A worthy and informative, if familiar, guide to starting a tech company.
A debut business manual shares tips the writer picked up as a tech entrepreneur.
Friedman’s Silicon Valley experience amounted to only three years, but during that time he successfully founded and served as the CEO of his own startup, Loopd, eventually selling it to a larger corporation for millions of dollars. That may seem like a pretty quick turnaround—“It was indeed a best-case scenario,” admits the author in his preface—but brevity is sort of his thing: “This book is short, because your time is limited. My hope is that it can serve as a quick reference of insights from someone who has been there.” After relating his own story—including an itemized timeline of Loopd’s history—Friedman offers insights in the key areas one should consider when developing a startup. From planning on how to grow the company—which includes everything from formulating a business model to “subordinating arrogance and myopia”—to considering various exit strategies, the author breaks down the necessary steps while delivering anecdotes from his personal experience. Friedman presents a nice, round 50 rules in all, divided by category and stage and each with a helpful “months from start” number to let readers know just how early they need to begin thinking about various items. Each section ends with numbered “takeaway” lists, and the author helpfully includes a glossary of relevant startup terminology in the back of the book. Friedman’s prose is direct and accessible, even when he discusses dry business concepts, such as designing a dependable lead-generation method: “For a startup targeting major corporations, the most strategic task is finding the right person inside a company with the authority to buy your products. In our case, we were looking for early adopters willing to buy new, unproven products with a five-figure price tag over the phone.” While there is nothing in this guide that is not available in other entrepreneur-penned manuals, Friedman’s presentation is clean and easily digestible. While no book can guarantee readers a multimillion-dollar sale, the author’s advice will surely be of use to those who find themselves with hot ideas and the will to get them off the ground.
A worthy and informative, if familiar, guide to starting a tech company.Pub Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0245-8
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Rolling Thunder Ventures, LLC
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes...
A wake-up call about caffeine from a committed and self-interested author.
Formerly a newspaper journalist in Russia who consumed enormous amounts of coffee and cigarettes, Kushner relocated to New York City during the early '90s. Shortly thereafter, she learned she suffered from Celiac disease, a genetic disorder that was perhaps exacerbated by products containing caffeine. She researched caffeine substitutes, none of them suiting her tastes. And she discovered that certain substitutes contain gluten, another substance that those with Celiac cannot tolerate. Thus, she "invented" soy coffee and uses this book as her marketing platform. It's frequently informative, though, once the the text moves beyond pure publicity. For instance, she mentions that England's King Charles II attempted to shutter coffeehouses in 1675 because men tended to neglect their families while staying out to consume caffeine. Widespread protest, though, defeated the ban; the Boston Tea Party of 1773 resulted in the consumption of coffee as a patriotic duty; the world's first espresso machine began making noise in France in 1882; Maxwell House coffee is named after a Nashville hotel; US coffee sales boomed during the 1920s thanks to Prohibition; the US imported 70 percent of the world’s coffee crop at the beginning of WWII; Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle in 1971. These are just a few pieces of coffee trivia the author offers. She also briefly discusses the history of the American addiction to caffeine, explaining the chemistry of the substance, listing specific health threats (heart disease, central-nervous-system disorders, ulcers, cancer) and mapping out specific routes to end dependency. Unfortunately, though, the style interferes with the substance, as the tone is often shrill and alarmist. An appendix titled "Make a Difference!" is the call to action here, urging readers to petition the FDA for fuller disclosure among coffee manufacturers of specific product caffeine levels.
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes soporific.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9747582-0-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An adequate guide for running high-performance workgroups within a corporate setting, but far from a guaranteed formula for...
A satisfactory business study confirming the old business saw that 10% of the people do 90% of the work.
According to Annunzio's analysis, only 10% of elite information workers work in high performance-workgroups. The remaining 90%? Apparently they labor away as modern-day Bob Cratchits, in environments that neither demand nor deliver optimal performance. Ebullient accounts of the ideal workplace are nothing new in business nonfiction, nor are the lugubrious tales of moribund organizations. The author rarely notes here, though, anything we haven't heard a million times before from Tom Peters, Steven Covey, or even Donald Trump. Her maxims are boilerplate business clichés: value people; optimize critical thinking; seize opportunities. But basing a formula for business success on such bland principles is problematic, since they are so vague as to be meaningless. Do companies fail because they neglect to do such things? Most failures had nothing to do with workgroup functioning; instead, they stemmed from lack of foresight and, more commonly, simple bad luck. Nonetheless, Annunzio does proffer good advice for companies that wish to maximize the performance of their workgroups. First, identify those that are performing at a high level, those that can provide evidence of profit/revenue growth along with product, service, or process innovation. Second, work on bringing average groups up to maximum performance. More importantly, avoid destructive behaviors such as micromanagement, bureaucratic interference, resource and information hoarding, politics, and control. She also makes the astute—and cost-saving—observation that before hiring high-priced consultants to solve business problems, companies might consider consulting their own employees, who are more likely to know the answers.
An adequate guide for running high-performance workgroups within a corporate setting, but far from a guaranteed formula for business success.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2004
ISBN: 0-59184-060-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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