Elegant Entrepreneur

The founder of MissNowMrs.com shares her insights on building and sustaining a successful business in this debut entrepreneurship book.

At 25, Tate, a top saleswoman for a large medical company, leapt to entrepreneurship, creating MissNowMrs, a site that streamlines the name-change process that she endured after getting married. Noting that her startup “developed at the same dizzying pace as my learning curve,” Tate intends this guide to “tell you all the things I wish I had known before I founded a company.” In 12 chapters, she outlines what she sees as the key steps in a startup’s life cycle, from testing the viability of the product or service (she provides an “Innovation Gauntlet” flowchart to aid in that process) and conducting business planning (pitch decks and SWOT— Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats—analysis are among the tools explained) to overcoming setbacks (including figuring out your refund strategy since “there is always a ‘percent dissatisfied’ ”). Each chapter ends with bullet-point “takeaways,” a further reading list, and a “How It Feels” section, with Tate offering tips on handling the emotional stresses of entrepreneurship, noting that “the concept of ‘no grit, no pearl’ applies…setbacks and competitors ‘irritate’ you into becoming a better entrepreneur.” She also includes inspirational quotes from businesswomen, including Ivanka Trump and Oprah Winfrey, and discusses how entrepreneurship is particularly empowering for women, allowing a better work/life balance, noting that her own son is now her “favorite startup.” In her introduction to this book, Tate defines “elegant” as “insights (right brain) that provide pleasingly ingenious and simple concepts.” While she is specifically referring to valuable entrepreneurial ideas, this term also applies to her overall primer. Tate provides helpful encapsulations of potentially dry and/or intimidating business topics (including pitch decks, Porter Five Forces Analysis, etc.) and an array of succinct stories highlighting her moxie and missteps, including using Twitter as the “backdoor” to reach an elusive potential partner as well as having to exit a flawed partnership that she ventured into beyond MissNowMrs. Tate’s female focus feels a bit wedged into this narrative, however, since her advice is largely applicable to both genders.

A well-styled, illuminating startup guide.