Startup Book Club

Best Business Book of 2012

admin — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 09:50:42 +0000

Charisma is not just something that certain lucky people are born with. It’s a collection of traits that can be developed through deliberate practice.

How can wiggling your toes make you a better listener?
Why did exposing his vulnerabilities help Bill Clinton become the most powerful man in the world?
What are the secrets to making a great first impression?

Charismatic behaviors can be learned, and this book will give you the tools to develop yours.

“A Life Changer”
“One of the most valuable books I have ever read”
More Reviews

The Charisma Myth:

How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

by Olivia Fox Cabane

Accidental Genius: You Are What You Focus On

admin — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:30:48 +0000

The things that matter most to you can easily get lost among the details of daily existence.

Regularly writing about your priorities and goals forces you to focus your attention on them.

Where you focus your attention defines who you become.

Accidental Genius:

Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content

by Mark Levy

Getting to Plan B: Without a Dashboard You’re Flying Blind

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:30:51 +0000

While many of the assumptions that your business model relies on can be validated by examining competitors and analogs, the leaps of faith must be measured and examined regularly.

A dashboard allows you to focus on the biggest risks in your business model—the unproven assumptions—so you can correct course before you hit the ground.

Your dashboard should contain a specific metric to test the validity of each hypothesis in your plan.

Now, validating your business model becomes a matter of testing and proving each hypothesis as quickly and cheaply as possible.

If each assumption proves to be true, it’s time to pull the trigger on scaling up. If not, it’s time for plan B.

Getting to Plan B:

Breaking Through to a Better Business Model

by John Mullins and Randy Komisar

The Knowing Doing Gap: Talk is Cheap

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:30:10 +0000

Knowing what you SHOULD be doing is just the first step.

Knowledge is just talk until it is translated into action.

A company can bridge the gap between knowing and doing by encouraging and rewarding action over words.

Making a decision of what to do is the beginning, not the end. It’s the implementation that matters.

Fear is the enemy of action. Fear based management discourages taking action.

Action is not possible without mistakes. Learn from mistakes and failure, don’t punish them.

Measure only what matters—the things that are tied to your core values, your business model, and your goals—so that you can identify and reward the right activities.

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The Knowing-Doing Gap:

How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action

by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Rober I. Sutton

Buy from Amazon
UK – DE

The Founder’s Dilemmas: Selecting Cofounders

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:00:34 +0000

Takeaway:
It is extremely difficult and costly to undo a bad cofounder decision.

The highest success rates are among cofounders who have worked together previously.

Founding with friends and family can be the most harmonious when it works, but there is a very real chance of damaging the existing relationship AND the business when things go wrong.

Additional cofounders improve your chances of success, but increases complexity and tensions.

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The Founder’s Dilemmas:

Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

by Noam Wasserman

Buy from Amazon

The Founder’s Dilemmas: Rich or King?

admin — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:30:13 +0000

Takeaway:

A founder must repeatedly make a choice between optimizing for building value (rich) or maintaining control (king).

Attempting to optimize decisions for both control and value is likely to put them both out of reach.

Your best options in selecting co-founders, early hires, funding, preferred rate of growth, and even your type of business are all determined by this trade-off.

Understanding your motivations for starting a business in the first place will allow you to consistently make the right decisions.

The Founder’s Dilemmas:

Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

by Noam Wasserman

Business Model Generation

admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:31:37 +0000

Business Model Generation provides a visual tool and framework for prototyping, experimenting with, and evaluating the impact of changes on all aspects of your business model.

Key Takeaways:

Business model innovation can be just as significant as product innovation, but is rarely taken advantage of.

There is no “right” business model— your businesses model must adapt as technology, competitors, and customer behaviors evolve.

Businesses often have hidden but crucial sets of customers with very different needs.

Business models are best explained to others by telling a story that exposes one component at a time.

The Business Model Canvas uses visual thinking to expose relationships between business model components and shows the impact of changes across the entire business model picture at once.

Business Model Generation:

A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Startup Book Club is Live

admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:58:56 +0000

Welcome to the new Startup Book Club (formerly the Startup Daily).
The email mailing list is now live, however the web site still has very limited functionality. Please bear with me over the coming days as the transition to the new domain name is completed.

To access the archives (or to get a taste of what’s to come), you may continue to view the old site at thestartupdaily.com

If you have already signed up for the Startup Daily, you don’t need to sign up again for the Startup Book Club.

Until the transition is completed, please continue to contact me using karl@thestartupdaily.com