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The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything (Hardcover)
by Guy Kawasaki
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Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start is a must-read for anyone who is working in a start-up or thinking of starting a business of any kind. |
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Author: Guy Kawasaki
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Pub. in: September, 2004
ISBN: 1591840562
Pages: 240
Measurements: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00804
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-1591840565
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- Awards & Credential -
The Art Of The Start is written to help guide the entrepreneur to success through secrets and techniques the author, Guy Kawasaki, has picked up as a venture capitalist.
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- MSL Picks -
The book makes a big promise with its sub-title, "The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything." I wondered if such a book could live up to it. "Starting anything" refers to a business, not a career, school, or hobby.
Obviously, it's impossible to create a comprehensive book of business best practices because every business has its own variables. What works great for one may kill another. However, the book doesn't take that approach. Rather, it tells how it is starting a business and the rough road of dealing with VCs (venture capitalists). If you expect a positive spin on stuff that's hard to do. Read a fairy tale instead.
Rather than abrasiveness and a "do this, don't do this" attitude, Kawasaki uses humor to explain the process. Anyone who has a small business including those around for a few years will benefit. When ready to take action, use this book as the manual that doesn't come with starting a business. Thinking about it isn't going to make a business successful.
Every chapter begins with the gist of it, an overview of what's to come. Each ends with FAQ, frequently avioded questions, to review the chapter's content and drill it in deeper for better understanding and implementation.
Get simple, but important hints on everyday business practices such as how to give a strong presentation. How many times have you sat through a presentation where each slide has over 20 words in size 12 point and the presenter practically reads the words adding little to what is on the slide? Kawasaki smartly covers the 10-20-30 rule. 10 slides, 20 minutes, and size 30 font. Making changes to the small practices can lead to reaching the next milestone.
This book can be likened to a quick reference guide for starting a business and useful strategies: has just what is needed without heavy-duty or dry language. It is, however, larger than most quick guides, but a fast and easy read into the world of startups and dealing with VCs. If a VC isn't involved, the book provides valuable tools and ideas to help with any business. However, technology start ups seeking VCs will benefit most.
Stuck on a business plan? Learn what is needed and not needed. Don't waste valuable time and use the book to do what's necessary without going overboard.
If long hours and challenges aren't in the plans, then read a romanticized business book instead. The Art of the Start shows how it really is and it's hard, but it can be a little easier with this book as a guide.
Get a taste of the book by reading its manifesto
(http://www.changethis.com/1.ArtOfTheStart), a free PDF download. The 34 page document should give you a clear idea of whether or not the book is for you as it includes the same components found in the book. As a bonus, the manifesto includes Great Ideas for Starting Things, covered in the first chapter. If the material and the table of contents sound enticing, get it.
Target readers:
Businessmen, entrepreneurs, anyone who intends to start small business .
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- Better with -
Better with
The Startup Company Bible For Entrepreneurs: The Complete Guide For Building Successful Companies And Raising Venture Capital
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Guy Kawasaki, who helped make Macintosh a household name, now runs Garage Technology Ventures, a venture-capital firm. He has held his workshop, “Boot Camp for Start-ups,” around the world. Kawasaki is the author of seven previous books, including Rules for Revolutionaries.
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From The Publisher
What does it take to turn ideas into action? What are the elements of a perfect pitch? How do you win the war for talent? How do you establish a brand without bucks? These are some of the issues everyone faces when starting or revitalizing any undertaking, and Guy Kawasaki, former marketing maven of Apple Computer, provides the answers.
The Art of the Start will give you the essential steps to launch great products, services, and companies - whether you are dreaming of starting the next Microsoft or a not-for-profit that’s going to change the world. It also shows managers how to unleash entrepreneurial thinking at established companies, helping them foster the pluck and creativity that their businesses need to stay ahead of the pack. Kawasaki provides readers with GIST - Great Ideas for Starting Things - including his field-tested insider’s techniques for bootstrapping, branding, networking, recruiting, pitching, rainmaking, and, most important in this fickle consumer climate, building buzz.
At Apple, Kawasaki helped turn ordinary customers into fanatics. As founder and CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, he has tested his iconoclastic ideas on real- world start- ups. And as an irrepressible columnist for Forbes, he has honed his best thinking about The Art of the Start.
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny....”
- Isaac Asimov
There are many ways to describe the ebb and flow, yin and yang, bubble-blowing and bubble-bursting phases of business cycles. Here’s another one: microscopes and telescopes. In the microscope phase, there’s a cry for level-headed thinking, a return to fundamentals, and going “back to basics.” Experts magnify every detail, line item, and expenditure, and then demand full-blown forecasts, protracted market research, and all-encompassing competitive analysis.
In the telescope phase, entrepreneurs bring the future closer. They dream up “the next big thing,” change the world, and make late-adopters eat their dust. Lots of money is wasted, but some crazy ideas do stick, and the world moves forward.
When telescopes work, everyone is an astronomer, and the world is full of stars. When they don’t, everyone whips out their microscopes, and the world is full of flaws. The reality is that you need both microscopes and telescopes to achieve success.
The problem is that this means gathering information that is spread among hundreds of books, magazines, and conferences. It also means talking to dozens of experts and professionals—if you can get, and afford, an audience. You could spend all your time learning and not doing. And doing, not learning to do, is the essence of entrepreneurship.
The Art of the Start alleviates this pain. My goal is to help you use your knowledge, love, and determination to create something great without getting bogged down in theory and unnecessary details. My presumption is that your goal is to change the world—not study it. If your attitude is “Cut the crap and just tell me what I need to do,” you’ve come to the right place.
You might be wondering, Who, exactly, is “you”? The reality is that “entrepreneur” is not a job title. It is the state of mind of people who want to alter the future. (It certainly isn’t limited to Silicon Valley types seeking venture capital.) Hence, this book is for people in a wide range of startup endeavors:
- guys and gals in garages creating the next great company
- brave souls in established companies bringing new products and services to market
- saints starting schools, churches, and not-for-profits
Great companies. Great divisions. Great schools. Great churches. Great not-for-profits. When it comes to the fundamentals of starting up, they are more alike than they are different. The key to their success is to survive the microscope tasks while bringing the future closer. Let’s get started.
Guy Kawasaki
Palo Alto, California
Kawasaki@garage.com
CHAPTER 1
The Art of Starting
Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.
- Hasidic saying
GIST (GREAT IDEAS FOR STARTING THINGS)
I use a top-ten list format for all my speeches, and I would love to begin this book with a top-ten list of the most important things an entrepreneur must accomplish. However, there aren’t ten—there are only five:
1. MAKE MEANING (inspired by John Doerr). The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning—to create a product or service that makes the world a better place. So your first task is to decide how you can make meaning.
2. MAKE MANTRA. Forget mission statements; they’re long, boring, and irrelevant. No one can ever remember them—much less implement them. Instead, take your meaning and make a mantra out of it. This will set your entire team on the right course.
3. GET GOING. Start creating and delivering your product or service. Think soldering irons, compilers, hammers, saws, and AutoCAD—whatever tools you use to build products and services. Don’t focus on pitching, writing, and planning.
4. DEFINE YOUR BUSINESS MODEL. No matter what kind of organization you’re starting, you have to figure out a way to make money. The greatest idea, technology, product, or service is short-lived without a sustainable business model.
5. WEAVE A MAT (MILESTONES, ASSUMPTIONS, AND TASKS). The final step is to compile three lists: (a) major milestones you need to meet; (b) assumptions that are built into your business model; and (c) tasks you need to accomplish to create an organization. This will enforce discipline and keep your organization on track when all hell breaks loose—and all hell will break loose.
MAKE MEANING
I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.
—Ludwig van Beethoven
Many books about entrepreneurship begin with a rigorous process of self-examination, asking you to determine if you are truly up to the task of starting an organization. Some typical examples are
- Can you work long hours at low wages?
- Can you deal with rejection after rejection?
- Can you handle the responsibility of dozens of employees?
The truth is, it is impossible to answer questions like this in advance, and they ultimately serve no purpose. On the one hand, talk and bravado are cheap. Saying you’re willing to do something doesn’t mean that you will do it.
On the other hand, realizing that you have doubt and trepidation doesn’t mean you won’t build a great organization. How you answer these questions now has little predictive power regarding what you’ll actually do when you get caught up in a great idea.
The truth is that no one really knows if he* is an entrepreneur until he becomes one—and sometimes not even then. There really is only one question you should ask yourself before starting any new venture:
Do I want to make meaning?
Meaning is not about money, power, or prestige. It’s not even about creating a fun place to work. Among the meanings of “meaning” are to
- Make the world a better place.
