Customer Reviews

Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building a Successful Company from Scratch

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, for a multitude of reasons. Ken details the entrepreneur's issues when bootstrapping a company quite well (we bootstrapped our company also, and ran into many of the same problems). I enjoyed reading more about how Ken FELT while the company was growing. As an employee, you don't often know how the CEO feels about anything (Ken is good at controlling his emotions). Turns out he had similar feelings most entrepreneur's do when starting a company.

The book is engrossing and at times reads like a story. Sometimes it's hard to believe, but I know it happened because I had the fortune of living through part of it. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to be successful at building a company. I'm convinced that the "Banner Blue Way" is the way to run a company and run a short-term project. Many companies later, I'm still running things the way Ken would have done it.

Kenneth Hess was the founder and President of Banner Blue Software which he took from a raw "bootstrap" startup and build it into an established company with a multimillion dollar annual sales record. Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building A Successful Company From Scratch is the author's true story of successfully creating his viable business from scratch. Filled with risks, rewards, lessons learned the hard way and the fruits of up-close and personal inspiration, Bootstrap is an inspiring read filled with the wisdom that comes from earned experience. Strongly recommended reading for all entrepreneurs aspiring towards achieving corporate success with their own business enterprises, regardless of services furnished or products produced.

An interesting book that would have been more useful had it delved into some of the 'mistakes' a bit more. Hess makes it all sound so simple, a straight, clear path that was always obvious to him. Any mistakes (like new products started and abandonded) are dealt with in a very cursory way. As the owner of a bootstrap software company I was hoping for more insight and to learn a thing or two. I was entertained (athough slightly irritated by some of it) but would not really recommend it other than as a bit of light reading. I bought this book because of the rave reviews on the Amazon site, but would have to say that overall I was disappointed. All those people who provided 5 star reviews clearly need to get out a bit more and read something of substance for a change!

Wish I would have read this book when I started my business.
Presents logical plan to act, rather than react, to the problems
or situations that a new business owner must confront to succeed.
A true guide to making a new business work

A story that talks as much about the satisfactions, disappointments, and inter-personality issues (both people-wise and corporate-wise) involved in starting a business as it does about strategy, finance, product development, and marketing. I found it very enjoyable to read and essentially filled cover to cover with insights and lessons learned. I would highly recommended it. Read other books to learn the details of running a business; Read this one to expose yourself to one man's hard-earned wisdom.

This is a thoroughly insightful chronology of the author's journey from employee to technology start-up entrepreneur, and back around again (though substantially wealthier). Business tactics, mistakes, family life, and attendant emotions are the main topics.

I'd like to operate my own business someday and I've dog-eared numerous pages of this book to refer back to for insights like:

"A product's sales volume is like a rolling snowball. As the snowball tumbles along, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. In a similar fashion, having a higher sales volume at one retailer makes it all that much easier to obtain distribution at yet another retailer, further increasing sales. Higher volumes also make it more cost-effective to do sales promotions, which in turn increase sales. A collection of [mediocre] products would not have this snowball effect, but one single, strong product would."

Bootstrap: Lessons Learned in Building a Successful Company from Scratch by Ken Hess, a graduate of Stanford University (BS Engineering) and a Harvard University (MBA), is one of the best books out there for teaching entrepreneurship to nascent technology and creative entrepreneurs. While the book is a few years old now, this is true even today, especially considering the current financial environment, which is showing signs of a down market for either angel capital or venture capital for most start-up companies. Depending on the depth and length of the downturn, boostrapping will become an even more important subject, and thus I feel its important for me as an entrepreneurship educator to learn more about this strategy and find out who has written about it. Fortunately, I've had Ken's book on my radar for the last five years. If anyone has other books they can recommend to me as well, please do let me know -- or let us know. But as of yet I haven't found a better one than Ken's for what I'm trying to accomplish in the classroom.

I have been teaching entrepreneurship to MSc, Ph.D. and UG4 students at the University of Edinburgh now through the Edinburgh-Stanford Link programme for 4 years now. I have always recommended the book for optional reading, and for my second semester course for digital design MScs called "The Digital Marketplace", I have made the book required. In fact, I even invited Ken over to guest speak in my course! Fortunately he accepted :-). Because of the nature of these (student) ventures and the fact that most if not all will need to be bootstrapped, I feel it important to give the students a well rounded view, and a thorough case of how someone has done it. The book is also human and entertaining as well, which makes it not only a bit more fun but a bit more real too.

Ken combines real world experience with sound logic in presenting a story and a how-to in his book. I would highly recommend it to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship educators as well. I especially and fond of the chapter on Strategy and Marketing. His explanation of equity and growth is especially valuable and needs to be considered. However, the sections on human resources such as hiring and firing and organization structure are good as well. Its a great book for first-time and nascent entrepreneurs as most of my students are, for it gives a good overview of the various components of a business.

-Michael Clouser, Edinburgh-Stanford Link, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Hess writes a wonderful story about his experiences of starting, growing, and selling a successful software company. The narrative intertwines his family life into the never-ending responsibilities of entrepreneurialism. The book is full of "lessons learned", although don't expect this to be a step-by-step roadmap for bootstrapping a company. This book serves as a testament of what can be achieved through planning, motivation, leadership, and passion. If you are creative and desire control and freedom, then this book will get you excited.

The 10 year story of starting a company scratch with no outside money, and taking it to US$17/million annual revenue and 80 employees over the span of 10 years.

Lots of great advice for any owner-CEO, especially in the high-tech software field.

A page turner for anyone thinking of starting a high-tech software company (me), or working on high-tech marketing or product development.

The book won't help you at all if you are looking to open a company. It is a long an uninteresting story of this guy's life.