Sign-In
Cart
Dying of Success: A Startup Tale of Ego, Power, and Failure
Paperback
Biographies GeneralBusiness GeneralTrue Crime
Publisher: Phone Media
Published: Jun 2 2026
Pages: 166
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.42 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
A certified letter arrived at his parents' house in Europe. He was four thousand miles away. By the time it was opened, the company he'd spent three years helping build had already begun writing him out of it, his contribution quietly reclassified, his ownership cut to eleven percent, the decisions made in rooms he was no longer invited to.
Severus was twenty-one and finishing his degree when a childhood acquaintance resurfaced on Facebook with a special project. He said yes before he had finished thinking. What followed was three years of midnight Zoom calls across an ocean and the slow, almost invisible work of disappearing from his own company, a company that kept winning competitions and press while the product never shipped, until it died not of failure but of success.
Dying of Success is the inside account of a startup freeze-out, told by the co-founder it happened to. It is not a takedown, and not a tidy story of villains and victims, but a forensic, unsparing record of how momentum, flattery, and good faith can rearrange a company around the very people who built it, and of one founder's own part in letting it happen.
If you've ever said yes before the paperwork arrived, stayed late for a team that stopped saying your name, or sensed something was wrong long before you let yourself admit it, you'll recognize this.
The builders. The early joiners. The quietly burned.
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Toby Byron (ED.)
Pete Welding (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover