Blindspots

Innovation wins in the market but loses in the contracts.Research shows 55.6 percent of venture-backed CEOs are replaced by year four - not for business failure, but through contractual mechanisms they never anticipated. Most founders lose their ventures to structural vulnerabilities: investor conflicts, governance gaps, contractual exposures.After 20 years as a finance lawyer and a decade as partner at White & Case, Ropes & Gray, and Jones Day, Jonathan Bloom founded an advisory firm serving sophisticated capital. As founder and Chief Executive, he built a firm shortlisted for multiple industry awards.When institutional dynamics he had not protected against converged, he exited the firm and documented the systematic patterns - backed by academic research on venture capital conflicts and organizational behavior under pressure.BLINDSPOTS reveals 18 systematic lessons across four parts on hidden risks that separate ventures that scale safely from those that stumble.With a Foreword by Tejune Kang (Harvard Business School Alumnus, Former NASDAQ-Listed Company Founder, YPO Member)What You Will Learn: Part I: Building Without Armor (Lessons 1-6) - Foundation protections before pressure hits: contractual safeguards, governance structures, and legal frameworks that create operational freedom.Part II: Navigating Institutional Dynamics (Lessons 7-10) - Understanding how institutional forces converge: investor incentive shifts, board dynamics, and platform risks.Part III: Managing Compound Challenges (Lessons 11-13) - Navigating when pressure becomes crisis: decision-making under constraint and protecting what matters most when dynamics converge.Part IV: Personal Transformation (Lessons 14-18) - Rebuilding after loss: processing failure, extracting wisdom, and preparing for what comes next.Plus: Three-tier implementation frameworks ($0-5K to $25K+), protection checklists, and practical tools organized by budget and timeline.This book is for founders raising institutional capital, entrepreneurs scaling ventures, investors who want to understand the founder perspective, executives managing complex stakeholder environments, advisors supporting high-stakes transitions, and anyone building something meaningful who wants to prepare wisely and build with confidence.