Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups

by Ali Tamaseb

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 what may be 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 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  
You will also hear the stories of the early days of billion-dollar startups first-hand. The book includes exclusive interviews with the founders/investors of  Zoom, Instacart, PayPal, Nest, Github, Flatiron Health, Kite Pharma, Facebook, Stripe, Airbnb, YouTube, LinkedIn, Lyft, DoorDash, Coinbase , and  Square , venture capital investors like  Elad Gil ,  Peter Thiel ,  Alfred Lin  from  Sequoia Capital  and  Keith Rabois  of  Founders Fund , as well as previously untold stories about the early days of ByteDance (TikTok), WhatsApp, Dropbox, Discord, DiDi, Flipkart, Instagram, Careem, Peloton, and SpaceX.
 
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.

 

Genres: Business, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Nonfiction, Technology, Audiobook, Leadership

320 pages, Hardcover

Published May 18, 2021

About the author

Ali Tamaseb is a partner at DCVC, a highly reputable VC firm in Silicon Valley with over $2 billion under management and investments in over ten billion-dollar startups. He holds several leadership and board positions at companies across the U.S. and globally. Ali was an honoree of the British Alumni Award of 2018 by the British Council, and Imperial College President's Medal for Outstanding Achievement. Ali and his work has been featured in BBC, TED, Guardian, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., The Telegraph, among others, and he has given talks and appeared on panels at major events and conferences.

Reviews

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally, I'd never reach for a book with such a terrible title, but I've followed a recommendation, so it wasn't an issue, ;)

The idea for this book is simple: to use real data about unicorns (1B valuation startups) to learn more about their founders. What is their typical education? How many times they've tried (founded)? Which industries are most "unicorn-friendly"? How much professional experience (tenure) is needed? Etc. The statistic information is interluded with case studies and interviews with interesting personas.

If you expect a cheatsheet or another way to "outsmart" the system - no, this is obviously NOT gonna happen. But it doesn't mean the book is bad, just that you are a bit naive ;)

In the end - an interesting, pleasant read that didn't rock my world, but it's helpful in (finally) dispelling some myths (like - the college drop-outs do best as start-up founders). Recommended.

[Jonathan Mckay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Privilege Wins

Why yes, I too would like to found a billion dollar company. So what does the data reveal about the best way to a billion dollar valuation? Be privileged. First, come from a top tier university: On average, founder of billion dollar startups came from higher ranking schools than average startups. median ranking of startup founder’s universities was 27, compared to 74 for the random group. Second, work at a top tier company: Among founders that had worked for another company before, 60% came from top tier companies. Finally, get funding from a top tier VC firm: Around 60% of billion dollar startups had raised their venture capital from tier 1 brand names like Sequoia. In hindsight, none of this should have been surprising, but it was sad to find few other elements of proactive advice for would-be startup founders.

Beyond this, Tamaseb quantifies some dimensions of startups that I found interesting. A little over half of billion dollar startups are software based, and only 30% of the founders had relevant industry experience. Contrary to the founding stories that anybody in Silicon Valley has heard, it’s possible to be successful through the path of solving a problem well known to the founder, or simply to look for a promising business opportunity. “You can either win as a missionary or win as a mercenary. ” But missionary zeal and a strong foundation are not enough to overcome a bad market. “When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins. When a lousy team meets a great market market wins. When a great team meets a great market something special happens. ”

The above is from the author’s commentary on his startup dataset. The rest of the book is taken up by vignettes that seem more about the image that the guest-authors should have written as Forbes articles than anything belonging in a book.


Other Interesting Notes:

* 1/5 billion dollar startups was founded by a solo founder, compared to 36% and 28% for 2 and three founders.
* High capex has a slightly higher chance of success

[Pavel Annenkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

О ЧЕМ КНИГА:
Автор, на основе статистических данных, ищет ответ на вопрос - что отличает основателей миллиардных стартапов от всех остальных фаундеров. За четыре года своих исследований Али изучил истории тысяч компаний по 60+ критериям. В итоге перед нами результат его работы, который развеивает большинство мифов о том, каков портрет создателя успешной, миллиардной компании. При этом есть несколько четких и понятных критериев, которые сильно влияют на выживаемость бизнеса. Еще одна книга в библиотеку фаундера и VC.

В книге совсем свежие примеры из историй построения таких юникорнов как Zoom, Instacart, Github, Stripe, Airbnb, Lyft, DoorDash, Coinbase, and Square, а также интервью с топовыми VC.

ГЛАВНАЯ МЫСЛЬ КНИГИ:
В большинстве областей жизни и бизнеса события разворачиваются повторяя одни и те же шаблоны. Чтобы увеличить вероятность успеха при инвестировании в стартапы, надо проверять их соответствие ключевым критериям успеха и при этом не поддаваться стереотипам.

ЗАЧЕМ ЧИТАТЬ ЭТУ КНИГУ?
Основателю стартапа, чтобы понимать, какие качества искать в своих кофаундерах, а VC для выработки своих критериев оценки стартапа.

МЫСЛИ И ВЫВОДЫ ИЗ КНИГИ:
- Стартапы, которые экономят клиентам деньги или время имеют больше шансов стать миллиардными компаниями, чем те, которые просто делают жизнь удобнее, либо заботятся о нашем здоровье.

- Медианный возраст основателей юникорнов - 34 года. Возраст фаундера не влияет на вероятность успеха стартапа.

- Каждый пятый юникорн имеет только одного основателя. Больше фаундеров, больше шансы выжить.

- Большинство основателей юникорнов перед созданием своего бизнеса имели опыт работы по найму в топовых компаниях.

- Если оценивать влияние опыта основателя в отрасли на успех его компании, то это важно в индустрии здравоохранения, биотеха и сложных научных продуктах и не так важно в потребительском или В2В секторах.

- Если для основателя это не первый стартап, то вероятность успеха серьезно повышается. Среди юникорнов около 70% компаний созданы предпринимателями, которые до этого создавали по крайней мере один более менее успешный бизнес. Это главное отличие основателей миллиардных компаний от стартапов из случайной выборки(там таких основателей всего 24%).
У этого есть три основные причины:
1. Доступ к капиталу, так как уже есть репутация и связи.
2. Уже сделано большинство ошибок в бизнесе.
3. Хороший нетворк, чтобы нанимать сотрудников и привлекать эдвайзеров.

- Подавляющее большинство юникорнов были созданы на больших рынках, а не создавали новые.

- Шансы на успех стартапа выше, когда в начале создания у него уже есть большой конкурент на рынке.

- Важно не быть первым на рынке, а вовремя выйти на рынок. Timing is everything.

- Совет основателям стартапов - тратьте большую часть времени на создание продукта и продажи, а не на убеждение VC дать вам деньги. Сделайте такую компанию, чтобы вас нельзя было не заметить.

- Over 65 percent of billion-dollar startups were competing for market share, rather than creating an entirely new market.

- Только 30% юникорнов выходили на рынок с новой идеей. Остальные реализовали идею, которую уже пробовали другие компании.

- «Among billion-dollar startups, only 8 percent had no defensibility factor—but over 45 percent in the group of random startups lacked specific defensibility. This shows the importance of having strong moats around a company and was another strong difference I observed in the data.»

- «Many of the billion-dollar startups (56 percent) had some sort of defensibility through engineering. This means the product itself was hard to build, making it difficult for another company to easily copy.»

- «you can and should start a company, no matter whether the market looks good or grim.»

- «85 percent of billion-dollar startups did not go through any accelerator program»

ЧТО Я БУДУ ПРИМЕНЯТЬ:
Основными критериями выбора стартапов для инвестиций, как и раньше, останутся: размер рынка, предыдущий бизнес-опыт основателей и время выхода на рынок. Буду еще внимательнее смотреть на технологическую защиту бизнеса от быстрого копирования.

ЕЩЕ НА ЭТУ ТЕМУ:
Randy Komisar «Straight Talk For Startups»

[Maciej Gajewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biographies of company founders and books like "How I Built This" give us a zoomed-in look at what starting a company and trying to change the market can look like. They emphasize the individualism of entrepreneurs and, although they are exciting stories, they do not provide a full understanding of the world. It's easy to forget about this and assume that a single case among startup founders is a good representation of reality, even if it is actually an outlier. This may result in the creation of an incomplete, distorted picture of the situation.

The book "Super Founders" offers a change of perspective - we move from a zoom-in to a zoom-out approach. Ali Tamaseb presents us with a bird's-eye, data-driven analysis of the market.
The book focuses on the three pillars that are important when starting a company - the founder, the company itself, and the fundraising process - and tackles various misconceptions about the impact of each of them on the success of the venture.

What I appreciate the most about it is the approach to research methodology, clear explanation of numbers and a comprehensive presentation of the topic (this is true in most of the book, although not in its entirety). Additionally, for the needs of the book and all the analyzes contained in it, Ali Tamaseb created an extensive database of 30,000 observations (if you believe the information on the cover), which is impressive.

The icing on the cake is the fact that the author did not stop at just showing quantitative data, but supplemented it with qualitative data in the form of logical, specific and complementary interviews with company founders and investment fund members (or with representatives of both of these categories, such as Peter Thiel). These interviews happened to be the most valuable parts of some of the chapters.

And as if the number of advantages were not enough, Tamaseb decided to donate the full proceeds from this book to causes supporting the fight against diversity and the lack of social mobility among entrepreneurs - one of the problems he identified while working on the book. And although I believe that the author is entitled to receive remuneration for his work, I must say that the use of this compensation for a practical attempt to solve the challenge noticed during the research work earns my sincere appreciation.

Okay, we have the positive aspects, now it's time for the negatives - because it's not a flawless job. In some places, I missed the analysis of hard numbers (after all, data is the marketing slogan of this book), and there were too many less specific thoughts of the author. I do not buy the author's explanation that it was impossible to obtain data, e.g. on the number of pivots made by companies, because this still leaves the question whether this aspect had to be discussed in the book, since it was not possible to do it quantitatively (I remind you: the book advertises is based on data). I'm not saying the more "non-numerical" parts didn't have any value, but it just didn't feel right for a book advertised the way this one was.

Until the very end of the book, I was not sure who the model audience for the book was - whether it was more of a guide for a young startuper, or a book for experts, or maybe even a book for entrepreneurship researchers. Now I think it's the former, but I think this lack of clarity has negatively impacted the quality and value of the book.

Additionally, at some points, in my opinion, the author drew incorrect or far-reaching conclusions from the presented data. Despite the introductory chapter devoted to the topic of not confusing correlation with causation, I have the feeling that the author did not avoid this trap, at least not completely. Some of my objections on this matter are debatable and potentially defensible, but in the case of others I felt that they were written for the sake of a thesis, regardless of the facts. It's also possible that the data was there and the conclusions were clear from the numbers - it's just that the parts that intrigued me were written unclearly (or I misunderstood them). Or the data was not shown to us, which would still be a significant disadvantage.


