Foundering

Executive coach and therapist Cameron Yarbrough draws on his work with Silicon Valley’s elite to reveal the real emotional work behind building—and surviving—venture-driven, high-growth startups.

Executive coach and therapist Cameron Yarbrough has spent years working with Silicon Valley founders at the moment when ambition and pressure collide. What he has learned is that the psychology that makes someone willing to build a company from nothing can also make it harder for them to function effectively once the company takes off.

When entrepreneur Garry Tan was on the verge of selling his company to Twitter, mounting pressure sent him into a series of conflicts that nearly destroyed the deal. Tan knew something was driving his behavior that he couldn’t see, so he turned to Yarbrough. Their work helped him understand the patterns behind his ambition and self-sabotage—and change. Today, Tan leads a venture firm managing more than $3 billion in investments and stands among Silicon Valley’s most influential figures.

In Foundering, Yarbrough draws on his work with Tan and many other founders to explore what happens when the qualities that help someone succeed—intensity, competitiveness, an ability to tolerate enormous risk—start working against them. Through stories of these breaking points, Foundering offers a new way to think about leadership: as the ongoing work of understanding yourself well enough to know when your greatest strengths have become liabilities. It is a book for entrepreneurs—and for anyone responsible for leading others—about becoming the kind of leader you want to be.

• “Building anything—a company, a team, a life—can feel like looking in a funhouse mirror: all your flaws reflect back at you. Foundering is an essential guide to help you through."
  Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor and Radical Respect
• “Fifteen years ago, The Founder's Dilemmas explored the pivotal decisions that can make or break a startup. Foundering takes us one level deeper: inside the founder making them. Through remarkable access to entrepreneurs at their most consequential moments, Cameron Yarbrough shows how the qualities that propel founders forward can also hold them back, and why scaling a company often requires founders to scale themselves. Insightful, compelling, and deeply human.”
  Noam Wasserman, author of The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup