Acknowledgments

Some of the original ideas that underpin this book came from the extraordinary men and women who helped build Rosetta. These include Chris’s cofounder, Kurt Holstein (Explorer), whose analytical marketing gifts and passion to discover more actionable insights was critical to shaping and scaling Rosetta’s service offering; Hari Mahadevan (Crusader), whose consulting and leadership gifts inspired clients and colleagues, allowing the firm to deepen its impact; and later in the journey, Nigel Adams (Crusader), who demonstrated the power of integrating business and leadership skills for greater impact. Each of these enormously talented individuals played a key role in building this book’s foundation, and we are deeply grateful to all of them.

In addition, we are indebted to Rosetta’s launch team—George Tang (Captain), Jason Whitney (Explorer), Chetna Bansal (Explorer), and Lawrence Choi (Explorer)—who first codified our Personality-Based Clustering technique, while Lawrence returned in the final stages of our work to fine tune some of the underlying analytics. Gifted leaders like Ned Elton (Crusader) and Shannon Hartley (Driver) helped bring the Rosetta vision to leading marketers globally. And finally, Tom Adamski (the model Captain)—taken from us well before his time—encouraged and enabled the earliest stages of the journey that became this book. Thank you, Tom.

Chetna Bansal and Alyssa Pemberton led the Rosetta team that included Sarah Martin, Steven Yum, and Loren Taylor-Raymond in applying Personality-Based Clustering to the research data for this book. Thank you all.

In the early stages of our work we were helped by many people. Peter Wendell, Marsha Firestone, Ken Traub, Adam Eiseman, Taylor Francis, and Paul Chamberlain were generous with both their time and their networks, as were the Pennsylvania and New Jersey chapters of the Young Presidents’ Association, and many others. Our preliminary interviews with several savvy entrepreneurs helped shape our thinking: thanks to Alexander Jutkovitz, Brian Halligan, Carol Head, Chinwe Onyeagoro, Frank Dombroski, Jay Gould, Justin Mares, Mark Buller, Paul Chachko, Neil Grimmer, and Tracy Doyle.

We are grateful to Stephanie Sandberg, Whitney Frith, and Dan Gerasmowicz, who contributed research, advice, and interview help as well. Devansh Gupta added research and write-ups, demonstrating wisdom and insight well beyond his years, complemented with help from Jenna Rodrigues, Max Bressler, Stephanie McGill, and Alex Ferguson. Heather Vanselous, our tenacious assistant, orchestrated our schedules, oversaw transcriptions, and managed many of the mission-critical aspects of our work behind the scenes.

We thank our team of initial reviewers—Gigi Goldman, Bob Kocher, Tom Higgins, Sylvia Sze, Jim Goldman, and others—who gave us candid feedback that sharpened our message. Dana Baker-Williams provided editing clarity during this key phase.

We write extensively about fit in these pages. Nowhere has the importance of that concept been more evident than in our fit as authors with our superb Harvard Business Review Press publishing team, led by Melinda Merino and supported by Jen Waring, Stephani Finks, Patty Boyd, Kenzie Travers, and Karen Palmer. Our book marketing team is led by Erin Byrne, with Margery Kraus, Jim Moorhead, and Kevin Goldman from APCO, along with Raeva Kumar’s incomparable support, and by input from Chris Danner and Bob Caruso. Their excellent counterparts at HBRP include Keith Pfeffer, Julie Devoll, Nina Nocciolino, Lindsey Dietrich, Brian Galvin, Sally Ashworth, Jon Shipley, and Aniruddh Kashyap.

We were also served by a series of very helpful individuals and companies. Will Danner, Kevin Haag, George Friborg, and Nik Schulz provided design help on our website and in these pages; and Research Now, Folio3, Absolute Data, Brian Hasenkamp of Asenka Interactive, Urban Mouse, Michael Franzyshen of Ascendant Technologies, and Princeton Transcription supported us in other valuable ways.

Writing a book is a disruptive process, and ours has been no exception. Our associates at Berkeley and Princeton were wonderfully accommodating to our various requests, meetings, calls, and schedule interruptions. They include faculty colleagues Mark Coopersmith, Dan Mulhern, Whitney Hischier, and Dean Rich Lyons at UC Berkeley, as well as Benedikt Westrick, John Molner, and Fanni Fan at Rosemark. At Princeton University, the Keller Center was in our court from day one, including Ed Zschau, Derek Lidow, and Mung Chiang on the faculty side, and Cornelia Huellstrunk, Victoria Dorman, Beth Jarvie, Stephanie Landers, and JD Jasper, among others, on the staff.

We were very fortunate to have the wise counsel of our agent, Jim Levine, of the Levine, Greenberg, Rostan Literary Agency, and the continued support of dear friends Treby Williams, Dannie Kennedy, and Tom Higgins.

As we review this list, incomplete as it no doubt is, we are humbled by the help we have received from so many people. However, lastly and most importantly, we thank our wives, Leslie and Peach, whose patience, judgment, and emotional support was immeasurable. Without them, this book simply would never have been possible.

Chris Kuenne and John Danner

December 11, 2016