To sum up, despite my reservations, I consider this book to be good and worth the time devoted to it.
However, it is not as good as I expected from the first part (which is undoubtedly the best and most valuable) and not as good as it had the potential to be.

I recommend it to everyone who is interested in entrepreneurship in the startup segment, especially since this book debunks many myths that have arisen in this field.

[Miebara Jato · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tamaseb's admonition is that there are two sides or pathways to building a billion-dollar startup. And if a startup can follow the less travelled path, it might all the same reach unicorn status.

[Patrick Pilz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea. Reading the description, I expected something along the lines of Jim Collins "Good to Great" or Malcom Gladwell "Outliers", and was somewhat disappointed. The book is well written and structured, but it is very schematic:: Each chapter explains some aspects of the way of becoming a real big company really fast, explores some data to perhaps discover some mitigating circumstances followed by an 'interview' which is actually more of a personal story of one of the rich and famous the book is all about.

While the book is peppered with a lot of interesting anecdotes and Trivia, it lacks really any eye-popping insight, It really makes you feel that the book was put together in a rush. I would recommend this book to the ambitious entrepreneur, the one who things has a shot at a billion dollar valuation. The one that wants to know how investors think and what aspects are important to hockey-stick-like growth. The rest of us is better of with the Collins and the Gladwell to get started on extraordinary results.

[Taren Gesell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't expect to get much useful information in this book; I really don't understand how it's rated so highly.

The majority of the book addresses what the author found DIDN'T result in success, then the few things that WERE correlated with success were barely addressed or are factors that are out of a founders control because they occurred prior to the formation of the company.

If you want to read this for general interest, fine, just don't expect much beyond a slightly entertaining read.

[Quan Truong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book is like reading a few thousand mini-stories about unicorn startup founders. It helps shape a pattern of paths to be successful founders on your mind.

The book data and approach can be debated in some sections but in general, you still get a lot of insights out of the book so I highly recommend this.

[Szymon Kulec · Rating 1 out of 5]

It feels like it could have been a good interesting book. It contains a lot of aggregations and reasoning "why" something happened. Each chapter is ended with an interview that support the thesis brought in it. The whole structure seems repetitive and boring though. It feels like it's almost a Jim Collins book, but it is not.

[Thiago Marzagão · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing mix of hard data and engaging narrative. There isn't a single chapter or a single interview that doesn't offer counter-intuitive knowledge. One of the best non-fiction books I've read this year.

[Yuliyan Velichkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and structured. Entrepreneurial + data-based = great read.

[Saing Sab]

Very inspiring, recommend to anyone read this before or in the mid of building startup.

[Jon Kartago Lamida · Rating 5 out of 5]

# Summary

In 2013 Aileen Lee introduces the term unicorn to describe a company with value over $1 billion. Ali Tamaseb do data driven analysis on what makes unicorn. He called the founders that build unicorn as Super Founders. It is a really exciting read to find somewhat a high level recipe to become a Super Founders and build a unicorn.

The book is divided into 3 parts:

- The Founders. Ali demystifies many myths which often mistakenly attributed to the success of a company, such as: age, education background and work experience of the founders.
- The Company: Startup is more than founders. In this part Ali highlights different company evolution (or revolution) from beginning into becoming unicorn. Pssst, luck apparently is one of the factor.
- The fundraising: In this part Ali discusses about different way of fundraising. Most of the companies become unicorn because of funding and trust the investors give from problem that the companies are trying to solve.

After every most chapters there will be interview section where real founder shares their experience in the context of the chapter. This book is refreshing read for anyone that has not read many on business topics like me. But it might be something that is repetitive for business people. The companies in the book is US centric. I wish that somebody can do similar analysis for startup in South East Asia.

# Important Ideas

- We will see that creating highly differentiated products is important, but being first to market is not.
- Half the battle in innovating is solving a problem that no one sees.
- focused on end users, not the competitors. Otherwise, all you will do is think about your competitors’ large teams
- When a VC is wrong, they lose 1x their money. When they are right, they can make 20x their money.

Warning: this book can make you itchy to think about starting business 🤤

# Highlights

88
14/8/2021 8:32:53 pm

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized.

153
15/8/2021 1:46:40 am

**We will see that creating highly differentiated products is important, but being first to market is not.**

869
15/8/2021 10:15:20 am

Ryan Graves, then a twenty-six-year-old business-development intern at Foursquare, replied. Graves started out as general manager and was named CEO shortly after launch.

890
15/8/2021 10:16:15 am

The new product, called Airtable, attracted the attention of many investors and was last valued at over $2 billion.

1067
15/8/2021 10:30:15 am

Flexport, a startup in the logistics and shipping space, work because they’re so boring. “Pick something that’s so boring that other people just won’t do it,” Torenberg told me.

1302
15/8/2021 10:44:58 am

Henrique Dubugras, the co-founder of Brex, told me he was most excited about companies focused on rebuilding insurance.

1303
15/8/2021 10:45:11 am

Mario Schlosser, the co-founder of Oscar Health, pointed to the wealth of opportunities still left to revamp healthcare.

1304
15/8/2021 10:45:25 am

Max Mullen, who co-founded Instacart, raved about the future of food; Max Levchin of Affirm and PayPal talked about the importance of “clean water, access to food, climate change, and improvement in education.”

