Entrepreneurs who envision going public will find value on every page.
An expert delivers advice on how to launch an IPO in this debut guide.
With a strong insider’s perspective, Cakebread, the CFO of Yext, examines IPOs up, down, and every which way. His advice starts at a critical juncture that enthusiastic entrepreneurs may overlook, sometimes to their regret. The author posits that while an IPO is the best long-term strategy for most companies, that’s not true for all of them. He outlines the variables that should factor into a decision to go public. He draws from his experiences and the lessons he learned in leading three startup tech companies to successful IPOs (Pandora, Yext, and Salesforce). He explains why going public in 2017 was the most important step in transforming Yext from a fledgling company to the nearly $2.3 billion behemoth it is today. Business owners who decide on an IPO will find a useful toolbox and instruction manual here. As the title promises, this is a playbook rather than a staid text. Cakebread lays out step by step the actions that will lead to the formation of a winning IPO and cautions about traps to watch out for. Some are surprising: “Along the way, you suddenly realize that the only difference between an IPO road show and your prior rounds of venture funding is that now some of the people you are meeting are potential enemies.” Before going public, he says, if a venture capitalist didn’t like an offering, he simply walked away. But in the public markets, “people are looking not just to bet on you, but perhaps to bet against you.” Few books examine the IPO model from all angles. Cakebread’s wide-ranging analysis uses bullet points and questions to prompt readers into honest assessments. At one point, he asks: “Is the company ready to make the investments in time and money to prepare itself to go public?” The author stresses the importance of creating chemistry in the company’s management. Time is a crucial factor, and Cakebread is a stickler about it. He tells readers that if a recruiter says a company is planning an IPO in less than nine months, it’s a red flag to “run away” because it takes a minimum of 18 months to prepare for one. The appendix includes every deadline needed to offer an IPO and keep it successful.
Entrepreneurs who envision going public will find value on every page.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73395-912-4
Page Count: 211
Publisher: Silicon Valley Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.
A program of cash-management techniques for aspiring entrepreneurs, aimed at a minority readership.
At the beginning of this business book, Mariga reflects on the birth of her daughter, Florence, and on the depressing prospect of returning to her corporate job and missing some of her baby’s early moments. She realized that she “wanted to show Florence…that I could, that she could, that anyone could be anything they wanted to be in this world.” To that end, she wanted to start her own business, and she “wanted to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses that provide opportunities for others.” In a sentiment reflected by others she’s interviewed, she says that she wanted to strengthen her family legacy, so she founded her own accounting firm. She paints a vivid picture of the hardscrabble early days of other minority business owners like herself, the child of an African American mother and a Chinese father who also had a family accounting business. She and others were “all hustling to acquire clients and build our businesses…and most of us had absolutely nothing to show for it.” She was inspired by Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First money management system, and the bulk of her book is devoted to an explanation of how to make this system work for minority business enterprises. (Michalowicz provides a foreword to the book.) One of the primary goals of Profit First is to build “a self-sustaining, debt-free company,” so a large part of Mariga’s work deals with the details of managing finances, building and abiding by budgets, and handling the swings of emotion that occur every step of the way. As sharply focused as these insights are, the author’s recollections of her own experiences are more rewarding, as when she tells readers of her brief time as a cut-rate accountant and learning that it was a mistake to try to compete on price. These stories, as well as financing specifics and clear encouragements (“Small changes and adjustments accumulate. Over time, they will lead you to your goal”), will make this book invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds.
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7357759-0-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: The Avant-Garde Project, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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