If you have the dream to become an entrepreneur and start your own business, The Purpose Is Profit was written for you. It covers the full arc-from the struggle to conceive the right idea, to funding your startup, to scaling the business, to executing the exit strategy. The appendix includes The Startup Roadmap and The Startup Funding Guide.
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 Wall Street Journal Bestseller featured in Bloomberg, Fast Company, Masters of Scale, the Motley Fool, Marketplace and more. An indispensable guide to building a startup and breaking down the barriers for diverse entrepreneurs from the visionary venture capitalist and pioneering entrepreneur Kathryn Finney. Build the Damn Thing is a hard-won, battle-tested guide for every entrepreneur who the establishment has left out. Finney, an investor and startup champion, explains how to build a business from the ground up, from developing a business plan to finding investors, growing a team, and refining a product. Finney empowers entrepreneurs to take advantage of their unique networks and resources; arms readers with responses to investors who say, “great pitch but I just don’t do Black women”; and inspires them to overcome naysayers while remaining “100% That B*tch.” Don’t wait for the system to let you in—break down the door and build your damn thing. For all the Builders striving to build their businesses in a world that has overlooked and underestimated them: this is the essential guide to knowing, breaking, remaking and building your own rules of entrepreneurship in a startup and investing world designed for and by the “Entitleds.”
ENTREPRENEUR! Do NOT run your business without reading this!!! I want you to know something. I'm an entrepreneur, just like you. I'm different, just like you. I have a big heart, just like you. I've been through a lot, just like you. Unlike traditional books or resources, I've actually been there and done this. I've put my 10,000 hours in. I'm a fellow entrepreneur whose heard a million times, "you can't do that" or "that won't work". I get it. This book is probably one of the only books on Earth that you'll ever read, business books for sure, that you can literally stop and implement the strategies that I'm going to expose to you...and significantly impact your revenue immediately. Literally, without making major changes, without dumping tons of resources, spending more time, energy and money, just follow my lead. I won't make you learn a million different new things, either. Just plug this into your existing thing and watch what happens. That's the biggest takeaway you're about to get from this book. The top 1% have been doing this for DECADES...behind the scenes...They've been playing a game, this whole time. If you haven't been playing it, you've been getting played.It's time to play the game, and WIN. Take just ONE strategy out of here, and you could see results by this time tomorrow, all right? I know a lot of people write books for the wrong reasons. Fame. Money. Ego. I do not write books to get famous, rich, or pump my chest. I'm a simple, friendly goat farmer from Wisconsin. I don't need all the glitz and glamour. I wear bib overalls. I'm good. This book exists because I think of my younger self, and I think of how I ran what I thought was a business for a long time. How much I struggled. The sleepless nights. The not knowing if I'd be able to pay rent. The NSF notices (if you've ever been poor, you know what the heck those are). The abuse from clients. The constant ups and downs and instability. This book would have fixed everything, had it been around back then. I want you to know that I'm here to help as many people as I can, and you're one of them. I really mean it, and I want to put a dent in this planet. Just so you know before you dive in, just remember, keep this in the back of your head. Let this soak in. Reading this book and implementing what's inside is going to give you full control and power to build a real and sustainable business. By page 37, you'll know this is what you've been missing...Your Entrepreneur Friend, -Dana "I'm Exposing The TRUTH" Derricks
&n> “This book should be on the seasoned entrepreneur’s list of ‘what I should have read before I started my business.’” JOE KEELEY, President & CEO, College Nannies & Tutors Development “This is one of the best entrepreneurship books I’ve read...I wish I had this book when I first started out.” RYAN O’DONNELL, Cofounder and CEO, BullEx Digital Safety Your own business: Take the leap, make it happen, and make it succeed! · The truth about choosing the right business for you and maintaining a healthy personal life · The truth about planning, funding, hiring, and successful launches · The truth about financial management, marketing, and growth This book reveals 53 bite-size, easy-to-use techniques for choosing, planning, launching, and growing your winning business. You’ll learn how to generate and test business ideas, and pick the one that’s best for you...select the right entry strategy...name and locate your business...raise capital...build your team and get expert advice...protect your business secrets and intellectual property...effectively brand your business and market its offerings...handle pricing, distribution, and sales...manage your finances to specific objectives...prepare for growth...and even maintain your work/life balance as an entrepreneur. This isn't “someone's opinion”: it's a definitive, evidence-based guide to building your own successful enterprise--a set of bedrock principles you can rely on whoever you are, wherever you are, and whatever business you choose to launch.
The Founder's Dilemmas examines how early decisions by entrepreneurs can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, including quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders as well as inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.
"This book debunks the myths of business start-ups by telling the truth: you have to be crazy to start a business. Written by serial entrepreneur Barry Moltz, the book delivers irreverent, straight talk about the complex intersection of start-up business, financial health, physical well-being, spiritual wholeness and family life. This perspective is augmented with other personal tales from the entrepreneurial front. The book offers tidbits of insight that will vaporize isolation, encourage self-reflection and refresh the spirit of anyone who has started a business or is thinking of starting one."--Publisher description
Introducing the global mind-set changing the way we do business. In this fascinating book, global entrepreneurship expert Daniel Isenberg presents a completely novel way to approach business building—with the insights and lessons learned from a worldwide cast of entrepreneurial characters. Not bound by a western, Silicon Valley stereotype, this group of courageous and energetic doers has created a global and diverse mix of companies destined to become tomorrow’s leading organizations. Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid is about how enterprising individuals from around the world see hidden value in situations where others do not, use that perception to develop products and services that people initially don’t think they want, and ultimately go on to realize extraordinary value for themselves, their customers, and society as a whole. What these business builders have in common is a contrarian mind-set that allows them to create opportunities and succeed where others see nothing. Amazingly, this process repeats itself in one form or another countless times a day all over the world. From Albuquerque to Islamabad, you will travel with Isenberg to discover unusual yet practical insights that you can use in your own business. Meet the founders of Grameenphone in Bangladesh, PACIV in Puerto Rico, Sea to Table in New York, Actavis in Iceland, Studio Moderna in Slovenia, Hartwell Metals in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, Given Imaging in Israel, WildChina in China, and many others. You’ll be moved by the stories of these plucky start-ups—many of them fueled by adversity and, more often than not, by necessity. Great stories, stunning successes, crushing failures—they’re all here. What can we, in the East and West, learn from them? What can you learn—and what will these entrepreneurial stories, so compellingly told, inspire you to do? Let this book open doors for you where you once saw only walls. If you’ve ever felt the urge to turn a glimmer of an idea into something extraordinary, these stories are for you.
Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in. Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.
Creative Truth is your playbook for starting, building, and enjoying a profitable design business. Whether you’re a solo freelancer working from home or a small group of creative entrepreneurs ready to get to the next level, this is your roadmap to success. You’re the CEO, CFO, CTO, Secretary, Janitor, Office Manager, and everything in between. Finding a balance between running the business and doing great creative work is a constant struggle. From learning how to price your work and manage your time, to setting up your business and defining your market, Brad Weaver covers everything designers need to know to run a studio without losing heart. Highlights: • Real numbers, real tools, and best practices in a toolkit that you can start using immediately in your business. • A companion website that offers up-to-date resources, articles, tools, and discussions, allowing readers to continue learning as they grow. • Practical tips for getting clients, being more profitable, building your network, managing your operations, getting things done, hiring help, managing contractors, and finding joy along the way.