rcmnd

The Founder's DilemmasBook

by Noam Wasserman

Who uses, recommends or left The Founder's Dilemmas, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

2 people

Jason Evanish
Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company; former product lead at KISSmetrics who writes about leadership and product management.
recommendedaffiliate link

Starting a company requires you to make tons of important decisions that deeply impact the kind of success and failure you experience. Professor Wasserman of Harvard uses data, research, and anecdotes to paint a clear picture of the absolutely critical decisions you must make in your startup around cofounders, investors, and whether you're building for control or wealth.

His continuously-updated books page (first published 2012-12-16, last updated 2020-10-28), where every book he reads gets a 1-10 rating and a "Why Read it" note. Book links carry his Amazon affiliate tag.

2020-10-28·jasonevanish.com ↗

Joel Spolsky
Software developer; co-founder of Stack Overflow and Fog Creek Software, and author of the Joel on Software blog.
recommended

Wasserman has finally put it all together in a great book called The Founder's Dilemmas, which I highly recommend if you're starting a company.

A short post about Noam Wasserman's quantitative research on startup founders.

2012-03-27·joelonsoftware.com ↗

What they also use

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.