Founders, Keepers: Why Founders Are Built to Fail and What it Takes to Succeed
By (Author) Richard Hagberg
By (author) Tien Tzuo
With Gabe Weisert
BenBella Books
Matt Holt Books
29th July 2025
17th June 2025
United States
General
Non Fiction
658.4092
Hardback
240
Width 152mm, Height 229mm
Based on decades of empirical research and data, Founders, Keepers gives founders a practical roadmap for navigating the inevitable challenges that come with startup growth.
Its a brutal paradoxthe same founder attributes required to put a startup in motion will invariably blow it up. The difference between success and failure lies in the personal journey that every founder must pursue to avoid their own worst impulses.
Steeped in nearly forty years of research in leadership psychology, Founders, Keepers begins with the same personality assessment Rich Hagberg, a psychologist and executive management coach, gives his clients. Hagberg and Tien Tzuo, founder and CEO of Zuora, help founders build a Swiss Army knife of practical tools that will give them a much better chance of making it to the next level of success.
A guide for founders, investors, and academics alike, the result of a decade-long collaboration between a successful CEO and Silicon Valleys CEO Whisperer offers readers insights into:
Rich Hagberg, Ph.D., often referred to as Silicon Valleys CEO Whisperer, is a trained psychologist who has spent the last 40 years of his career as an executive management coach for over 6,000 executives. Since 2009 he has worked with companies like Tinder, Twitter, Dropbox, MixPanel, Zendesk, Quora, Asana, Pinterest, Salesforce, Munchery, Reddit, Gusto, Cruise, Tinder, Optimizely, Instacart, Patreon, Nerdwallet, and Super Evil Megacorp (its a gaming company). Dr. Hagberg is often quoted in the business and general media and has been featured in publications such as Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Entrepreneur, The Information, Business Insider and CNN.
Tien Tzuo, Founder and CEO of Zuora, evangelized the shift to subscription and service-based business models, coining the phrase Subscription Economy. In an effort to empower this new economy, Tien created what became an award-winning monetization suite capable of powering any recurring revenue model. Before Zuora, Tien was one of the original forces at Salesforce, joining as employee number 11. In his 9 years at Salesforce, he built its original billing system, later serving as Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Strategy Officer. Tien is also the author of the USA Today, LA Times and Amazon best-selling book, Subscribed, which has sold over 100,000 copies in 14 languages around the world. He holds a BS in electrical engineering from Cornell and an MBA from Stanfords Graduate School of Business. Tien was born in Taiwan and raised in Brooklyn, New York.