Tao of Founders
Resources & References
Thank you for buying the book! Here are all the references, studies, and resources organized by chapter.
Patagonia: Bad Business Decisions That Work
• DamNation: The Problem with Hydropower
• Artifishal: The Fight to Save Wild Salmon
Ambition or Overconfidence?
• Creativity Breeds Overconfidence — Psychology Today
• Unskilled and unaware of it — Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6)
• The optimism bias — Sharot, T. (2011), Current Biology
• CEO overconfidence and innovation — Galasso & Simcoe (2011)
• Prospect theory — Kahneman & Tversky (1979)
• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366-381
Why You (Still) Can’t Focus
• McKinsey Research — Strategy and Resource Allocation
• Project Resource Allocation — McKinsey
• Startup Failure Analysis — CB Insights
• Psychology of Long-Term Goals
Your Goals Define Who You Become
• Derek Sivers — There’s No Speed Limit
• Bronnie Ware — Regrets of the Dying
Da Vinci: Intuition Needs Nurturing
• Hsu, D. K., Simmons, S. A., & Wieland, A. M. (2021). T-shaped expertise and opportunity innovation. Journal of Business Venturing, 36(3)
• Karimi, S., & Maempa, T. (2024). Entrepreneurial curiosity and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 167
• Shin, J., & Grant, A. M. (2020). When putting work off pays off. Academy of Management Journal, 63(5)
Running Up Sand Dunes / Against the Odds
• 70% commitment → 20% success vs. 100% commitment → 75% success
• Conscientiousness predicts entrepreneurial success
• Moderate attention to detail improves outcomes by 20-30%
• Startups with quality control achieve 20% higher retention
• Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal research
• Studies of 460 life-science companies
• Entrepreneurs from incumbents show 30% higher survival rates
• Studies of 132 small business owners
• Research by Bellezza, Gino, and Keinan
• Studies of 1,761 participants
• Research analyzing 1,761 participants
• Two types of entrepreneurial curiosity drive success
• Drives breakthrough innovation
• “5 Whys” achieve 40% better problem resolution rates
• Steve Blank’s customer development model
Neurodiversity 🤝 Entrepreneurship
• 10-20% of the global population — Deloitte
• 50% have dyslexia, 50% have dyspraxia
• 50-70% of autistic individuals also have ADHD
• 2024 UK survey of 502 neurodivergent entrepreneurs
• 96% experience discrimination
• 582 million entrepreneurs worldwide — WEF
The Greed Paradox 🤑
• “Dark Triad” traits research
The Upsides of Being Misunderstood
• Psychology of Entrepreneurship study
• UK survey of leading entrepreneurs
When Independence Turns on You
• 70% of entrepreneurs feel lonely
• 30% more likely to experience depression
• Solo-founded startups 2.5x more likely to survive
• Thich Nhat Hanh on Interbeing
• Y Combinator discourages solo founders
The Chip on Your Shoulder
• “Good entrepreneurs have a chip on their shoulders...”
• “Every great founder gets started with a chip...”
• Moderate early adversity builds grit
• Induced anger improves performance — APA
• Myisha Cherry on chip psychology
• Axel Honneth — The Struggle for Recognition
• Honneth on social injustice and recognition
Resilience 2.0
• Online entrepreneurial communities study
• Affective forecasting research
• “Elephants on the rope” — Learned helplessness
• Strategic empathy — CEIA briefing
• COVID-19: Playful people were remarkably resilient
• “Lemonading” — Frontiers in Psychology
• Humor and playfulness — Lincoln Center
• Awe as contact with something vast
• Cognitive flexibility and creativity under stress
• Self-efficacy and internal locus of control
• Self-compassion and resilience — Neff (2023)
• Moderate adversity benefits — Seery et al. (2013)
• Affective forecasting — Wilson & Gilbert
• Social support and entrepreneurial resilience — MDPI (2022)
The Entrepreneurial Triad 🔱
• Proactive personalities and resilience
• Hamzah & Othman (2023) — Locus of control
• Farradinna et al. (2019) — Psychological resilience
• Self-efficacy and proactive behavior
• External locus: “no such consequences”
• Zhao & Wibowo (2021) — Optimism paradox
• Branicki & Sullivan-Taylor (2018)
The Hill You Will Gladly Die On
• Buy or gift the book — taooffounders.com
Why Great Founders Have Great Taste (Part 1)
Neuroscience & Evolution
• Brain regions that activate together
• The evolutionary answer — Rhodes
• Cross-cultural studies — Annual Reviews
• Beauty as proxy for adaptive advantage — Zaidel
• Evolutionary and cognitive aspects of beauty
• Research on visual perception
• Art and beauty as training simulations — Cosmides
• Aesthetic engagement correlates
• Research on aesthetic chills
• Recent research on aesthetics
• Research on aesthetic disgust
• Remarkable cross-cultural agreement
• Studies of color preferences
Why Great Founders Have Great Taste (Part 2)
Urban Design & Architecture
• Oscar Newman’s research — Defensible Space
• Robert Gifford’s meta-analysis
• Roger Ulrich’s landmark study
• Richard Taylor’s fractal research
• Learn 20-26% faster — Daylighting study
• Call centers 6-7% faster with nature views
• Charles Montgomery’s Happy City study
• 10% of absences due to poor design
• Greater activation in shared experiences
• Jonathan Haidt’s elevation research
• fMRI studies on shared aesthetics