The Founder's Map Volume I book cover by Matthew Cleevely
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The Founder’s Map

VOLUME I: BUILDING THE MACHINE

By Matthew Cleevely

A hype-free guide to the decisions founders have to make about themselves, their teams and the company growing around them.

Get founding less wrong: Build yourself, your team and the machine that scales you.

“As a founder, I'm constantly looking to learn from other founders, especially from the mistakes, failures, and hard-earned lessons that rarely make it into the headlines. Matthew has done an excellent job distilling his experience, both as a founder who thinks from first principles and as an investor who has seen hundreds of companies up close. Wish I had it when I started out.”

- Sai Shivareddy, Founder and CEO, Nyobolt

Part 1: What You Want

Your Choice: Decide whether this journey is really yours before you start

Survival Gear: Protect your downside so you can afford to be ambitious

Big Words: Set your own direction for others to build on

Reality: Build machinery that cuts through to reality and keeps your vision clear

Crisis: Be ready for ‘Oh, shit’ moments

Inside:

“If you are going to start a venture backed business, read this book first. It'll teach you so much you need to look out for as you start on this journey. I wish I had this at the start of my journey.”

- Dr Amrit Chandan, Exited climate-tech founder ($20m raised) | CEO, Lorefully | Forbes 30U30

Part 2: The Machine Around you

Systems: Plant the smallest useful systems before complexity crushes you

Co-founders: Choose people who'll share the uncertainty, not just the workload

Network: Assemble outside intelligence and support before you need it

Governance: Build your accountability early, on your terms

Part 3: Bringing people in

Hiring: Build a hiring capability, not a series of hires

Fairness: Build consistency and care into how you help your team thrive

Culture: Make how you solve problems together explicit before pressure does

Equity: Use ownership to make people partners, not just employees

Endings: Handle endings well, because exits shape the team that remains

Volume II — customers, capital, scale and exiting at your leisure — follows in 2027.

Most startup advice comes with an agenda: to impress others or to attract investors. The Founder’s Map has a simpler purpose: to show you the terrain before you cross it, so you can make interesting mistakes rather than boring, avoidable ones.

Volume I is about your foundations: the decisions you make before you know you’re making them. What do you actually want from starting a company? How will you keep sight of reality when everyone has an opinion? Who will you build with? And how do you create something that can grow beyond just you?

It won’t tell you what to build. It’ll give you tools to decide for yourself, because business failure is an option. Personal failure isn’t.

Matthew Cleevely founded global software company 10to8 and, as CEO and Chair, led its successful sale. He is an angel investor and adviser to founders. The mistakes in the book are almost exclusively his own.

The Founder's Map is a practical startup book for first-time founders and people considering starting a company. Rather than focusing on startup mythology, fundraising or growth hacks, it deals with the decisions founders have to make about themselves and the organisation they're building: choosing co-founders, dividing equity, hiring people, creating culture, establishing governance and building the systems that allow a company to grow.

  • "A refreshingly honest take on the journey most founders actually experience. It's like having a non-exec available for consultation 24/7 for the price of a few coffees! Buy it, read it, then come back to it for reference when making big decisions or things get tricky."

    Anthony Jenking, 30 years creating, scaling and exiting tech businesses

  • "You should definitely read through this before you start. I realise you probably won't ... but when things go wrong, at least we'll all know why, and maybe you'll then realise why you should have read it."

    Dr Julian Huppert, scientist, politician, and failed entrepreneur

  • "Most entrepreneurship books sanitise the journey. This one doesn't. For founders and anyone building a venture who wants a candid account of what the process actually involves, warts and all. Honest, deeply human, and written with a distinctive voice."

    Dr Monique Boddigton, Associate Professor, Cambridge Judge Business School

  • "If you are going to start a venture backed business, read this book first. It'll teach you so much you need to look out for as you start on this journey. I wish I had this at the start of my journey."

    Dr Amrit Chandan, Exited climate-tech founder ($20m raised) | CEO, Lorefully | Forbes 30U30

  • "Starting your first company? Get a copy of this book. You'll thank me in six months!"

    Ben Hartley, Director, ideaSpace - University of Cambridge

  • "The honest guide to startups — the one every first-time founder wishes they’d read before getting started."

    Vanela Bushi, Entrepreneur & VC (founder H-Tree Capital)

  • "This is a book for founders the humans, not founders the shiny persona"

    Emmi Nicholl, CEO Cambridge Angels

  • "Every founder needs a thoughtful, witty and authentic voice of entrepreneurial experience echoing through their mind — preferably not their own — reminding them it’s possible, especially when the ‘oh shit’ moments happen. Let that be Matthew."

    Sarah Broderick, Entrepreneur

  • "This is essential reading for anyone with a great idea who wants to actually get it off the ground, and needs to understand the gritty details of building a business. I will strongly recommend this book to any of my students who are interested in building a new venture, or who want to understand what it is like on the ground for entrepreneurs."

    Constantine Yannelis, Janeway Professor of Financial Economics, University of Cambridge

  • "This is the type of reference book that every first time founder should carry, you can dive in to any chapter at any time rather than being lectured on the whole journey"

    “Paul B, serial entrepreneur, start-up guide and angel investor”

This is probably for you if...

  • You're building your first company.

  • You've built one before and suspect you missed things.

  • You want frameworks without pretending they're laws.

This probably isn’t for you if…

  • You want seven steps to a billion-dollar company.

  • You'd prefer everyone to pretend failure is character building.

  • You dislike footnotes.

Still trying to decide?

… or just ask the book below!

The Founder’s Map — Volume I: Building the Machine
Matthew Cleevely
Paperback / Kindle
SBN-13: 9781068439247
ISBN-10: 1068439246
Publisher: C&P
Published 2026

Book details

Buying for a team, cohort or organisation?

If you’re buying for a team, accelerator, university, investor portfolio or event, we can arrange bulk and custom orders.

At 100+ copies, we can also talk about signed editions, a bespoke foreword or introduction, custom inserts, or me joining the group for a session. Get in touch.