1305
15/8/2021 10:45:36 am

Neha Narkhede of Confluent, it was “the consumerization of the enterprise,” meaning a bottom-up adoption of tools to make enterprise sales happen.

1306
15/8/2021 10:45:46 am

Michelle Zatlyn, the co-founder of Cloudflare, was excited about the future of social networks.

1307
15/8/2021 10:46:00 am

on the life science and healthcare side, Arie Belldegrun of Kite Pharma was excited about cell therapy, while Nat Turner of Flatiron Health was keen on the application of data in “neurology, neurodegenerative disease, and cardiovascular diseases.”

1390
15/8/2021 10:51:08 am

Guild Education helps Fortune 500 companies like Chipotle, Disney, and Walmart offer free or reduced-price higher education to their employees.

1517
15/8/2021 11:08:50 am

Okta, which sells an authentication service to large and small companies, allows users to access multiple products with a single sign-on.

1551
15/8/2021 11:45:06 am

their immediate value proposition and marketing strategy is enabling a customer to achieve a goal faster.

1564
15/8/2021 11:46:20 am

When Romanian entrepreneurs built UiPath in

1564
15/8/2021 11:46:39 am

UiPath in 2005, they planned on outsourcing software projects for the world’s biggest companies. It wasn’t until 2012 that they realized the potential of robotic process automation (RPA) and pivoted their product to automate tasks that would typically require a human touch. RPA saves time in many ways: an insurance company can use RPA software to automate downloading a receipt from email and uploading it into a database; in the legal department of a large factory, RPA bots can help lawyers automatically send nondisclosure agreements.

1666
15/8/2021 8:01:10 pm

**Half the battle in innovating is solving a problem that no one sees.**

1795
15/8/2021 8:44:12 pm

Max Levchin

1962
15/8/2021 10:37:10 pm

Oscar Health’s story from Mario Schlosser,

2086
15/8/2021 10:48:05 pm

In the mid-2000s, Flexport’s founder, Ryan Peterson, had struggled with shipping problems while importing Chinese ATVs, scooters, and dirt bikes to sell online in the United States.

2191
15/8/2021 10:54:38 pm

**focused on end users, not the competitors. Otherwise, all you will do is think about your competitors’ large teams**

2191
15/8/2021 10:54:44 pm

I focused on end users, not the competitors. Otherwise, all you will do is think about your competitors’ large teams and huge resources instead of

2191
15/8/2021 10:54:48 pm

I focused on end users, not the competitors. Otherwise, all you will do is think about your competitors’ large teams and huge resources instead of working on your own product.

2395
15/8/2021 11:09:26 pm

**When a VC is wrong, they lose 1x their money. When they are right, they can make 20x their money.**

2459
15/8/2021 11:17:58 pm

Zscaler, a billion-dollar startup that provides internet security services. For its first four years, Zscaler was heavily self-financed by its founder, Jay Chaudhry, a Super Founder who had previously sold multiple cybersecurity companies for hundreds of millions of dollars and had the means to invest those proceeds in his next company.

2483
15/8/2021 11:20:11 pm

dilutions

2491
15/8/2021 11:21:11 pm

It turns out that’s hard, but the company did get acquired by Microsoft. And I was employee number thirty-two there. So I got $10,000 or something out of it. It was a $100 million purchase by Microsoft, but I got, like, ten grand. You learn lessons in these acquisitions and see that being a founder is very much different from being an employee.

2614
15/8/2021 11:30:26 pm

The billion-dollar startups created in 2008 or 2009 include Airbnb, AppDynamics, Cloudera, Cloudflare, Docker, FanDuel, Okta, PagerDuty, Pinterest, Quora, Slack, Square, Stemcentrx, Thumbtack, Uber, and WhatsApp.

2629
15/8/2021 11:31:55 pm

Todd McKinnon, co-founder of Okta, had to build a presentation to convince his wife and friends that leaving his lucrative job at Salesforce and starting a company during the 2008 recession was the right move—and that he hadn’t lost his mind. He titled the presentation “Why I’m Not Crazy.”

2869
16/8/2021 12:37:06 pm

I found Elad Gil to be one of the most successful angel investors.

2955
16/8/2021 12:42:47 pm

Paul Graham wrote a great blog post I really love about being relentlessly resourceful.

3204
16/8/2021 1:00:42 am

**Fundraising is pitching, but it is also about selecting a partner. If you want to fundraise, you should make a short list of the people that you want to get to know better.**

3235
16/8/2021 1:02:52 am

We publish this deck about how we like pitch decks to be structured. You don’t need to do it exactly in this order, but it is a way to organize your thoughts on why your company matters. Here’s the order:

[Alessandro Perilli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a 3 out of 5 or a 4 out of 5 depending on your initial knowledge of the startup world and your expectations.

- Why a 3 out of 5: If you already have a decent understanding of the startup ecosystem and the venture capital world, this book probably contains 3-4 surprising data points for you. No more.

If your expectation is to deep dive into a copious amount of data and be amazed by what that data reveals, a promise that seems kind of implied in the book introduction, you will be disappointed. Not because there's no revelation, but because you'd expect more.

This is especially evident in the third part of the book, dedicated to venture capital and fundraising. There are very few insights and nothing that you cannot find by reading the public blogs of famous venture capitalists.


- Why a 4 out of 5: if you are new to the startup world and are considering founding a startup, this book is wonderful. It will dismantle certain preconceptions you might have and will convince you, through data, that you can build a billion-dollar startup, too, no matter your circumstances.

