About the Authors

This book crystallized unexpectedly over lunch in December 2014. We thought we were going to talk about our respective classes at Princeton the prior semester. But as we began comparing notes about our various careers, ideas, and interests, we realized how convergent yet complementary they were. We were both fascinated by why and how entrepreneurs create something from nothing, building businesses that grow from startups into successful enterprises, and we were both convinced of the importance of that process in a world looking for greater economic opportunity and social progress. In that context, Chris had long been intrigued by the dimension of how personality shapes behavior in marketplaces, and John by the issues and challenges of innovation and leadership.

We both felt that no one had yet decoded the interplay between the who and the how at the core of the entrepreneurial process: the catalytic interaction between the business founder’s own personality and the various challenges he or she must confront in building a great enterprise. In short, we thought who you are must shape how you build.

Sometimes serendipity trumps strategy. From that casual conversation came the partnership and friendship that led to this book. In the process of conducting our research, honing our ideas, and writing these chapters, we’ve integrated our respective East and West Coast styles of thinking and working—so much so that we nicknamed our collaboration “West by Northeast.”

Here’s a more formal snapshot of our respective backgrounds.

Chris Kuenne, founder of Rosetta and Rosemark Capital, is a highly successful entrepreneur, member of Princeton University’s faculty, and growth capital investor. For more than thirty years he has been fascinated by the question of what motivates people to act as they do in a commercial context. He has devoted his career to translating insights about customer motivation into personalized sales and marketing techniques that accelerate enterprise growth.

Chris is now focused, with his colleagues at Rosemark, on applying these growth techniques to investments in partnership with leading private equity firms. He is a frequent speaker to various business leadership audiences, including the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), venture capital associations, the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), and the CFO Roundtable, among many others. He is an active contributor to Forbes and a range of other leading industry magazines and journals, such as Advertising Age, Banking Strategies, and Pharmaceutical Executive. He has also appeared on CNBC’s Street Signs, Forbes podcasts, and other media outlets.

Prior to founding Rosetta, Chris co-led the retail marketing practice at First Manhattan Consulting Group, following ten years in marketing management at Johnson & Johnson, where he led the Band-Aid and Tylenol brand franchises. Chris serves on various corporate and nonprofit boards. He received his MBA with honors from Harvard Business School, and his BA from Princeton University. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and Shelburne, Vermont, with his wife, Leslie, and their three sons, Peter, William, and Matthew.

John Danner teaches, consults, speaks, and writes about innovation, entrepreneurship, strategy, and leadership. He has always been intrigued by how these elements converge to create economic and social value across the private, nonprofit, and government sectors, and his career as an executive, entrepreneur, and adviser spans all three domains.

Currently, as Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley’s Institute for Business Innovation and Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, John teaches at the Haas School of Business. Each fall he is also a visiting professor in entrepreneurship at Princeton. In addition to his consulting practice, he conducts executive education and leadership courses in the United States and around the world. A popular speaker at conferences globally, he originated the idea for TED U[niversity], appearing most recently on the TEDx Beacon and TEDx Athens stages.

John serves on several advisory boards and judges the international Spark Design Awards. He has been covered in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Chief Executive, Strategy + Business, Entrepreneur, and Business Insider, as well as various foreign media. He is the coauthor of The Other “F” Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work.

John holds JD, MPH, and MEd degrees from UC Berkeley and a BA cum laude from Harvard College. He lives in Berkeley, California, and New York City with his wife, Nancy Pietrafesa, with whom he has three sons, Eliot, Chris, and Will.

You can reach the authors using the following methods:

www.builtforgrowth.com