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The ones that they can contribute in the most.If the founder can be a VP R&D, he/she can do that.VP Sales?Great!Do that.CTO?Excellent.There's no textbook solution for it, nor is CEO a granted default that the founder "gives up on".But here is the important thing:You don't get a salary for being a founder - or job security either.A founder is not an occupation.You get a salary for doing a job, well.What you get for being a founder is your equity chunk, your holding in the company.Think:You have a stake in this company.It's YOUR best interest for the best people to hold the healm, in every position.Maybe you are not them.Don't get me wrong - I love it when the founders are on top of the company's day to day as its leaders: they are gurrunteed to fight harder, especially when the fight gets hard.But the main point is - no safety nets.

Credentials: I've run analyst and associate level interviews at three different buy-side firms and interviewed hundreds of candidates over the last four years. I have also evidently been on the other side of the fence (but not hundreds of times...).Firstly, I would say that I don't think reading a book or two before any investment professional interview (private equity or hedge fund) is going to make a meaningful difference. At the end of the day, each person you meet will have his/her own style of running the interview and his/her criteria for feeling impressed.Notwithstanding, there are typically three boxes that you need to tick to make you really stand out in an interview:Raw IQ/Intelligence: the really smart ones are impressive, no matter what you throw at them (e.g. introduce new ways of thinking about things, see how quickly they "get it" and how quickly they re-apply it).Structure and Logic: being systematic and structured is a helpful skillset in most industries, but particularly in private equity where you constantly have to diligence new companies and markets. You will typically be evaluated on how naturally you are able to frame a structured "mental model" to assess a market's growth potential, a company's earnings growth, or the return on an investment, but also on how adept you are at communicating this to the interviewer.Passion for Business and Investing: this is where the books can come in (because if you are passionate, you probably are already devouring everything you can get your hands on).For the record its easier to ask for these things as an interviewer than to deliver as an interviewee - so that's why you'll always have to interview with more than one firm as you will get unlucky.So here's my suggested reading list (note not exhaustive, reading is a lifetime pursuit!):Best Overall "Investment Philosophy" GuidesWarren Buffett's letters (either straight from the website or summarised/rearranged in The Essays of Warren Buffett)Seth Klarman's Margin of Safety (out of print, pdf here)Howard Marks' memos (either straight from the website or his compilation book The Most Important Thing)Phil Fisher's Common Stocks & Uncommon ProfitsEasier "Prose" written for allBarbarians at the Gate (crazy historical days of private equity)Fooling Some of the People All of the Time (David Einhorn's long attempt to go after a fraud)The Smartest Guys in the Room (repetitive after a while but hey, you get to learn about the crazy Enron things)Advanced ReadingNot a "value investor", but certainly a unique thinker as it relates to macroeconomic investing, I highly recommend making your way through Ray Dalio's writings on the economic machine. You can start with the easy video and then graduate to his essay if you want to learn more.Benjamin Graham (father of value investing) wrote some "old school" classics, the short version being The Intelligent Investor and the classic bible being Security Analysis (think of this as the 600 page textbook...)Charlie Munger probably had as much of an influence on Buffett as Graham did, but he's probably "too smart" for me to understand. However this thoughts/investment thinking is best understood if you get your hands on a copy of Poor Charlie's Almanack which is only available to buy from his website.As Charlie Munger always says, one must 'invert, always invert'. So to help spot the best businesses, you should learn about identifying the worst, the frauds and manipulators. For that, I highly recommend Financial Shenanigans, as well as the Art of Short SellingReal academic reading, but Choices, Values and Frames is the definitive compilation of the top research papers in behavioural economics and cognitive psychology - all of the original papers that look into practical human fallacies like asymmetric loss aversion or mental accounting biasesOn strategy and competitive advantage, look no further than Michael Porter's Competitive Advantage, Prahalad's Core Competence as well as Grant's Resource-Based Theory of Competitive AdvantageOn disruptive technology and the difficulties of scaling up a business, the reference books are of course by Geoff Moore - Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado

Imagine the following scenario for me:You are a college student. You just took your midterm exam. Some students, like yourself, spent hours studying. You took notes diligently during each lecture, and you kept up with the readings. If you were struggling with the material, then you met with the professor during office hours for extra help. Understandably, you got an A on the exam.Other students didn’t do that.They slept during class (if they even bothered to show up). Their definition of reading the textbook was to thumb through the pages quickly in the moments between the professor greeting the class and pulling up their PowerPoint slides. They didn’t even know where the professor’s office is located, and you’d be wrong if you thought they even spent five minutes studying for the exam. They, for glaringly obvious reasons, failed.The professor subsequently announces a change to the grading policy.He tells you that he was shocked and angered by the level of grade inequality that he saw in his class. There was nothing that upset the professor more than to see that his class was divided into the A students and the F students. He then ranted about the unfair privileges that you and students like you received for doing nothing at all beyond having superior intelligence and studying habits. To further reinforce that notion, he told all students of superior intelligence in the class that they didn’t earn that, and that he was forced to rectify this gross level of grading inequality with his new grading policy.It’s called equity grading.For every point an A student received above a B, you had to give half a point to an F student. For every point that a B student received above a C, they had to give a quarter point to a D student. This new policy of equity grading would level the playing field between students so that there would be more harmony in the class. It also hoped to take away the systemic privileges granted to those with superior intelligence and studying habits.What do you think the class’s reaction would be?I know what it would be: mayhem.Half the high-achieving students would be running to the Dean’s office to bring tenure charges against the professor. The other half would be protesting so loudly that the professor wouldn’t be able to give the lecture. You guys are outraged that the professor would take points away that you earned and give them to students who hadn’t shown up to class.That’s what wealth redistribution is.Wealth redistribution is a governmental policy by which wealthy people are taxed at a higher rate to pay for social programs for the poor. It is done, not because it benefits the economy, but because it makes people happier. One of the techniques that is used is known as progressive taxation, whereby you are forced to pay more money into the welfare system as your income increases.[1] It is commonly justified by saying that the success the wealthy are experiencing was due to people other than the wealthy.[2] Even though many business owners are forced to start their entire business from scratch, some say that they didn’t earn their wealth.That’s unfair.I am the only person who can follow all of the steps to build my own small business.[3] The government cannot plan my finances. The poor cannot get me my trade license. The poor cannot determine whether I need an LLC or a C-corp. Those are moves only I can make, yet wealth redistribution supporters believe that I didn’t do that.[4]I oppose wealth redistribution because it is unfair, and it punishes me for my success and the failures of others for which I am not responsible.It is not my fault that someone else is poor. I didn't not earn my success at the expense of the poor.It is not my fault that someone else is homeless. I didn't earn the ability to buy a home at the expense of the poor.It is not my fault that someone isn't as smart as me. I didn't earn my grades at the expense of students who dropped out of high school.To punish me for my success in relation to the failure of others is grossly unjust, and it shouldn’t be allowed.Instead, we should be using a flat tax.This is a policy where we are all taxed at the same rate.[5]I'm not punished for my success in relation to others. I pay the same tax rate as everyone else. It doesn't correct the perceived wrongs against those who have not been wronged, and I get to enjoy the success I've earned.Footnotes[1] Redistribution of wealth[2] YIR/ELECTION:OBAMA "YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT"[3] Starting a Business[4] YIR/ELECTION:OBAMA "YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT"[5] Flat Tax