#1 National Bestseller
Super Founders uses a data-driven approach to understand what really differentiates billion-dollar startups from the rest—revealing that nearly everything we thought was true about them is false!
Ali Tamaseb has spent thousands of hours manually amassing the largest dataset ever collected on startups, comparing billion-dollar startups with those that failed to become one—30,000 data points on nearly every factor: number of competitors, market size, the founder’s age, his or her university’s ranking, quality of investors, fundraising time, and many, many more.
And what he found looked far different than expected. Just to mention a few:
Most unicorn founders had no domain expertise;
There's no disadvantage to being a solo founder or to being a non-technical CEO;
Less than 15% went through any kind of accelerator program;
Over half had strong competitors when starting--being first to market with an idea does not actually matter.
Filled with actionable insights based on data, and not gut feeling and single anecdotes, Super Founders looks at startups from 65 different angles
It features behind the scenes stories from the early days of mega-successful startups
As well as exclusive interviews with the founders, angel Investors, and VCs of billion-dollar startups
Interviewees include:
Henrique Dubugras - Co-founder, Brex: Founded a Billion-Dollar Fintech Startup At the Age of Twenty One
Arie Belldegrun - Co-founder, Allogene, Kite Pharma: Founded Two Billion-Dollar Startups While a University Professor
Nat Turner - Co-founder, Flatiron Health: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup With No Industry Experience
Max Mullen - Co-founder, Instacart: Founded a Massively Successful Business in The Second Try
Neha Narkhede - Co-founder, Confluent: Built a Billion-Dollar Startup Initially Originated at a Large Tech Company
Tony Fadell - Co-founder, Nest – Inventor of the iPod: Built Highly Differentiated Products That Generated Billion Dollar Outcomes
Rachel Carlson - Co-founder, Guild Education: Built a Billion-Dollar Startup Outside Traditional Tech Hubs
Max Levchin - Co-founder, PayPal and Affirm: Did Both Market Creation and Market Expansion
Mario Schlosser - Co-founder, Oscar Health: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup With Perfect Market Timing
Eric Yuan - Founder, Zoom: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup That Won Against Fierce Competitors
Tom Preston-Werner - Co-founder, GitHub: Bootstrapped a $7.5 Billion Company For Over Four Years
Michelle Zatlyn - Co-founder, Cloudflare: Founded a Billion-Dollar Startup In the Depth of the Financial Recession
Elad Gil - Angel Investor: Invested in Over 20 Unicorns Including Coinbase, Stripe, Gusto, Square, Wish
Keith Rabois - General Partner, Founders Fund: Invested in YouTube, LinkedIn, Palantir, Yelp, Lyft
Alfred Lin - Partner, Sequoia Capital: Invested in iconic companies like Airbnb, Houzz, DoorDash, Zipline
Peter Thiel - Co-founder Palantir, PayPal: Invested in Facebook, SpaceX, Stripe, Spotify, Asana, TransferWise
About the Author
Ali Tamaseb is a General Partner at Data Collective (DCVC), a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley with over $4 billion under management and investments in more than ten billion-dollar startups. He holds multiple leadership and board director positions at companies across the United States and globally. He holds a degree in biomedical engineering from Imperial College London and studied general management at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Ali was an honoree of the British Alumni Award of 2018 by the British Council, and he received the Imperial College President’s Medal for Outstanding Achievement. Ali’s work has been featured on BBC, in The Guardian, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., The Telegraph, and other media outlets, and he has given talks and appeared on panels at major events and conferences. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Reviews
“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
“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 of entrepreneurship and author of Why Startups Fail
"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
“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, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor of private equity
“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
“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
"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, a great guide I wish I had earlier in my career.”
— Tony Fadell, Future Shape principal, Nest founder, iPod inventor, and iPhone co-inventor
“Tamaseb is an articulate and influential advocate for the complex world of startup culture, and his education, experience, and access all come into play here. Many books in this realm tend toward cautionary tales, but Tamaseb offers an intriguing combination of history, data, theory, economics, and thoughtful interviews with significant founders and investors, creating a narrative that is less tech history and more playbook for the power players that come after.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Order Your Copy Today!
Available in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook formats
Available in English in most countries. Search the book in your country’s Amazon or national bookstores.
Translations in Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and German coming soon.