Noam Wasserman

Noam Wasserman is a prominent academic leader and a recognized authority on business startups and venture capital. He currently serves as the Dean of the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University, where he leads initiatives to integrate rigorous business education with strong ethical values. Before assuming this role, Wasserman was the founding director of the Founder Central initiative at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. However, he is perhaps most widely recognized for his nearly two-decade tenure as a professor at Harvard Business School.\nDuring his time at Harvard, Wasserman developed and taught an award-winning course on entrepreneurship that became one of the school's most popular electives. His academic research focuses on the early decisions that founders make—decisions that often have disproportionate, long-term consequences for their companies. He holds a PhD from Harvard University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a BSE from the University of Pennsylvania.\nWasserman is the author of the best-selling book The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup. This seminal work draws on a decade of research involving thousands of startups to analyze the "people problems" that plague new ventures. The book won the Academy of Management’s Impact on Practice Award and has become required reading in business schools worldwide. In 2018, he released his second book, Life Is a Startup: What Founders Can Teach Us About Making Smart Choices in Your Career and Life, which translates his research on entrepreneurship into broader career and life advice. His work has been featured extensively in major publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes.