Super Founders - Ali Tamaseb  ## Metadata - Author: **Ali Tamaseb** - Full Title: Super Founders - Category: #books ## Highlights - range is quite substantial. Some founders were as young as eighteen, others as old as sixty-eight when they started their companies. The median age of a billion-dollar startup’s founder was thirty-four years old—meaning half the founders of billion-dollar startups were that age *or older* when they got started. The distribution of age is more or less the same in the random group of startups, meaning that a founder’s age—whether younger or older—doesn’t correlate strongly with the success of their company. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtsdp6rzb1nntptn8qyxnqtp)) - One of the lessons that we learned is to be careful to not hire overqualified people for every job. I used to think, “We’re going to hire a bunch of customer support people, and they should be all Harvard grads,” but that was not a good idea. You want people to be passionate about what they are doing. We try to hire the young hustler who wants this role really badly. For Pedro and me, starting the company at such a young age was a great move. It’s pretty low risk: you can always go back to school, you can always go back to your parents’ house. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtsf4c7n92g14dd8dxcvrj3h)) - Abe Othman, head of data science at AngelList—a website enabling angel investors to invest in early-stage startups and to diversify through index investments—told me, “One of the most significant characteristics we’ve observed among successful startups is when a founder had experience as an investor or angel investor.” This could be because former investors have an easier time raising money, and because they’re better at filtering their ideas and betting on the right one to spend time on. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtshv9rw7pt5fvf349fpd0bs)) - Among billion-dollar companies, fewer than 50 percent of founding CEOs and fewer than 30 percent of founding CxOs had much, if any, work experience that directly related to their startups. This means, for example, that founders who had experience working on a social media app were later able to start a successful insurance company, or CTOs with experience in a data infrastructure company were able to build the platforms of a successful e-commerce company. It seems that what is important is having certain soft skills, like the ability to hire a group of talented people, managing them, building and maintaining strategic connections and partnerships across industries, excelling at sales, and thinking about problems in the right way—rather than knowing the technicalities of a specific industry sector. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtshzdcc7dzvv1eh2vq27kh1)) - In science-related startups, the story is a little different. On average, 75 percent of founders in healthcare, life sciences, and biotech had directly relevant experience, while in enterprise tech only 40 percent and in consumer only 30 percent had directly relevant experience. That’s not entirely surprising: founders with a background in science may be better equipped to understand their product and to navigate the industry rules that regulate their companies. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtsj54t1hsn70zxjyszzx71c)) -  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtsj79vtk29ajk6n1hbacshm)) - Greenberg and his colleagues have found that the same approach can cure late-stage melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. It has also shown potential to treat other cancers, including aggressive leukemias, Greenberg’s primary concentration. His work eventually resulted in a company called Juno Therapeutics, which develops T-cell therapies for cancer patients and was later acquired for $9 billion by Celgene, a large pharmaceutical company. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtsj8hkzsha9q3v66868rwgp)) - For Camp, it was just the latest in a series of transportation woes. He had a habit of taking expensive taxis or calling black cars, which rarely showed up. The $800 ride was yet another insult, but it also gave him an idea. He could bring down the cost of a private black-car or limousine service if he could pay per trip, on demand, rather than reserving the car in advance and paying per hour or half-day. The driver would still get paid for a day’s work, just with multiple passengers. He quickly sketched out the concept and called it UberCab, which used the customer’s GPS location to send a text message to the closest driver. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtsjkerzkesfck4j3m7ejna5)) -  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtsjs752ekyyqbc4d6862qme)) - Repeat founders were more likely to build billion-dollar startups. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtsjscm8qgppc99xz44dznky)) - When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins. When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins. When a great team meets a great market, something special happens. —ANDY RACHLEFF, FOUNDER OF BENCHMARK CAPITAL AND WEALTHFRONT ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jttkkg6w1jeh81fw2bjyqmj9)) - I’ll write you a $300,000 check.” I was like, “Wow, I just raised money in Silicon Valley after forty-eight hours of being here.” He said it was not going to be enough and that I should raise more money. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jttmj71smzk87xtt6y95j4v6)) - He also smartly chose to focus on merchants as a distribution channel for the lending product at Affirm, and to pursue a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) strategy rather than directly going after consumers (B2C), given where he and his team had strength. Earlier in the chapter, we learned how each of these strategies leads to success in building billion-dollar startups. Market dynamics are important, but two other factors that are important are market timing and market maturity. We will look into these in the next chapter. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jttmz3x2gxxhjdnc37hkv6h2))