values-based culture for speed and engagement How to create business and personal operating systems so that you can balance your life and grow your company at the same time How to develop, lead, and leverage your board of directors for greater impact How to ensure that your company is bought, not sold, when you exit Startup CEO is the field guide every CEO needs throughout the growth of their company.

Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy. The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world, Steven Koltai argues. Koltai says an alternative approach would work: investing in entrepreneurship and reaping the benefits of the jobs created through entrepreneurial startups. From 9/11 and the Arab Spring to the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate, instability and terror breed where young people cannot find jobs. Koltai marshals evidence to show that joblessness—not religious or cultural conflict—is the root cause of the unrest that vexes American foreign policy and threatens international security. Drawing on Koltai’s stint as senior adviser for Entrepreneurship in Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and his thirty-year career as a successful entrepreneur and business executive, Peace through Entrepreneurship argues for the significant elevation of entrepreneurship in the service of foreign policy; not rural microfinance or mercantile trading but the scalable stuff of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton, generating the vast majority of new jobs in economies large and small. Peace through Entrepreneurship offers a nonmilitary, long-term solution at a time of disillusionment with Washington’s “big development” approach to unstable and underdeveloped parts of the world—and when the new normal is fear of terrorist attacks against Western targets, beheadings in Syria, and jihad. Extremism will not be resolved by a war on terror. The answer, Koltai shows, is stimulating entrepreneurial economic opportunities for the virtually limitless supply of desperate, unemployed young men and women leading lives of endless economic frustration.

Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses of all kinds, ranging from established companies to early-stage startups, to grow revenues, drive innovation, and transform themselves into truly modern organizations, poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the twenty-first century. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups – building a minimal viable product, customer-focused and scientific testing based on a build-measure-learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot. In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to an entirely new group of organizations: established enterprises like iconic multinationals GE and Toyota, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio. Drawing on his experiences over the past five years working with these organizations, as well as nonprofits, NGOs, and governments, Ries lays out a system of entrepreneurial management that leads organizations of all sizes and from every industry to sustainable growth and long-term impact. Filled with in-the-field stories, insights, and tools, The Startup Way is an essential road map for any organization navigating the uncertain waters of the century ahead.

When entrepreneurs seek expert advice to help them put together a compelling business plan, they turn to product gurus, technology experts, and folks with sales and marketing, fund raising, or operations backgrounds. But for guidance on how to create and sustain a high-performance company culture - the softer side of startup strategy - rarely will entrepreneurs find a source of advice and counsel. Culture.com: How the Best Startups Make it Happen fills that void. It is a research-based exploration of what it takes to build and sustain a winning startup culture. Culture.com provides practical advice, insights and diagnostic tools for would-be entrepreneurs, seed capital investors, board members and advisors to young, rapidly growing companies. It is also a valuable resource for educators and students of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is all about innovation. Leaders of established companies who are trying to change their company's culture to foster more creativity and innovation will find this book an eye-opener. It identifies the critical seven dimensions of winning startup cultures, and describes the leadership practices required to support breakthrough innovation. Many of these practices apply to managers at all levels in larger organizations struggling to gain a competitive advantage with their people and processes.

STARTUP CULTURE MINDSET A Primer to Building an Amazing Culture and Tribe was written for startup founders or executives who aspire to create an amazing team that buys into the mission. The key is to understand that the founder of a startup or leaders of a company determine the culture on purpose. And in order to do that well, you have to understand the key elements of a culture framework. Based on 20 years of company creation, leadership and observation, I will share with you the key elements of a culture framework: ‣ Leadership: Led by the founders or key leaders of a startup. ‣ Mission: The goal of the startup from a customer point of view. ‣ Values: The core values of the startup, usually determined by the leadership. ‣ Freedom/Accountability: The key mantra to any successful startup. I will delve into each of these four areas of the culture framework in the book. What you can expect from this book is research and knowledge on culture, a defined culture framework, insights from some amazing company founders and quite a few takeaways that you can incorporate immediately into your daily life. For example, you don't become a leader just because you launch a startup or lead a division in a company. You have to acquire years of knowledge, experience and mentor-based insights as a great follower. Those are things you could be doing right now. Your ultimate goal is to establish the framework for an amazing culture before you actually launch the startup. Then when you recruit your first employee, you will know what type of person you are looking for, not based on a skill set, but based on fitting into your culture. The people you recruit will be critical to your success and they need to feel they are setting out on a powerful mission, guided by great leaders, supported by solid values and fueled by a freedom and accountability atmosphere, all to help your customers attain their goal. If a potential recruit does not fit into this type of culture, regardless of skills, don't hire them. Long term, they will disruptthe "tribe" of your other employees and dysfunction will occur. Do everything you can to keep these people out of your company even if it means you still approve of final recommended hires with a "culture" interview. One final thought on the critical importance of creating a great "tribe" for your startup. Quite a few Silicon Valley investors have said this when investing in a startup team. "Give me a great startup team with even a mediocre idea over a weak team with a great idea every time. Because a great team will know when to pivot and they will trust each other to execute. A weak team will simply fail."

An instant New York Times bestseller, Dan Lyons' "hysterical" (Recode) memoir, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "the best book about Silicon Valley," takes readers inside the maddening world of fad-chasing venture capitalists, sales bros, social climbers, and sociopaths at today's tech startups. For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong? HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."

From veteran online journalist and BuzzFeed writer Doree Shafrir comes a hilarious debut novel that proves there are some dilemmas that no app can solve. Mack McAllister has a $600 million dollar idea. His mindfulness app, TakeOff, is already the hottest thing in tech and he's about to launch a new and improved version that promises to bring investors running and may turn his brainchild into a $1 billion dollar business -- in startup parlance, an elusive unicorn. Katya Pasternack is hungry for a scoop that will drive traffic. An ambitious young journalist at a gossipy tech blog, Katya knows that she needs more than another PR friendly puff piece to make her the go-to byline for industry news. Sabrina Choe Blum just wants to stay afloat. The exhausted mother of two and failed creative writer is trying to escape from her credit card debt and an inattentive husband-who also happens to be Katya's boss-as she rejoins a work force that has gotten younger, hipper, and much more computer literate since she's been away. Before the ink on Mack's latest round of funding is dry, an errant text message hints that he may be working a bit too closely for comfort with a young social media manager in his office. When Mack's bad behavior collides with Katya's search for a salacious post, Sabrina gets caught in the middle as TakeOff goes viral for all the wrong reasons. As the fallout from Mack's scandal engulfs the lower Manhattan office building where all three work, it's up to Katya and Sabrina to write the story the men in their lives would prefer remain untold. An assured, observant debut from the veteran online journalist Doree Shafrir, Startup is a sharp, hugely entertaining story of youth, ambition, love, money and technology's inability to hack human nature. "A biting and astute debut novel [with] many delights."-Lara Vapnyar, New York Times Book Review

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.