An effective, single-minded primer on maximizing profit when exiting a business.
A précis on successfully selling a startup.
Iseri, the founder of health-tech company SwipeSense, and Achler, a founding partner of MATH Venture Partners, focus on helping younger entrepreneurs sell their businesses in this concise and well-organized debut book, which provides readers with a thorough, well-organized plan of action using the “FAIR framework,” which defines and examines the “Fit, Alignment, Integration, and Rationale” at the heart of the relationship between a startup’s founders and its acquirers. Its accessible, highly readable format seems specifically geared to fostering a sense of agency, moving from anecdotes regarding specific, real-life sales to philosophical questions about who to trust in what can be a cutthroat environment. The book is effectively anchored by dual forewords; James Jack, head of UBS Global Wealth Management, praises the authors for their focus on training entrepreneurs to have a long-term, realistic perspective on one of the most important events in their business lives, and entrepreneur and venture capitalist Brad Feld considers the work to be a sort of sequel to his own treatise on funding startups. Together, they provide a sense of gravitas to the work and give impressive credit to its authors for their targeted strategy of finding trustworthy partners, maximizing value, and looking toward future deals. Ultimately, this book provides plenty of useful advice for budding entrepreneurs, with negotiation tips and guides for organizing one’s finances taking center stage. Throughout, Iseri and Achler make clear that achieving the highest returns is their primary goal; in the opening pages they note, “We all know that you’re supposed to focus on your customers and your team and not worry about the exit, but let’s face it: we all do it.” As such, the work may disappoint readers who might be expecting a work that treats customers in a more holistic manner. However, the book does point out that entrepreneurs should be cleareyed about their goals and potential outcomes, which helps to ground the work.
An effective, single-minded primer on maximizing profit when exiting a business.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2599-0
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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