Some of the most valuable parts of the book are the interviews with famous founders at the end of each chapter. It really helps you contextualize and corroborate the insights that come from collected data.
Similar comment for the writing style: almost every page of statements is supported by real-world examples of billion-dollar startups and their founders. It really gives a lot of additional credibility to what you are reading and builds great confidence.

If you are this type of reader (new to the startup world), the third part of the book, which I criticized above, is an exceptional part. It doesn't matter that it contains little data-driven insights. It gives you a starting point that you can further expand with books like "The Business of Venture Capital".


A few years from now, it would be really good to see a second edition with data points and considerations about exits from 2010 to 2020.

[Jung]

The meteoric rise of companies like Facebook and Apple has perhaps set a model for what success looks like. But, there have been countless other startups that have followed their own path to the top. While there are many myths floating around Silicon Valley, the data shows that true predictors of unicorn success are dreaming big, have a solid understanding of the market, and have had previous startup experience.

---

A successful idea needs to be backed by need and by passion.

Now that we’ve learned that previous success in founding a company is a predictor of future success, let’s take a look at what’s important when it comes to starting a company.

Contrary to popular belief (and wishful thinking), most good startup ideas don’t come as eureka moments. Instead, they’re the result of a painstaking process of ideation. Many successful unicorn founders deliberately pick a market or a trend and then look to solve a problem in that space.

VC investor Erik Torenberg offered a few simple ways to hunt for good ideas: Solve a problem that people really care about, like Tinder did for single people. Unlock a new asset, like YouTube did with content, or Airbnb did for travelers. Or find something so boring that no one wants to touch it – like Flexport did in the freight shipping space.

What's more, success stems not just from the idea itself – the real key is to combine opportunity with a sense of purpose. Founding a startup is hard work and the years ahead are definitely going to be tough, which is why many investors like ideas that are mission-driven: If a founder is driven by passion, they’ll better be able to withstand the various pitfalls down the line.

Another important aspect for success is having the flexibility to pivot – and many eventual unicorns often started out as something else.

Stewart Butterfield, one of the founders of Slack, is a master of pivoting. Years earlier, Butterfield had started Neverending – another gaming company that never found any traction. But its photo sharing service did. They rebranded as Flickr and were eventually sold to Yahoo for $35 million.

In the tech industry, pivots are important, because they show which founders are flexible and dedicated to finding opportunities. Rather than being emotionally attached to their ideas, they were willing to humble themselves and recognize when an idea was failing, and then adapt before the company ran out of money.

Despite all these successful pivots, it’s important to keep in mind that doing so is a last ditch attempt to save the company. By pivoting, founders not only throw away years of work, but also gamble with the confidence of their team and investors. Still, sometimes this is a better option than quitting.

The thing to remember is that customers are ultimately more important than the idea. If something isn’t working, know how to listen to the market and when to move along.

But speaking of teams and investors . . . Very few founders find success without a team. And most VCs like to thoroughly vet a company’s team before investing. In fact, in a study conducted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business, 53 percent of investors said that a company’s team was the most important factor when deciding where to put their money. Which is why smart founders tend to assemble star teams by offering job titles and strong salaries to entice the best talent.

---

If your product is good enough, you don’t necessarily have to worry about funding.

According to Tamaseb, 90 percent of the unicorns in his study were VC-backed. That’s because VC investment and startups are a marriage made in heaven, with both aiming to move quickly toward their goal of a billion dollar payday. And to get there, most VCs would rather back a risky but potentially massive startup over one with low risk and steady growth.

Honestly, the math is a bit tedious to unpack, but in short it comes down to this: If a VC invests in a startup and fails, they lose all their money – a fixed sum. If the startup skyrockets, the potential gain is unlimited. For instance, Facebook’s IPO valuation of $100 billion earned their VC backer, Accel Partners, 300X their initial investment. While this kind of return is the outlier, it also exemplifies the kind of game VCs are playing.

But here’s the thing – getting tons of investment capital isn’t necessarily the key to success. Why? Well, because venture capital isn’t for everyone. Some ideas, like Tesla, require tons of capital investment because they’re both risky and costly. Others, like video content platform, Quibi, raised over $1 billion before launch only to shut down six months later.

Which is to say, depending on the idea, sometimes it’s better to bootstrap for a couple of years to find out the company’s market viability. For instance, Sara Blakely, who launched Spanx with $5000 of her own savings and never took a single investment. For the first couple of years, she did all her own marketing, PR, and customer service. By the time Spanx reached its billion dollar valuation, Blakely still owned 100 percent of the company.

While Spanx achieved profitability early on, there's great lessons to be learned in running a company on limited funds. That’s because a capital-efficient business model is actually better for both founders and investors. By achieving a high return with less investment, the company avoids dilution and there’s more profit for the stakeholders.

But running a capital-efficient company requires ingenuity. Take Stitch Fix for example. While still studying at the Harvard Business School, Katrina Lake got the idea for a personal shopper startup, which would assess a customer’s style and sell clothes specifically for them. While Stitch Fix was able to get seed money, it had trouble raising more cash in subsequent growth rounds. So Lake learned to be efficient. She ran the business using GoogleDocs and Excel, she worked with interns who manually entered credit card numbers to process orders, and restructured its cash cycle to move product quickly. At the same time, Lake focused on hiring the best possible data scientists, turning the company into a hub for talent.
Lake recounts how having low cash reserves forced the company to work toward early profitability, and in turn, gaining a strong understanding of the economics underlying their business. When Stitch Fix went public at $1.6 billion, Lake became the youngest woman to ever do so.

