Lak Ananth - Anticipate Failure: The Entrepreneurs Guide to Navigatin Uncertainty, Avoiding Disaster, and Building a Successful Business

Lak brings his years of real-world experience building startups and new businesses inside large companies into this book, and I am certain that any founder, entrepreneur, or executive will benefit greatly from reading it. I know from personal experience that there are lessons to be learned from startups, even for a large, global business such as ours. Through my thought partnership with Lak, I have transferred many of these startup lessons into Siemens with favorable outcomes.

DR. ROLAND BUSCH, President and CEO, Siemens AG

Anticipate Failure is a rare look into the causes of business failure and why so many leaders dont adequately address them until its too late. Through plenty of in-depth case studies, the book provides readers with a proven roadmap for anticipating the most common points of business failure and then navigating their way through them.

GRAZIA VITTADINI, CTO at Airbus

Insightful, thought-provoking, and eminently practical. Lak Ananth has crafted a powerful guidebook rooted in the philosophy that the key to safeguarding success is a deep understanding of the drivers of failure. A rewarding journey through fascinating case studies, powerful concepts, and constructive coaching, Anticipate Failure is a valuable addition to the entrepreneurial tool kit.

RON ADNER, Leverone Memorial Professor, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Author of The Wide Lens and Winning the Right Game

When I built my own businesses, I had the good fortune to be able to gain insights from my strong personal network of entrepreneurs, along with great investors who offered their timely guidance. They helped me take advantage of opportunities and recover from the inevitable failures. But what if you dont have a network to draw on for advice as you grow your business? In Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth coaches readers through the most common sources of failure, providing tremendously valuable advice. I wish I had a book like this when I founded my own startupsit would have been a huge benefit to me, my customers, and my companies.

BILL TRENCHARD, Partner, First Round Capital

In his book Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth addresses a topic that is of critical importance to every entrepreneur, which is to expect and prepare for failure when starting a new venture. As veteran company founders know all too well, its not a question of if failure will arriveits when. A methodical framework such as mine, coupled with Laks book, will go a long way to help any entrepreneur get their venture off the ground, find their way past failure points, and get to ultimate success.

MOHIT ARON, Founder & CEO, Cohesity, Co-Founder & CTO, Nutanix

Anticipate Failure, written by Lak AnanthCEO of venture firm Next47 and one of INSEADs senior alumni in the VC spaceguides entrepreneurs through the most common sources of failure, and in turn, offers valuable advice that is rare to come by. Entrepreneurs and business builders will truly appreciate this book and the tools it offers to navigate failure and ultimately find the success they so richly deserve.

CLAUDIA ZEISBERGER, Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD, Author of Mastering Private Equity: Transformation via Venture Capital, Minority Investments & Buyouts

Lak Ananths book Anticipate Failure paints a comprehensive and well-illustrated picture of the kinds of failure that can harm a business and its journey to success. I recognize a lot of sennders challenges and failures in the book, and I know a lot of founders, including myself, will probably find Laks insights very useful for their own journey.

DAVID NOTHACKER, Co-Founder and CEO, sennder

Business failure is painful. By looking fearlessly at the possibilities of failure, entrepreneurs can learn to avoid them. In his excellent and timely book Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth teaches the tricks to turn risks into opportunities and mistakes into learning experiences.

MARTEN MICKOS, CEO, HackerOne

After years of working directly with some of todays most successful businesses and their founders and executives, Lak Ananth has distilled the lessons he has learned in this bookvaluable lessons that will encourage European founders, corporations, and governments to aim high and build great organizations.

DR. GERHARD CROMME, Former Chairman of Supervisory Board at Siemens AG and ThyssenKrupp AG

Foundersmyself includedare often pathologically optimistic. We assume well succeed and thus dont give failure enough thought. In his book Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth persuades through hard-earned lessons conveyed with wit and warmth that we should channel our optimism toward actively identifying and avoiding failure modes. It struck me as odd that I hadnt seen a book organized like this beforeits pretty obvious this book should exist. Now it does, and I believe it will help the next generation of entrepreneurs build more successful companies with better odds.

JOHN BEATTY, Co-Founder and CEO, Clover

As a company founder, I have learned firsthand that failure is always waiting patiently just around the corner. The problem is that youre never sure which direction its going to come from and when it will arrive. In Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth explains that failure is commonits something that every business builder can and should anticipate. And, with the right tools at their disposalwhich Lak provides in his groundbreaking bookthey can work through failure and get to the other side stronger than ever.

WILL CHAN, Co-Founder of Cloud.com and Rancher Labs

Darkest Hour is one of my two favorite movies, The Post being the other. A Winston Churchill quote (from Darkest Hour) that has had a profound impact on my life goes like this: Success is not final, failure is not fatal. Its the courage to continue that counts. Laks book, especially the final chapter, reminds me of that anti-fragile mindset that I try to inculcate in my post-COVID life, including with my children, every day.

DHEERAJ PANDEY, Chairman & CEO, DevRev

In his book Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth provides readers with an essential roadmap to the most common sources of business failure. Lak offers the benefit of his years of experience working with startups to coach readers through failure and to the success they work so hard to attain. By helping your people Anticipate Failure and then providing them with the tools they need to work their way through it, you will unleash their great human potential to reinvent the companies for which they work.

JIM HAGEMANN SNABE, Chairman of Supervisory Board at Siemens AG and A. P. Moller Maersk, Former Co-CEO, SAP AG

Anticipate Failure is a rare look into the causes of business failure. Packed with in-depth case studies and interviews with some of todays most successful startup founders and entrepreneurs, the book provides readers with tools to anticipate the most common points of business failure and provides insights on how to navigate through them. The stories Lak Ananth tells are both entertaining and eye-opening.

GREG MARK, Chairman & Founder, Markforged

When embarking upon a journey where the stakes are high and odds of success are low, having a guide who knows where the land mines are buried is worth much more than a treasure map. In Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth, through his personal journey, guides us on how to identify and avoid such land mines, empowering us to each forge our own path toward ultimate success.

RENEN HALLAK, CEO & Founder, VAST Data

In Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth provides us with the benefit of his many years of experience helping business builders launch and grow companies. The book is full of current examples of business and interviews with some of todays most successful founders and executives. Putting the lessons contained in this book to work in your own business can help you find success.