Don’t F**k It Up

About the Author:

There probably is no one who has spent as much time working intimately with company founders as Les. He is currently working on his sixth founder transition, where he is the CEO of an early stage medical imaging software company. He documents his experience during the past two decades connecting the dots while culling through the noise inherent in these organizations, to tell it like it is, making his forthcoming book Don’t F**k It Up both poignant and easy to read. The idea for this book started when he was drafted to be the protagonist of a Harvard Business School Case entitled Les is More Times Four, (Wasserman and Flynn, 2007, Harvard Business School) describing his first four encounters with founder transitions. The case has been a core part of the entrepreneurial curriculum at The Harvard Business School, MIT, the University of Southern California and other leading graduate business programs for a decade. Trachtman focuses on the difficulties founders have in transitioning from the guerrilla warfare of their startup phase to professionally managing a larger team. He writes about founders who have sabotaged their companies rather than lose the CEO seat and how others that have succeeded in made the adjustment. Don’t F**k It Up is the first definitive work on this important coming of age that is often the difference between success and disaster in an organization. Les Trachtman has lectured at numerous universities including: The Harvard Business School, The MIT Sloan School of Business, University of Southern California, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Kent State University, University of Maryland Smith School of Business, Union College, and Quinnipiac University School of Business and is a frequent speaker at industry events. He writes the blog: Founder Transitions found at (www.foundertransitions.com) and has published articles including the Experts Respond: The Ex-CEO Plots a Coup (Harvard Business Review, June 2013).