[Danny Leybzon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent analysis of the factors that are correlated with startup success (defined as achieving unicorn status) but lacking in the statistical rigor that I would prefer. The recommendations are certainly better than the unfounded heuristics that VCs and others in the valley like floating around, but the way that they're presented has some flaws. It's great the Ali actually did statistical analysis of correlation (+1), and especially that he actually used a control group (+10), but a lot of the results are presented without explanation of the confidence or strength of effect. This missing information makes it hard to evaluate the correlations and understand how impactful they might really be.

Here are my key takeaways from the book:
# Intro
Looked at unicorns
# founders
Founders are most important variable at early stage
## myths
Median age of unicorns were 34
No correlation between age and success
34 or younger had larger values
Most older founders were either serial entrepreneurs or previously execs

No correlation between number of founders and likelihood of unicorn
Solo founders usually had a previous successful exit
History of working together is meaningful
Division of responsibility is important to avoid conflict
Technical or non-technical CEO, both work

High ranking schools, 3x more likely to successfully found

Immediate startup or work experience, both work
Work at major company is statistically significant, especially Google
Helps with recruiting, fundraising, and skills

Many founders lack directly related work experience, no effect on outcomes

## super founders
Repeat founder is strong indicator
Esp if successful exit
Early employee doesn't matter
Strongest correlation

## pivots
Common
Need to not be attached to a solution, just desire to build
YouTube was originally a dating site
Discord was originally a video game company
Pivot early, Pivot out of existing market, don't think about sunk costs

## what and where
Software disproportionately unicorn

## product
Startups that save money or time have an advantage over Startups that offer convenience
Deep and medium tech more likely to be successful
High differentiation more likely to be unicorns

## mqrket
Starting in an existing market is beneficial. Requires innovating to reduce cost or improve functionality

## market timing
Lowered cost of components or raised costs of competition can create right timing and conditions
Regulatory disruption
Start in a backwater part of the market that you expect the market will catch up to

## Defensibility

Defensibility was a strong difference
Engineering complexity is a good moat
Network effect is also good
Brand is weakest defensibility factor but still good

# funding
VC funding chases tail big wins
Disproportionate unicorns are VC backed

## capital efficiency
Most are highly capital efficient and have low Capex compared to opex
Capex can also be a moat

## accelerators
Accelerators don't seem to do much, except maybe YC
Especially beneficial to first time founders
Adding too many owners on the cap table can create a legal hassle

## VCs
Firms with most unicorns: yc, a16z, accel, svangel, Khosla, benchmark, first round, founders fund, dcvc, felicis, sequoia
Pick VC based on board member
Create a plan of how you'll use money, what your targets are, etc
Unicorns raise larger rounds

[Firsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh yeah this was gooood! Being a founder myself I saw lots of parallels between the super founders and I (I'm a tad bit short on being a billionaire, but the concepts are similar). What I especially liked, is the mention of familiar names left and right. Furthermore, the podcast-style interviews, the "I'll let them say their story in their own words" kind of multi-narrator aspect was amazing. So listen to it, don't use your eyes. The book managed to debunk many many myths and finally provides an honest talk about what makes a successful startup, what kind of founders are best positioned to succeed and how.

I'm not in the business of VCs, nor am I willing to sell my business, so part III was usless. But as an investor and owner, parts I and II were interesting. If you can "scale down the billions" you can definitely apply some of what you learn, if nothing else then to be encouraged to create or renew (pivot) your business with newfound enthusiasm. If you are the envious type that dislikes capitalism, this is probably not for you.

Highlights from the "what to remember" (only those that I found interesting or relevant):

- Founders of billion-dollar companies started at any age—half of them were thirty-four or older—and came from all kinds of backgrounds. Age was a nonfactor. Both technical and non-technical founders succeeded as CEOs (though technical founders had a slight advantage), and solo founders weren’t less likely to build billion-dollar companies. The number of co-founders doesn’t affect success.

- as many attended top-ten schools as went to schools not even ranking in the top one hundred. There were more PhD holders among billion-dollar startup founders than there were dropouts

- You can disrupt an industry you don’t know much about (with life sciences and hard sciences Speed of learning is the more important factor; after that are the abilities to be resourceful and to ask the right questions of the right people.

- The ideas that became billion-dollar companies didn’t fit any specific archetype. Some founders acted as missionaries, solving their personal problems, but many startups were the result of deliberate ideation and were opportunity driven. [...] great founders weren’t emotionally attached to a specific idea and were willing to listen to the market. Completely change your idea if you must until you find the market pulling the product out of you. Remember that YouTube was intended to be a dating website

- Startups with highly differentiated products were more likely to become billion-dollar companies. Startups that created a product to save their customers time or money were more likely to become billion-dollar companies than those going after convenience or entertainment.

- It’s not about being first with an idea—it’s about being the closest to the turning point.

- Billion-dollar companies created defensibility through engineering—the expertise and amount of time and work needed to build a product—but also through network effects, scale, brand, and intellectual property. Those with network effects were more likely to become billion-dollar companies.

- Many successful founders become angel investors, and they tend to have a higher chance of spotting future billion-dollar companies

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most books on this topic are usually based on anecdotal evidence. This is an attempt at drawing lessons from actual data. While the author does acknowledge the limitation of the dataset from the outset, I believe some data is still better than no data.

However, this is not a dry book on statistics. It is filled with relevant examples and every chapter ends with an insightful interview.

