Sail to Scale

Steer Your Startup Clear of Mistakes from Launch to Exit

Most new businesses fail. Most failures are avoidable.

While some startups may catch favorable winds, most will encounter stormy seas that can capsize their ventures. Understanding how to navigate these choppy waters is crucial.

You don’t learn to captain a warship

by training to sail fast on calm seas.

In Sail to Scale, authors Mona Sabet, Maria Fernandez Guajardo, Heather Jerrehian, and Maria Fernandez Guajardo, Mona Sabet identify 18 common mistakes that leaders make across four pivotal waves of a startup's journey. Drawing from their collective experience, they dissect each mistake, help leaders recognize the situations that create them, and offer practical advice to steer clear of them so that their businesses can overcome each wave successfully.

Through both first-hand accounts and interviews with leaders across a variety of businesses, the authors provide insight from people behind successful — and not so successful — companies, the decisions they made, and why they mattered.

Sail to Scale serves as an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to chart a steady course through critical business junctures and fluctuating market conditions.

Foreword by Ann Miura-Ko, Co-founding Partner at Floodgate

Mona Sabet, Heather Jerrehian, and Maria Fernandez Guajardo are technology and business leaders with over 25 years each in the technology sector, blending their unique insights and extensive expertise in their co-authored book, Sail to Scale: Steering Startups Clear of Mistakes from Launch to Exit (2024). This trio of visionaries and operators has navigated the challenges of scaling businesses from nascent startups to global powerhouses. Together, they offer a comprehensive roadmap for entrepreneurial success, drawing on their profound experiences to help new business leaders sidestep common pitfalls and harness opportunities in the dynamic tech landscape.