Customer Reviews

Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company with Almost No Money

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is probably the worst edited book I have ever read. Every second page a sentence with a missing verb or something equally important. Then there are the "missing or misplaced quotation marks. Finally, many sentences have a mysterious, comma dropped into them. All this brings reading to a halt as you stop to figure out what the author is trying to say.

Honestly, how much would it have cost to hire a grad student in English Lit to read it over?

In terms of the content, it was less than impressive. This book borrows ideas heavily from Paul Hawken's Growing a Business and Amar Bhide's articles in Inc magazine. But the book never acknowledges either writer. Instead the author tries to come across as if all this is new and original material.

Here is his advice in a nutshell:

Before investing any money into your startup, make a list of your proposed products features (before it exists), and then call 200 potential customers to ask if they'd buy such a product.

If it's affirmative, then have the product made and start selling it via telephone from your kitchen table.

Don't spend any money on anything until you have enough sales for positive cashflow.

That's it.

My wife got me this book for XMAS thinking it would help. It didn't. It can be distilled down to two points everyone already knows:

* Selling is job #1 in a startup. Forget about every other aspect of the business until you have a steady stream of sales.

* Don't take on any fixed overhead until the sales are achieved.

Thanks for the clarification, guys.

*yawn*

After reading a few of the other reviews for this book, I had to leave my own. First of all in response to the complaint about this book not being about "online businesses", this book is about starting a company without any outside investors, no angels, using only your own cash and whatever loan you could squeeze from the bank (otherwise known as "bootstrapping"). This book was not marketed as a book about online businesses so I don't understand where such an expectation could come from. I mean, just read the title. However, many of the examples in the book involve people who have online businesses and I found those examples to be interesting and illustrative of the points that were made in the book.

We come from a background of very little business experience, but a lot of experience with technology. A lot of our business education has been through trial and error. If I had read this book earlier I would have avoided a lot of those errors.

I haven't read Inc a lot or a lot of other business books so I don't know if the information in this book was recycled from those, but that is irrelevant to me. I only care if this book is a good one and in my opinion, it is.

All the other books I have bought on starting and growing a tech business spent too many pages on how to get venture capital, how to find investors, how to please investors, how to solve problems with investors, etc. We have none of those problems. This was the first book that adressed the exact problems that we have had - about 10 problems that have caused us a lot of headache - that we would have avoided if we had read this book earlier. The book offered solutions that I had not thought of but wish I had. From my own experience with the problems that this book warns new business owners about, I think the advice in this book is astute.

So, in conclusion, this book was everything I've been looking for. It is perfect for me because it taught me a lot of things I've needed to know.

I was really disappointed by this book. Basically, the book is an attempt to cash in on the Inc magazine article from a few years ago. Many books published these days have the same origins in an article. Go to Inc site and read the article for free instead of buying the book which is basically the article and a ton of filler fluff.

Don't waste you money on this one. The Rob Adams book A Good hard Kick in the A** is a lot better.

Greg Giantforte has a different take on starting up a business. His advice is not to first build the mousetrap, but to call a bunch of potential customers. If you have an idea for a business Greg's suggestion is to ask people:

"Would they buy a better mousetrap?"
"How would they use the mousetrap?"
"What features do they want in a mousetrap?"
"How much would they pay for the mousetrap?"

By spending a couple weeks doing market research before developing a product you have a much better idea exactly what customers want and what they would pay. If you don't find enough interest you've only lost a couple weeks, instead of months and thousands of dollars developing the mousetrap.

Bootstrapping Your Business: Start And Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money by Greg Gianforte and Marcus Gibson is a quick read, packed with lots of good ideas.

I have been fascinated by out Paul Graham's thought that cheaper computers means startups are much cheaper. This trend continues to accelerate for example Google recently announced App Engine as a service to reduce operating costs for Web startups.

If you are interested in starting up your own business then check out Bootstrapping Your Business.

This book is perfect for the person looking to start a new business. It is an introduction to the concept of bootstraping, not a step by step guide to starting a business. If you need a step by step guide to starting a business, you probably need more help than you can get from a book anyways. After reading this book, I used the concept of bootstrapping to start my own business that would have other wise been out of my reach. The book teaches a thought process outside of the traditional business approach, not only to starting a business, but for running a successful business for years to come. The review about the book not having any applicable information about running an online business, is way off. That guy missed the point of the book, this concept can be applied to any business. I highly recommend this book.

I am surprised to see so many people think highly of this book. I have a startup for a new software product and am trying to bootstrap (to raise VC money you still need paying clients).
I read this book some months back and was disappointed. Two false things stuck out even now:

1) dont prototype, pre-sell your idea. This may work for service type companies, but may not work for products. Why? as you build the prototype, you will innovate and the end product will be unrecognizable from the idea at the start. This was my case. I had to build my prototype. The customer doesnt know what he wants until it is laid out in front of him.

2) exploit your employees. He didnt say it explicitly or would have been sued for age discrimination, but he says, hire people without much experience, and full of energy ie. young. Then make them work long hours for cheap. I have seen a big name (top three) consulting company deliberately do this strategy and burn their people out. Sorry, that is not how I plan to build my business!

The best book for startups is Kawasaki's "Art of the Start". Skip this book.

A well written book with loads of good information. The only negative is that it is geared toward internet based business startups more than the traditional business type.

This is a great book for anyone who has a business or is in the process of starting a business. Lots of sensible advice and helpful examples. My copy came quickly, in perfect shape and was very affordable. I'm now passing it on to other bootstrappers and think of myself as a bootstrapper.

I can understand why this book get's mixed reviews. It's not the book itself, it's that some people think they understand the message - when they really just don't get it. People looking for a step-by-step guide on how to succeed in business are going to be disappointed. You are not going to find the *7 steps* to building your empire here. But this is a remarkable book.

Bootstrapping is an approach. A business philosophy. It acts as a guide for your decision making. It keeps money in your pocket, and uses an iterative approach to minimise risk and find the *real* opportunities. Greg explains the principles of bootstrapping in an enthusiastic and pragmatic way.

At one extreme of business there is Gianforte's RightNow. At the other extreme, Shaheen's Webvan. And in my opinion Gianforte is right on the money.

Unfortunately most people whould rather find the 'secrets' of business from the likes Rob Kiyosaki. Good luck to them, they sure need it.