The first part of the book looks at founders and myths relating to their background, education and work experience.

The second part then dives into the companies. It looks at origin, location, pivoting, product, market, timing and competition.

The final part of the book surveys fundraising, covering venture capital vs bootstrapping, bull vs bear markets, capital efficiency, angels and accelerators, and VCs.

In summary, Ali concludes:
- There are a lot of myths about founders. Forget them
- The mythical Ivy League college dropout who launched a company in their dorm room makes up only a tiny percentage of billion-dollar startup founders
- There’s no right or wrong in deciding where to work to prepare you for your own entrepreneurial journey
- The ideas that became billion-dollar companies didn’t fit any specific archetype
- While billion-dollar startups were more likely to have been headquartered in Silicon Valley, half of them were spread out among other tech hubs
- Startups with highly differentiated products were more likely to become billion-dollar companies - Billion-dollar companies were disproportionately built in markets that were already large, but those that created new markets were no less likely to succeed
- It’s not about being first with an idea—it’s about being the closest to the turning point
- Competition is good, or at least not an extinction risk
- Venture capital is relatively new in the history of financing new businesses, but it has an outsized impact
- Venture capital has an unintuitive math behind it, and the power laws of startup outcomes dictate why VCs prefer risky startups with massive potential to lower-risk startups with less perceived upside
- The fund size of the VC firm you are raising money from dictates the minimum exit outcomes that would make the investors enough money to move the needle.
- Startups still got funded and billion-dollar startups were still created in recessions, albeit with reduced dollar amounts and valuations
- Many successful founders become angel investors, and they tend to have a higher chance of spotting future billion-dollar companies

[Sergio Salvador · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Super Founders" by Ali Tamaseb is a compelling read (or listen, in my case) for anyone interested in the world of startups and what it takes to build a billion-dollar company. Tamaseb has clearly done his homework, compiling a massive dataset to analyze the patterns and characteristics of "unicorn" founders. The book is packed with fascinating data, insightful observations, and engaging stories of well-known companies. I particularly enjoyed the audiobook version, which was well-produced and easy to follow.

The book's strengths lie in its data-driven approach. Tamaseb debunks many common myths about successful entrepreneurs and provides a clear, evidence-based perspective on what factors contribute to extraordinary success. The case studies are interesting and offer valuable lessons for aspiring founders.

My main criticism, and the reason for docking a star, is the book's overwhelmingly US-centric focus. While understandable to a degree, given the historical concentration of unicorns in Silicon Valley, the startup landscape is increasingly global. Nowadays, thriving startup hubs exist in Europe, Asia, South America, and beyond. Roughly 95% of the content and data in "Super Founders" revolves around US-based companies, which limits the book's applicability and relevance for a global audience interested in understanding the broader picture of unicorn creation.

Despite this limitation, "Super Founders" is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the intricacies of building successful startups, offering a wealth of data and compelling narratives. I would recommend it, particularly to those focused on the US market, but with the caveat that it paints an incomplete picture of the global startup ecosystem.

[Scott Wozniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an exploration of the results of a study done on billion dollar companies founded in the last 10 to 15 years. It can be a little dry at times as the other shows charts of data and gets into technical discussions. But the clear display of the numbers helps avoid the exaggeration and hype that so many books about these companies fall into. And perhaps one of the more useful insights of the book is how many of the things we’ve been told are important for building these big companies actually don’t matter. People don’t like to report on data that comes back with a negative answer (“nothing to see here, folks”), but that is as significant as the positive correlations.

So, what did he find?

School doesn’t matter but connections/relationships made in school do. Silicon Valley area schools had more big companies—both from Stanford and from the local State College. Being near other investors and founders did help. Didn’t matter the actual school.

Painkillers were more common than vitamin pills (look that up if you don’t get the analogy) but only slightly so. Both can work.

Age didn’t matter. There was a fairly even spread from teens to 60’s in the age of the founder.

The vast majority of them raised money from investors. The great majority of the investors were VC’s.

And more like this. If you’re in this space, building or investing in companies then this is a good read. If not, it’s probably a bit dry. It has stories, but it tells more of like academic paper than a journalistic story.

[Paolo Balinas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super Founders by Ali Tamaseb Summary

When we hear billion dollar start-up founders, we can't help but imagine 20+ year old college students, working in their college dorm room building the next disruptive app. In this book, we deep dive into the data and discover the myths, commonalities, and strategies start-ups have used to become billion dollar start-ups.

Hey Guys! this is book # 33 of my 52-week book challenge wherein I aim to read 1 book a week or 52 books in a year! Here's a summary of my top 5 key takeaways from the book, "Super Founders" by Ali Tamaseb Summary

https://youtu.be/GUgNyvX_C7w

0:00 - start

0:40 - Is age important? - Discover the myths around 20+ year old founders

2:00 - Do I need to dropout of school? - Learn a some surprising facts about billion dollar start-up founders educational attainment

3:25 - Sometimes you need to pivot - Learn some examples of companies who needed to pivot until they found a product-market fit

5:23 - The Defensibility Factor - Learn a few characteristics of billion dollar start-ups

7:11 - Sequoia Capital Pitch Deck Structure - Learn the anatomy of a perfect pitch according to one of the largest venture capital firms

Thanks and to view more of my previous summaries, like and subscribe my Youtube Channel, Paolo Balinas

Now off to the next book! :)

P.S. Comment below on what was your key takeaway

#BookSummary #BookReview #SuperFounders #AliTamaseb

[Robin Jose · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are many myths about Unicorns. For example, the founder should be an Ivy League dropout, or all good startup ideas come as eureka moment or that you need to invent a new market to succeed.

Ali Tamaseb is a Silicon Valley VC veteran running the investment firm DCVC – they have made investment in 10+ startups valued over a billion dollars. He claims to have crunched over 30,000 data points that he collected since 2017to come to the conclusions in this book.

So, let’s cut to the bottom-line: what are the success factors of a good Unicorn? According to Ali, the true predictors of Unicorn success:
- Dreaming big
- Having a solid understanding of the market
- Having had previous startup experience

Would you learn something new from the book? It depends on your understanding of the startup world. I have played many hats - as an entrepreneur, working in the C-level in a Unicorn in the past decades in startups, so I did not find anything new in here. However, if you are aspiring to be in the startup world, or have dreams of starting the next startup, you could gain some very valuable information. Personally, I would rate it a 3/5 based on my takeaways from the book.

[Alejandro Rodríguez Vahos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tamaseb makes an interesting analysis of the principal mythological characteristics of an "unicorn", a word that serves as a landmark for the companies that reach 1B USD valuation. In the process he debunks some common fallacies regarding all aspects of company building, from founders' background to market size. Curiously, for me, and besides all the work from Tamaseb debunking those myths with data, the highlight of the book are the interviews with different founders/investors/operators.

Also, some important "flaws" that the author strives to avoid, or to caution the reader about, but nonetheless can be found throughout the book:
1. An important number of unicorns from the original dataset are no longer unicorns in 2023. All the analysis is very useful but it seems to forget that history is different when interest rates are surging.
2. Mixing up correlation and causation. The wording sometimes is confusing, and can get the reader to think that the statistical analysis done is sufficient to determine that some characteristic might, even partially, "cause" the outcome of 1B USD valuation.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a big revelation for me. I had many misconceptions and biases in the back of my mind about billion-dollar startups and their founders. Things like the age of founders when they founded the company, their level of education, their sector, their experience level, their domain knowledge, the amount of funding and the number of years it took them to reach their billion-dollar status. And on what basis their valuations and different funding rounds happened.

Well, no evidence is stronger than real data and statistics to make a pretty accurate judgment on these topics.

I loved the writing style of the author. no B.S, to the point, concise, engaging, and rich with insights conferred by thorough analysis.

Best business book I read this year. It really empowered me. It helped me discard all the biases and misjudgments I had on how top billion-dollar companies are started and succeeded in the last 2 decades.

[Hoda N · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was one of the beta readers of this book and received an advance copy.
As a data scientist, I was amazed by the analytics methods this book is using to shy away from gut feelings and anecdotal observations. What made it a super interesting read though, is that this is not at all a research book. I would lose track of time when reading the story of Github, I got goosebumps reading the interview with the founder of Guild Education, I was shocked when I found out that Apple had 3 cofounders.. this book takes you on a true journey. It is so well written that you don't want to put it down, and it educates you and gives you a new lens to look at successful startup founders, a lens that shows you their untold stories, not some myths.

[Alex Bit · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this great book to my peer entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs who want to have a better sense of what to expect on their journey.
This book is unique compared to many other books that I listened to in the sense that it is inspired by data and questions many misbeliefs about what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Such misbelieves discourage many of the folks who might otherwise become successful entrepreneurs.
I also really resonated with this new term "Super Founder", because the underlying characteristics that define this catchy word are very actionable and separate me from common misbelieves about the advantages that successful entrepreneurs have that I don't.

[T. Laane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The good about the book: a LOT of personal stories from tech billionaires, how and why they succeeded. The bad about the book: I don’t think that the sample size for failed entrepreneurs is big enough to compare what is the success formula for succeeding unicorns. But I do agree on the biggest point: unicorns are built by Super Founders, meaning a founder that has founded things before and has the experience. You need a lot of practical know-how from the past to build something great rapidly, because great and fast gut instinct only comes from past experience. We all might think that Zuckerberg made the first attempt as Facebook, but no - they all had previous great successful projects and the knowledge from that.

[Reza Takapoui · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book because it has a data-driven approach to answering some interesting and curious questions about unicorns. As a quantitative-minded reader I don't find it appealing to read studies that examine one or two examples of successful stories - in fact in many instances I feel there's "overfitting" in those approaches. Alireza has made a lot of efforts to avoid this by rigorous hypothesis testing and supporting his findings with adequate data. This book provides intuition about what factors are meaningfully different between unicorns and other startups. I recommend this book to readers who are curious about this topic.

[Philip van den Heuvel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book for founders and VC investors to read. It uses both scientific data-driven approach to providing insight on how billion dollar have been created, as well as some of the stories behind the successes.

The book is well-written and uses good graphs. The only point of improvement might be that the main take aways could also be summarized very shortly. There are a lot of more likely's in the book, also because there probably is no one formula. The main take away is: founders are key for success and most important characteristic of Super Founders are that they the billion dollar company wasn't their first success.

[William Yip · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book debunked many myths about highly successful startups and founders. Each chapter was interesting and dealt with an aspect of the startup ecosystem such as education, number of co-founders, level of competition, location of the business. Some of the data reinforced a myth such as a person who had started a previous company having better chances of creating a successful company. The author gave a lot of good advice such as the importance of having moats like strong network effects and polishing the company rather than the pitch. I enjoyed the interviews and reading about the people's experiences and perspectives.