Book description
Get the real guidance you need to create and build your first startup company from founders who have been there many times before.
The first run printing of The Startup Playbook SOLD OUT! So, we revised, expanded, and improved this second edition, including a new foreword by Brad Feld, author of Venture Deals.
We still give our personal, how-to guide for building your startup from the ground up. You'll find a collection of the major lessons and shortcuts we've learned that will shift the odds in your favor. We're sharing our tips, secrets, and advice in a frank, founder-to-founder discussion with you.
We make no bones about our bias. We're on your side, the founder's side. While venture capitalists, investors, and accelerators/incubators can add great value in the startup ecosystem, this book isn't about their points of view. We'll tell you where our interests as founders diverge from those on the other side of the table—investors, bankers, advisors, board members, and others—and what to do when that happens.
The Startup Playbook is not a recipe, it's not a template, it's not a list of tasks to do. It's our insider's guide to starting a company and running it successfully in those critical early months. Between us, we've started over a dozen high-tech software companies and raised over $500 million in investment capital. We've acquired over thirty-five companies, had three of our startups go public, sold six of them, and we made billions of dollars for shareholders. We've also invested in over eighty startups, advised and mentored over two hundred companies and actively worked with venture capitalists (VCs), incubators, and accelerators to help launch many other new startups.
We've had plenty of failures, too. And we've probably learned more from those than from the successes. We share those lessons as well.
The Startup Playbook is full of our advice, guidance, do's, and don'ts from our years of experience as founders many times. We want to share our hard-earned knowledge with you to make success easier for you to achieve.
"This book is extraordinarily fresh and exciting. In an accessible, straight talk fashion, this book is a manual, and an inspiration. The Startup Playbook is smart and avoids the 'I am so smart' over-writing endemic to the genre. Read this as it is presented. You'll be doing yourself a tremendous favor."
—Amazon Reviewer
Table of contents
- Cover
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I: I Want to Start a Company
-
Part II: Getting Off the Ground
- Chapter 5: How Do I Know If My Idea Is Good or Not?
- Chapter 6: Vetting Your Vision
- Chapter 7: Product-Market Fit
- Chapter 8: If You Build It, They Will Come
- Chapter 9: Your Market
- Chapter 10: Money—Getting It and Making It
- Chapter 11: Getting Help
- Chapter 12: Pulling the Founding Team Together
- Chapter 13: Equity Splits
- Chapter 14: Operating as a Founding Team
- Chapter 15: How Do I Form My Company?
- Chapter 16: Finance and Human Resources
- Part III: Funding Your Startup
-
Part IV: Running Your Company
- Chapter 23: How Do I Build and Deliver a Great Product?
- Chapter 24: Making Your Customer Successful
- Chapter 25: How to Get Customers
- Chapter 26: Your Marketing Approach
- Chapter 27: Sales and Distribution Strategy
- Chapter 28: You Don't Run Your Company, Your Culture Does
- Chapter 29: Hiring and Managing Your Team
- Chapter 30: Scaling the Company
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- About the Authors
- Index
- End User License Agreement
Product information
- Title: The Startup Playbook, 2nd Edition
- Author(s):
- Release date: July 2020
- Publisher(s): Wiley
- ISBN: 9781119708513
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