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Founder vs Investor

The Honest Truth About Venture Capital from Startup to IPO

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About this listen

Read by the authors.

“The rarest of business books, one that provides genuinely actionable counsel delivered without empty cliches.” – KIRKUS

How many world-changing startups will fail because the founders and investors never figure out how to work together? Founder Elizabeth Zalman and Investor Jerry Neumann square off in this one-of-a-kind book, exposing how startups are built, broken, and fought over.

Every iconic tech company was once a startup. And while these companies like to paint an origin story full of surefooted confidence, the truth is usually something different: the early life of most startups is pure chaos.

This chaos comes from the vastly different motivations and incentives between those with the vision and those with the money. From fundraising paranoia to boardroom coups, Zalman and Neumann train their inimitable voices on the gulf between what founders and investors promise to do and what they end up actually doing.

Founder vs Investor is the brutal truth, from each side’s perspective, of the pitfalls of this tenuous relationship—where bad blood can turn sure things into shattered dreams. It is the only book written by insiders with the temerity to pull back the curtain on the world of high growth venture-backed startups.

Accompanying charts, tables, and a glossary are included in the audiobook companion PDF download.

Business Development & Entrepreneurship Corporate & Public Finance Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Investing Stock Money
All stars
Most relevant
An excellent dive into the startup/VC relationships and perspectives. The authors do a great job at sharing clear, real, and impactful stories about funding startups, growing, and exiting, with all the interactions and tensions that the founder/VC relationships can generate. Truly eye-opening and informative.

They say it how it is!

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The VC world is so full of propaganda telling you why your business needs VC funding and how to get it, but so little covering where things can go wrong and why. This book does that in spades, and is so helpful. As a founder, it’s necessary reading

The absolute best book on raising capital via VCs

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