Startup Confessions: A Founder's Guide to Getting It Wrong (and Sometimes Right)

By Gauthier Malderen

Written with sharp wit, brutal honesty, and hard-earned insight, this book reveals what building a company actually feels like.

Most startup books tell the polished version of entrepreneurship: heroic founders, elegant frameworks, and inevitable success. Startup Confessions does the opposite. Written with sharp wit, brutal honesty, and hard-earned insight, this book reveals what building a company actually feels like: chaotic decision-making, pointless projects, fundraising rejection, hiring mistakes, leadership flaws, and the constant performance of calm while everything backstage threatens to collapse. Based on eight years of scaling Perlego, the author offers a refreshing alternative to traditional startup myth-making: a candid guide for founders who want to fail faster, learn cheaper, and build with realism instead of illusion. This is not a triumph story. It is the truth -- and that is exactly why it matters.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9059967267
• ISBN13: 9789059967267
• Release Date: November 2026
• Publisher: Lannoo Publishers
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.