ANTICIPATE FAILURE

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Navigating Uncertainty, Avoiding Disaster, and Building a Successful Business

Lak Ananth, CEO and Managing Partner, Next47

About Lak’s Book

History is filled with products that were predicted to disrupt markets and change our lives forever. Until they didn’t. What if their creators could have anticipated their own flops? In this groundbreaking book, Lak Ananth, CEO of global venture capital firm Next47, reveals why often game-changing innovations still fizzle out. Anticipate Failure starts with the understanding that building a business based on innovation is a perilous endeavor, where big and small missteps are always around the corner. Taking you on a journey through a riveting collection of high-profile innovation failures, this book examines the root causes for why a brilliant idea is never enough. Through a series of never-before-heard stories and interviews with some of the most successful founders and executives in the world, Ananth takes the dual role of a coach and trusted companion to extract insightful lessons from high-profile failures and share them with the reader in an easy to digest format. Anticipate Failure is a brutally honest roadmap for any business founder, executive, or manager to conquer their toughest challenges, change how they innovate, and launch a product or business that actually succeeds.

Praise for Anticipate Failure

“A critically important book that 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

“Business failure is painful. In his excellent and timely book Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth teaches the tricks to turn risks into opportunities and mistakes into learning experiences.”

MÅRTEN MICKOS CEO, HackerOne

“Lak Ananth is one of INSEAD’s senior alumni in the VC space, and this book offers valuable advice that is rare to come by. Entrepreneurs and business builders will truly appreciate this book.”

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

“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 know a lot of founders, including myself, will find Lak’s insights very useful for their own journey.”

DAVID NOTHACKER Co-Founder and CEO, sennder

“I’ve started five companies. I wish I had a book like this when I founded my own startups—it would have been a huge benefit to me, my customers, and my companies.”

BILL TRENCHARD Partner, First Round Capital

"A well-organized and engagingly written book about learning from losses."

Kirkus Reviews

About Lak

Lak Ananth is an Indian American venture capitalist who has spent much of his career focused on identifying industry changing disruptions and acting on them as an investor or acquirer. He is the founding CEO and Managing Partner of the global venture capital firm Next47 which is backed by Siemens AG and partners with the best entrepreneurs to help them build companies that will change how the world works. Lak has spent his career in service to the entrepreneurial pursuit. In addition to running Next47, he serves on the board of several companies that he has helped to grow beyond $1B valuations. As an investor and board member, he believes in establishing mutual trust with founders so when critical business decisions need to be made, he can support them in making the best choices for building world-class new businesses. Lak holds an MBA from INSEAD and The Wharton School of Business. He is also a Kauffman Fellow (Class 12).