The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company Paperback – April 1, 2012

Why do I call The Startup Owner's Manual "Disruption Entrepreneurship?" Well...I was a student at the local college, and I was preparing to graduate with a degree in Business Administration with a specialization in Entrepreneurship, and then the college suggested that I participate in the business plan competition. I submitted my business plan and a little while later I was subsequently nominated to compete in the business plan competition. As I was writing the business plan, I must say that I got advice to add "creative elements" to it. Honestly, was the business plan supposed to be accurate or just to make some people happy? As Steve Blank says ..."business plans don't survive first contact with the customer."After listening to the audiobook the Lean Startup, the Lean Startup raised some interesting points, and when I pressed my professor about my doubts before the competition, I got a lot of reassurances. After subsequently getting 3rd place in the competition, I sought to expand what I had heard about in the Lean Startup. I realized that my product concept was so large and encompassing, that it could be applied to various markets, but which market? How should it look? How do I know I'm doing it right? I had so many questions, and the textbooks simply didn't suggest a good route to go. They didn't talk of Customer Development, or the Business Model Canvas. The big question is who are my customers? This is where The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company comes into the equation. This book shows you new ways to go about developing your product, and teaches entrepreneur's the right way to product development. If I had only known about this a few years ago, I might have saved a lot of money in unnecessary product development costs. As I build my next round of prototypes, I feel I have a better chance at success, as I can demonstrate what the customers want. This book is a must have!Here's some more content of the book:As Steve Blank says "There Are No Facts Inside Your Building, So Get Outside."(Rule No. 1) Go out and interview the customer. Find out what they want. Don't wait until the last minute. You simply don't want to build a product, based upon wrong assumptions. That's simply a waste of time and money.Rule No. 6 of the Customer Development Manifesto also says: Design Experiments and Test to Validate Hypotheses. Essentially, you create an experiment to validate your product or target market. In doing so, you'll learn how to make your product better or where to pivot.These are just a few examples of what's not talked about in the traditional textbooks.

I highly recommend this book if you're new to business creation. It guides yo through the stages of startup development by turning your hypotheses into facts. By the end of the book, you'll have a thorough business plan written up with a newfound business ready to go. Just read the book from front to back and take plenty of notes.

The content is fantastic, it makes the process of advising startups so much simpler. I intend to adopt it for a class I teach, and the kindle version is incredibly cheap. Thanks Bob & Steve for providing a textbook for 1/15th of the cost of normal textbooks!My problem is that the kindle version does not have page numbers, despite what is stated on the amazon page. This means it cannot be easily used in a classroom where some will have the book and others will have the kindle version. I will require all students to buy the paper version because of this.The kindle issues are worse than that, however. For some reason, they decided to create three versions of their textbook, a Strategy overview, another for Web-based startups, and a third Physical startups. This means there is no version that perfectly parallels the paper version. This is a big pain if you want to read about both physical and online. So if you have read the web-based startup section and you then want to learn how to apply it to physical, you have to reread the whole book to find the key differences they apply to physical startups.It is even worse than that, since in numerous places in the web-based section they are forced to reference material that was written for physical startups. Othertimes, they inexplicably include a long section on physical startups in the web-based startup version of the book. For example, there is a long passage for physical startups regarding Get/Keep/Grow that is in the web-based section of the kindle version.It is ironic that the authors preach so heavily about not wasting time designing a product or features that customers may not want, yet that is what they have done with the kindle version. I don't need special versions to assist me in navigating a book, I don't need their constant advice not to "implement all this or even process it in one sitting." Yes, I know it is a long book, but any competent reader knows when to skim or skip what doesn't apply to their situation.Solution: New version that perfectly represents paper copy with page numbers, or, add this as a fourth version that is included with the other three.

For all of those reviewers that note that they are in a startup and don't have time for this process, and that the checklists are boring or tedious, this book is EXACTLY what you need. We all have spent far too much time working "in" our business, not "on" our business, and substituting our instincts and gut feel for data driven decisions that may make the difference of 10x or more in our valuations. Having been involved in several early stage companies, I continue to be amazed at the deltas in success between those who have an agile plan for market feedback and product development and those where the founder has visions of IPO Ferraris and they believe they're the second coming of Bezos or Jobs. The classic MBA doesn't work in a startup - but that also doesn't mean that basic and fundamental business elements are ignored or that the formula to success is somehow magically different. There is a path to success, there is a formula, there is an accepted and proven approach - and this book has it well documented.If you are in leadership, investment or management teams of early stage ventures, you need to read this book. Period. Yes - that means you VC guy or Ruby on Rails genius. You will have better perspective and more realistic expectations once you do so, and if you follow the formulas outlined in the book.