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Founders, Keepers

By Richard Hagberg, PhD and Tien Tzuo

$14.99$30.00

It’s a difficult but unavoidable truth: in order to grow a startup, you have to grow as a person. Founders may be unable to account for all the complexities entailed in scaling a company, but they can learn how to account for themselves. Founders, Keepers offers the way forward.

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ISBN: 9781637746905

Publication Date: June 2025

ISBN: 9781637746912

Publication Date: June 2025

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Description

AVAILABLE IN JUNE 2025

Based on decades of research, Founders, Keepers provides an engaging and practical road map for navigating the inevitable challenges of startup growth. 

Every founder is a time bomb waiting to explode. Why? Because the same personal attributes a founder needs to launch a startup will invariably blow it up. Successful founders learn how to defuse their worst impulses and build durable companies. But most don’t.   

For founders, investors, and academics alike, Founders, Keepers is the distillation of a lengthy collaboration between Rich Hagberg, Silicon Valley’s “CEO Whisperer,” and his client Tien Tzuo, founder and CEO of Zuora. Steeped in nearly 40 years of research in leadership psychology, it delivers a Swiss Army knife of mental models and practical tools that will give founders a much better chance of making it to the next level of success.   

This sharp, lively guide gives readers insights into:

  • The three pillars of leadership every founder needs to be successful
  • How certain personality traits can lead to fatally flawed decisions
  • Common blind spots, including the default tendencies and leadership styles that often undermine success
  • The key factors that differentiate successful and unsuccessful founders
  • Why founders often frustrate their investors, partners, and employees—and what to do instead

It’s a difficult but unavoidable truth: in order to grow a startup, you have to grow as a person. Founders may be unable to account for all the complexities entailed in scaling a company, but they can learn how to account for themselves. Founders, Keepers offers the way forward.

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About the Authors

Richard  Hagberg, PhD

Rich Hagberg, Ph.D., often referred to as “Silicon Valley’s 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 (it’s a gaming company). Dr. Hagberg is often quoted in the business and general media and has been featured in publications such as FortuneForbesBusinessWeekThe Wall Street JournalInc., EntrepreneurThe InformationBusiness Insider and CNN.

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Tien  Tzuo

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 TodayLA 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 Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Tien was born in Taiwan and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

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Publication Details

Format: Hardcover

ISBN: 9781637746905

Dimensions: 6 x 9 in.

Publication Date: June 2025

Format: E-book (epub)

ISBN: 9781637746912

Publication Date: June 2025

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