Foundering: The Inner Work of Building—and Surviving—Successful Startups

What happens when your greatest survival skills follow you into the corner office?

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 is one of 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.