THE STORY OF A TRULY INDIAN SPORTS BRAND THAT COULD GO PLACES BUT FAILED Prashant Desai was seven when he lost his father. Growing up in poverty, his single-minded focus was to become wealthy and successful. Ranking fourth on the all-India Cost and Works Accountants exam at the age of twenty-one, joining the corporate world and working with leaders such as Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Kishore Biyani and Jignesh Shah was a dream run that Prashant enjoyed, one that very few could even imagine and achieve. In April 2017, Prashant Desai founded a venture to build the first truly Indian sports brand - D:FY. In six months, Rajiv Mehta, who started Puma India and led it for seven years, joined him as a partner. They opened seventeen stores in seven cities, riding on great aspirations and confidence. The business lost Rs 30 crore in thirty months, virtually wiping out all that Prashant had earned for nearly thirty years. The venture failed not because Prashant did not possess the necessary vision, determination and courage; it failed because the number of things Prashant did wrong exceeded the number of things he did right. One could weep over the fuselage or decode the black box. So, when Prashant decided to decode it, new possibilities emerged, revealing a treasure trove of success secrets. The Biography of a Failed Venture provides a brutally honest account of why D:FY failed and how entrepreneurs can avoid these pitfalls to make their business ventures successful.
If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.
The often hilarious and sometimes poignant story behind Dal LaMagna's rise in the beauty industry. By the time LaMagna graduated from the Harvard Business School, his entrepreneurial activities—including operating discotheques in drive-in theaters, working with the 1960s musical teen sensations the Cowsills, and opening an ice cream parlor on the Venice Beach boardwalk—had landed him $150,000 of debt. Raising Eyebrows tells the story of how he finally succeeded. After years of failures and living pennilessly, LaMagna founded Tweezerman, one of the world's most respected, innovative and successful beauty tool manufacturers with over 40 million customers. A leader for socially responsible companies, Tweezerman became a success by making helping communities and caring for the environment everyday practices, not publicity gimmicks. A responsible capitalist, LaMagna wrote this roller-coaster memoir for entrepreneurs who are struggling and disenchanted with the ever changing economic system Packed with business lessons, financial plans, and practical advice Raising Eyebrows is full of inspiration, conscience, and good ideas for entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs everywhere.
In this tale of grit and glamour, setbacks and comebacks, business and pop culture icon Tommy Hilfiger shares his extraordinary life story for the first time. Few designers have stayed on top of changing trends the way Tommy Hilfiger has. Fewer still have left such an indelible mark on global culture. Since designing his first collection of “classics with a twist” three decades ago, Tommy Hilfiger has been synonymous with all-American style—but his destiny wasn’t always so clear. Growing up one of nine children in a working-class family in Elmira, New York, Tommy suffered from dyslexia, flunked sophomore year of high school, and found himself constantly at odds with his father. Nevertheless, this self-described dreamer had a vision and the relentless will to make it a reality. At eighteen he opened his own clothing store, parlaying his uncanny instinct for style into a budding career as a fashion designer. Through decades of triumph and turmoil, Tommy remained doggedly optimistic. To this day, his approach to commerce is rooted in his positive view of the world. American Dreamer brims with anecdotes that cover Tommy’s years as a club kid and scrappy entrepreneur in 1970s New York as well as unique insights into the exclusive A-list personalities with whom he’s collaborated and interacted, from Mick Jagger and David Bowie to Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. But this is more than just a fashion icon’s memoir—it’s a road map for building a brand, both professionally and personally. Tommy takes us behind the scenes of every decision—and every mistake—he’s ever made, offering advice on leadership, business, team-building, and creativity. This is the story of a true American original, told for the first time in his own words, with honesty, humor, and the insatiable appetite for life and style that proves that sometimes you have to dream big to make it big. Praise for American Dreamer “A unique look into the fashion world . . . an honest, straightforward, mostly entertaining autobiography of the man who created a classic yet hip line of clothing.”—Kirkus Reviews “Fashionistas and business gurus alike will glean important lessons from Hilfiger’s rags-to-riches rag-trade story.”—Booklist “Tommy burst onto the fashion scene at the height of hip-hop and was instantly taken up by rappers and rockers alike. Since then, year after year he has been ahead of the curve with his elegant and stylish looks. His creative energy has always been an inspiration to me. He’s really himself in American Dreamer.”—Mick Jagger "In American Dreamer Tommy shows how he has taken the (rock) stars and the (preppy) stripes and come up with a look—and a label—that are recognized globally as being quintessentially American, as well as a brand that constantly keeps time with pop music.”—Anna Wintour “Tommy is an inspiration to many people. American Dreamer shows how he has managed to be successful in business and done so with integrity.”—David Beckham “Tommy is one of the most genuine people I know! In American Dreamer you can feel his passion pour through everything he does: fashion, fatherhood, family, and friendship!”—Alicia Keys “Tommy Hilfiger is an American icon who was able to transcend fashion and blend it with pop culture and take it to a worldwide audience. American Dreamer documents how, unlike any other designer, Tommy was able to tap into music, its subculture, and its influence on society.”—Tommy Mottola
Inspired by her hugely popular podcast, How To Fail is Elizabeth Day's brilliantly funny, painfully honest and insightful celebration of things going wrong. This is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it's a book for everyone. If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood. I have evolved more as a result of things going wrong than when everything seemed to be going right. Out of crisis has come clarity, and sometimes even catharsis. Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, sport, babies, families, anger and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It's a book about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid. Uplifting, inspiring and rich in stories from Elizabeth's own life, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals. Because learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. And everyone needs a bit of that.
In the tradition of Phil Knight's Shoe Dog comes the incredible untold story of how Netflix went from concept to company-all revealed by co-founder and first CEO Marc Randolph. Once upon a time, brick-and-mortar video stores were king. Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard was of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. Indeed, these were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997, when Marc Randolph had an idea. It was a simple thought—leveraging the internet to rent movies—and was just one of many more and far worse proposals, like personalized baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning. But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair—with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO—founded a company. Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable, but the twenty first century's most disruptive start up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when Netflix brass pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts, and determination can change the world—even with an idea that many think will never work. What emerges, though, isn't just the inside story of one of the world's most iconic companies. Full of counter-intuitive concepts and written in binge-worthy prose, it answers some of our most fundamental questions about taking that leap of faith in business or in life: How do you begin? How do you weather disappointment and failure? How do you deal with success? What even is success? From idea generation to team building to knowing when it's time to let go, That Will Never Work is not only the ultimate follow-your-dreams parable, but also one of the most dramatic and insightful entrepreneurial stories of our time.
While the entire world knows Mark Twain as the renowned author of many classic American novels, few people are aware that he was also a highly successful businessman. In fact, more than half of his life was consumed by moneymaking pursuits, which often resulted in writing projects being neglected--but at the same time, these adventures were the inspiration behind many of the characters found in his books. In Ignorance, Confidence, and Filthy Rich Friends, Peter Krass captures a little-known side of this American icon and details the roller coaster ride of his business ventures in a dramatic, entertaining, and informative narrative style. From Twain's time as the founder of his own publishing house--where he made a small fortune publishing General Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs--to his foray into venture capitalism and investment in numerous start-up firms, to his focus on his own inventions, this engaging book reveals the Mark Twain that few of us know: the no-nonsense, successful American businessman.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword covering her trial and sentencing, bringing the story to a close. “Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.
Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues--Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
