Founders Keepers: Why Founders Are Built to Fail, and What It Takes to Succeed
Richard Hagberg and Tien Tzuo with Gabe Weisert
Matt Holt Books, An Imprint of BenBella Books (June 2025)

“The startup landscape is a killing field.”

According to Peter Fenton in this book’s Foreword,”Founders are the gravitational center around which the entire entrepreneurial world rotates. There’s a magic to founders — a spark that cannot be replicated or engineered. Their bravery to take the first step, moved by a relentless obsession with an idea and an audacious refusal to accept the status quo, enables them to create something entirely new from pure imagination.”

Written with the assistance of  Gabe Weisert, Richard Hagberg and Tien Tzuo share what they have learned from wide and deep research to answer two separate but related questions: “Why do about 75% of venture startups fail?” and “How to avoid failure?”

What happens when a founder reaches “the ceiling of their capacity to lead, then a ticking ‘time bomb’  detonates (BOOM!). Why?  According to Hagberg and Tzuo, “Because the same people [i.e. founders] who command respect and effort also happen to be control freaks who are terrible at delegating and worse at empowering. The same people who will new things into existence are undisciplined workaholics who exhaust themselves and everyone around them. The same people who innovate and inspire frequently lack the EQ [i.e. Emotional Intelligence] to effectively communicate, work through others, and sustain trust. They can see the future, but they lack the capacity to think and organize collectively. They are not your calm, deliberate and empathetic Tim Cook types. They can charm you with their drive, but they are typically not ‘fun hangs.'”

Hagberg and Tzuo focus much of their and your attention on what they characterize as the three “pillars” of leadership. Briefly, the Visionary Evangelist, the Relationship Builder, and the Manager of Execution. “are all essential to the success of any organization, but each brings unique strengths and corresponding weaknesses…Each contributes to a cycle of leadership that is essential to any startup: But the message is clear: to be an effective founder, [begin italics] you have to be good at lots of things [end of italics].” (See Pages 26-27)

All of Part II (Chapters 3-8) is devoted to examining the differences between successful and unsuccessful founders. For example, successful founders tend to be astute observers of external trends, challenge the status quo, are confident risk-takers, are effective influencers, and work incredibly hard. Other founders — mediocre to average — struggle with building relationships, staying in touch with the pulse of the organization, and generally have an IQ much higher than their EQ [i.e. Emotional Intelligence] , and have difficulty with delegating and empowering. The worst founders struggle with providing focus, struggle with setting goals and tracking progress, holding people (including themselves) accountable, are allergic to scaling, and are terrible at giving praise or recognition.

Then in Part III (Chapters 9-16) Richard Hagberg and Tien Tzuo share what they have learned about HOW TO

o Create a workplace culture of effective decision-making
o Implement strategy
o Plan, prioritize, and maintain focus
o Locate and attract talent
o Create and nourish an executive team
o Master the “Execution Triangle”: Delegation, Accountability, and Coaching
o Facilitate conflict resolution
o Develop organizational structure, systems, and processes

The most important dos and don’ts this book can be of incalculable value to those who are thinking about launching a new company, who have only recently done so, or who founded a company that now seems certain to fail. The same material can be essential to the success of any leadership development program that involves classroom instruction or self-directed learning.

Long ago in his classic work Future Shock (1970), Alvin Toffler observes: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

I  highly recommend  Founders Keepers to anyone who is wholeheartedly committed to developing the literacy that Toffler so passionately affirms.

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Here are two suggestions while you are reading Founders Keepers: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to the co-authors’ remarks that conclude each of the sixteen chapters, and to Hagberg’s “46 Competencies” in the Appendix (Pages 233-239).

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.