Super Founders

In 2014, shortly before I founded my first company, I was at a startup conference in Basel where you could pitch your ideas to get initial feedback. It was not about pitching for funding, but about getting opinions from strangers. A woman presented her idea for a restaurant (very insecurely). When the moderator asked her why she was so unsure, she replied: “Because the other restaurant founders were much better trained than she was, and she didn't have the background that many others had.”
The moderator smiled and replied that she had a completely wrong picture of who the average restaurant owner was.

And that is exactly what the book “Super Founders” by Ali Tamaseb is about. We usually have a certain stereotype in our heads of what, for example, the billionaire company founder looks like – be it education, age or experience. Using data, Ali Tamaseb proves in his book that, as a rule, we are all wrong with our gut feelings. And that is exactly what I liked so much: that it showed me very clearly and simply what the successful unicorn founder looks like from a data perspective.

Like the woman mentioned in the introduction, after reading the book I too had a euphoric “then I can do it too feeling”. What else I liked, and why I recommend the book to all those who may doubt themselves now and then, you'll find out in this review.

Did you know that YouTube was originally meant to host selfie videos for a dating platform? Or that the travel portal Expedia was first only in operation as a Microsoft-internal travel platform? No? Me neither!

The focus of “Super Founders” is quickly and easily explained: our ideas about companies and the people behind unicorns are often wrong. Ali presents the evidence for this with a large number of clear and easy-to-understand charts.

I would say “Super Founders” is above all for those who are willing to question their previous assessments of unicorn founders. With “Super Founders”, Ali has managed to do great data storytelling. Lots of numbers and charts are combined into exciting stories (see below).

So if you would rather trust facts than opinions and feelings, you will definitely be happy with “Super Founders”.

Super Founders really entertained me: again and again I caught myself realizing that a former “gut feeling” of mine had turned out to be wrong. Too often I had a wrong picture in my head of who the founders of unicorns are. “Super Founders” reminded me a bit of the book “Factfulness”. There, too, data showed very clearly that the general (personal) perception of the world does not match reality.

With “Super Founders”, Ali has created a very entertaining and exciting work that regularly proves us wrong.

On the topic of "Super Founders" I found some interesting information that I would like to pass on to you here.

By the way, a so-called super founder is when the founder of the unicorn (a valuation >1bn €) has previously sold a company for >10m €.

As mentioned, the book contains a number of interesting charts. I have added a few very interesting ones for you here.

Online I came across a good interview with Ali Tamaseb, which I would like to link for you here.