Founder memoirs fail for one reason more than any other. They have no antagonist. The founder does everything right. The team is always brilliant. The customers always love the product. There is no tension. The reader gives up on page thirty.
The real problem
Founders who write memoirs are usually reluctant to name the people who tried to stop them. There are legal reasons for this. There are also personal reasons. The investor who declined the round has since become a friend. The competitor who copied the product has since gone out of business. Being generous in print feels safer than being honest.
The result is a book with no shape. Every business story is a story of resistance. If you remove the resistance you remove the story.
What a villain looks like in a founder memoir
The antagonist does not have to be a person. It can be a market condition. It can be a regulator. It can be a category leader who was, at the time, indifferent to the founder's existence. It can be the founder's own doubt. But it has to be named. It has to have a shape. It has to be strong enough that overcoming it is a real accomplishment.
Three examples that work
Phil Knight's Shoe Dog names the bank that nearly killed Nike three times. The bank has a name. The banker has a name. The scenes are specific. The book works because the reader learns what an interest payment feels like at 2 a.m. when the wire is due at 9.
Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things names the moment his company nearly went to zero. He names the customer that saved it and the customer that almost killed it. He does not pretend it was inevitable.
Sara Blakely's public interviews about Spanx name the department stores that told her no. She names the buyer who eventually said yes. The buyer becomes a character.
What to do if you cannot name the person
Compose them. A composite antagonist is fine if the alternative is no antagonist. Change identifying details. Write a note to the reader explaining what you have done. Readers accept this.
What readers do not accept is a founder who won at everything without opposition. Nobody wins that way. And no book about winning that way is worth reading.
Comments (6)
Great essay.
Nobody wins without opposition. This applies to the bakery, the print shop, and the software company.
Every founder I have worked with initially wants to write the book with no antagonist. It is my single hardest conversation.
Rebecca same here. I now show them the Shoe Dog opening in the first meeting. It saves a month.
The Shoe Dog example is perfect. That book works because the bank is a real character.
Owais this is exactly the essay I needed before starting my current founder project. The composite antagonist idea especially.