A comprehensive, easy-to-read manual for people launching new ventures.
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A Silicon Valley CEO–turned–company adviser uses the Socratic method to help readers clarify their ambitions, circumstances, and capabilities.
Daglow begins each of six major sections in this debut business book with questions that address such topics as defining projects, building teams, locating work sites, securing funding, managing risks, and thinking long-term. He asks readers to write thoughtful answers to these queries before reading his commentary, which is filled with anecdotes, observations, and tips drawn from his experience leading video game makers Electronic Arts and Broderbund, founding game developer Stormfront Studios, and advising new and established companies. The format mirrors his previous volume for video game designers, but the questions and comments here are designed to apply broadly to anyone with a “Dream Project.” That said, they’re particularly relevant for tech-based startups. He explores issues related to new products and services, retail shops, home-based solo operations, and new initiatives within large organizations. But although Daglow addresses readers’ dreams, he’s no Pollyanna; he also warns readers to conserve cash, avoid foolish risks, and not neglect family, and his watchwords are “balance and common sense.” He calls his approach “The Passion-Process-Product Method,” which considers an entrepreneur’s motivating passion to be foundational, and he offers practical steps toward achieving a profitable product. No single guide for entrepreneurs can cover everything, but Daglow’s touches on many essential startup challenges. The author also excels at probing internal issues in a company, discussing how one assesses commitment and prepares for failure. His prose shows a clarity of thought and authority borne of experience. Daglow suggests that readers “Think of this book as a private discussion between you and me.” Then he adds, “Wait, check that. Think of this book as a private discussion between you and you.” Those who combine introspection with his seasoned counsel will gain not only a tutorial on business realities, but also insight into themselves.
A comprehensive, easy-to-read manual for people launching new ventures.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9967815-4-1
Page Count: 523
Publisher: Sausalito Media
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Possibly inspired by the letters Cleary has received as a children's author, this begins with second-grader Leigh Botts' misspelled fan letter to Mr. Henshaw, whose fictitious book itself derives from the old take-off title Forty Ways W. Amuse a Dog. Soon Leigh is in sixth grade and bombarding his still-favorite author with a list of questions to be answered and returned by "next Friday," the day his author report is due. Leigh is disgruntled when Mr. Henshaw's answer comes late, and accompanied by a set of questions for Leigh to answer. He threatens not to, but as "Mom keeps nagging me about your dumb old questions" he finally gets the job done—and through his answers Mr. Henshaw and readers learn that Leigh considers himself "the mediumest boy in school," that his parents have split up, and that he dreams of his truck-driver dad driving him to school "hauling a forty-foot reefer, which would make his outfit add up to eighteen wheels altogether. . . . I guess I wouldn't seem so medium then." Soon Mr. Henshaw recommends keeping a diary (at least partly to get Leigh off his own back) and so the real letters to Mr. Henshaw taper off, with "pretend," unmailed letters (the diary) taking over. . . until Leigh can write "I don't have to pretend to write to Mr. Henshaw anymore. I have learned to say what I think on a piece of paper." Meanwhile Mr. Henshaw offers writing tips, and Leigh, struggling with a story for a school contest, concludes "I think you're right. Maybe I am not ready to write a story." Instead he writes a "true story" about a truck haul with his father in Leigh's real past, and this wins praise from "a real live author" Leigh meets through the school program. Mr. Henshaw has also advised that "a character in a story should solve a problem or change in some way," a standard juvenile-fiction dictum which Cleary herself applies modestly by having Leigh solve his disappearing lunch problem with a burglar-alarmed lunch box—and, more seriously, come to recognize and accept that his father can't be counted on. All of this, in Leigh's simple words, is capably and unobtrusively structured as well as valid and realistic. From the writing tips to the divorced-kid blues, however, it tends to substitute prevailing wisdom for the little jolts of recognition that made the Ramona books so rewarding.
Pub Date: Aug. 22, 1983
ISBN: 143511096X
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1983
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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