- Increase the quality of life.
- Right a terrible wrong.
- Prevent the end of something good.
Goals such as these are a tremendous advantage as you travel down the difficult path ahead. If you answer this question in the negative, you may still be successful, but it will be harder to become so because making meaning is the most powerful motivator there is.
It’s taken me twenty years to come to this understanding.
In 1983, when I started in the Macintosh Division of Apple Computer, beating IBM was our reason for existence. We wanted to send IBM back to the typewriter business holding its Selectric typewriter balls.
In 1987, our reason for existence became beating Windows and Microsoft. We wanted to crush Microsoft and force Bill Gates to get a job flipping fish at the Pike Place Market.
In 2004, I am a managing director in an early-stage venture capital firm called Garage Technology Ventures. I want to enable people to create great products, build great companies, and change the world.
The causation of great organizations is the desire to make meaning. Having that desire doesn’t guarantee that you’ll succeed, but it does mean that if you fail, at least you failed doing something worthwhile.
MAKE MANTRA
Close your eyes and think about how you will serve your customers. What kind of meaning do you see your organization making? Most people refer to this as the “Why” or mission statement of an organization.
Crafting a mission statement is usually one of the first steps entrepreneurs undertake. Unfortunately, this process is usually a painful and frustrating experience that results in exceptional mediocrity. This is almost inevitable when a large number of people are commissioned to craft something designed to make an even larger number of people (employees, shareholders, customers, and partners) happy.
The fundamental shortcoming of most mission statements is that everyone expects them to be highfalutin and all-encompassing. The result is a long, boring, commonplace, and pointless joke.* In The Mission Statement Book, Jeffrey Abrams provides 301 examples of mission statements that demonstrate that companies are all writing the same mediocre stuff. To wit, this is a partial list of the frequency with which mission statements in Abrams’s sample contained the same words:
- Best-94
- Communities-97
- Customers-211
- Excellence-77
- Leader-106
- Quality-169*
Fortune (or Forbes, in my case) favors the bold, so I’ll give you some advice that will make life easy for you: Postpone writing your mission statement. You can come up with it later when you’re successful and have lots of time and money to waste. (If you’re not successful, it won’t matter that you didn’t develop one.)
Instead of a mission statement and all the baggage that comes with it, craft a mantra for your organization. The definition of mantra is
A sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer, meditation, or incantation, such as an invocation of a god, a magic spell, or a syllable or portion of scripture containing mystical potentialities.†
What a great thing a mantra is! How many mission statements evoke such power and emotion?
The beauty of a mantra is that everyone expects it to be short and sweet. (Arguably, the world’s shortest mantra is the single Hindi word Om.) You may never have to write your mantra down, publish it in your annual report, or print it on posters. Indeed, if you do have to “enforce” your mantra in these ways, it’s not the right mantra.
Following are five examples that illustrate the power of a good mantra:
- Authentic athletic performance (Nike).‡
- Fun family entertainment (Disney).?
- Rewarding everyday moments (Starbucks).||
- Think (IBM).
- Winning is everything (Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers).
Compare the Starbucks mantra, “Rewarding everyday moments,” to the company...
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A reader (MSL quote), Indonesia
<2007-03-14 00:00>
I have never worked for any company in my life, entrepreneur from day one, and i have been starting up and running businesses for 18 years, with 5 companies in my track records (about 20 if i count the branches and business units, plus the failures!).
I have funs and enjoy this boook immensly. I love reading, and Guy is one of my favourites, from his early "Macintosh Way" (the wordings: something of "If you cut my flesh, i will always bleed seven colors", still in my ears), to the famous "RULES of the Revolutionaries". This is one of his bests.
It shows that after running garage.com, Guy got "matured" somehow and he has been really know the ins and outs of the start ups. The books teach a lot of truth, and honestly potray the situation.
I will complain that the book puts too much emphasis on the "venture capitalist" approach and less on other means of funding, (Venture Capital is not common in Indonesia, or most Asian countries). And there are too much ringing on the high tech industry.
BUT, even if that i don't agree with thoses issues, still most part of the books are very true and give a lot of pure gold advices.
I do a lot of Entrepreneurship seminars, and i know that you can not teach entrepreneurship by doing seminars or reading books as much as you can't learn to ride a bike or learn to swim by coming to a seminar. Yet, for those people who are going to do his own start up, this book can encourage and guide and enlight.
Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, those dreamers who insist to change the world and start some new business, this one is for you. Cheers, warmest regards from me at tanadisantoso-dot-com.
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Glenn Reid (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-14 00:00>
This is a truly great book. I didn't expect to get so much from it; I'm battle-hardened myself and thought I knew a lot about starting companies and thinking about product development and marketing. I'm an author myself, of two technical books (you can search for me in Amazon's author index) so I understand the process and am have pretty high standards in reading and judging books.
I've read the first 20 pages of a lot of supposedly similar books and given up on them. Time, after all, is one of the most valuable assets to an entrepreneur, and I won't have mine wasted. But with The Art of the Start I was learning and thinking on every page, and genuinely got excited about my own business by reading this book; it doesn't get much better than that.
Guy Kawasaki has a gift for getting right to the heart of an issue, in a no-nonsense way, which of course every entrpreneur needs; I'm often thinking: make your point already!
And right when you're about to call into question one of the points the author is making (and he does make some bold points that you're tempted to question) he follows it immediately with "for example..." and the examples are so compelling and clear, you immediately accede his point, change your own thinking slightly, and keep reading.
I wrote Guy Kawasaki a long email while I was on an airplane and had been reading this book, to tell him that I loved it. I normally would never do such a thing, but he points out in the book that you should always include your email address and not hide from customers, and you should answer your email, so it occurred to me that it might be okay to write to him. So I did, and he wrote back to thank me.
I've read a lot of "how-to" books on a lot of topics, from woodworking to business development, and this is one of the best ever written. I'm not sure if my review will compell you to check it out, but I thought it's worth a try. I am not one who normally recommends things, so my recommendation carries extra weight.
Get it. Read it.
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Jeff Lippincott (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-14 00:00>
Starting a small business can be overwhelming. Many people who try experience feelings of inadequacy much like high school students feel when trying to write their first term paper for English class. If you are hoping to start a business in the future, or you are in the midst of doing so now, I highly recommend you read this book. It is light, easy to read, and informative.
The content of the book is broken into five groupings:
1. Causation (think it up)
2. Articulation (write it up)
3. Activation (implement it)
4. Proliferation (monitor it & reevaluate it)
5. Obligation (be good)
In a way, I found this book to be another one on business planning and strategic planning. However, it is presented in a different way than any other book I've read on these topics. This book reads more like an authoritative guide written by someone who has already "been there" and who did not have to do a lot of research to fill in the book's content. In comparison, many of the other books I've read seem to have been written by high school students writing their first term paper. Do yourself a favor and read this book. You will be glad you did.
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Peter Hupalo (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-14 00:00>
The Art of The Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide For Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki gives new entrepreneurs an overview of topics they might need to understand.
Some of the topics surveyed in The Art of The Start include:
The Art of Positioning
The Art of Pitching
Writing A Business Plan
Bootstrapping
Recruiting
Raising Capital
Partnering
Branding
All entrepreneurs will find some of Kawasaki's advice useful. For example, he suggests making a bottom-up forecast, rather than a top-down forecast. Top-down forecasts usually predict a market size and arbitrarily assume the business will be able to capture some percentage of the market. That's not grounded in reality.
Kawasaki writes: Bootstrappers don't build top-down models. For them, top down = belly up! Instead, they build bottom-up models, starting with real-world variables such as
- Each salesperson can make ten phone calls a day that get through to a prospect
- There are 240 working days per year
- Five percent of the sales calls will convert within six months
- Each successful sale will bring in $240 worth of business
- We can bring on board five salespeople
- Ten calls/day x 240 days/year x 5% success rate x $240/sale x 5 salespeople = $144,000 in sales for the first year."
With positioning, Kawasaki says the entrepreneur should be positive and customer-centric. Kawasaki writes: "Entrepreneurship isn't war, so you don't describe your enterprise in warlike terms... Positioning is about what you do for your customers-not about what you want to become. Announcing that your organization is 'the leading company' is egocentric, not customer-centric. It's also impractical: How can you prove you're the leader? How can you prevent another organization from declaring that it is the leader-just like you have?"
Kawasaki, a renown public speaker, also gives some solid advice about giving presentations and pitching. He suggests you videotape yourself and says, "If you can watch it without being embarrassed, you're ready to go."
Overall, The Art of The Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide For Anyone Starting Anything is a good overview of topics you'll find useful in starting your own entrepreneurial venture.
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