Customer Reviews

Entrepreneur Journeys: Bootstrapping: Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction (Volume 2)

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Having been near the front lines of the dot-com boom (and bust), I remember how much money was being thrown around at ideas that were utterly ridiculous. And if you could get venture capitalists to fund you long enough, you could then shift to an IPO and cash out for big bucks. Those days are gone, and now you have to be much more self-sufficient to get yourself started and maintain your momentum. Sramana Mitra looks at a number of entrepreneurs who have gone the bootstrapping route with great success in her book Entrepreneur Journeys: Bootstrapping: Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction. This is a good source of personal stories and input on how to do it on your own without giving up control of your idea and hard work.

Contents:
Prologue
Doing More With Less: The Real VCs Of Silicon Valley; Fund Envy; Bootstrapping, Montana Style (Greg Gianforte - Right Now)
Getting Started with Little or No Capital: Passion and Leverage (Cree Lawson - Travel Ad Network, Beatrice Tarka - Mobissimo), Barack Obama's Finance Lesson (Om Malik - GigaOM, Rafat Ali - paidContent, J. R. Johnson - Virtual Tourist, Guillaume Cohen - Veodia, Wayne Krause - Hydro Green Energy); Weapon of Mass Reconstruction (Scott Wainner - SysOpt & ResellerRatings, Ramu Yalamanchi - hi5)
Validating The Market - On The Cheap: Carts Ahead of Horses (Murli Thirumale - Ocarina, Manoj Saxena - Webify)
Resurrecting The Dead: Silicon Lazarus (Lars Dalgaard - SuccessFactors)
Epilogue

Mitra structures Entrepreneur Journeys as a series of interviews with people who have started businesses and willingly (or unwillingly) went without massive funding for the first part of their histories. The ranges of personalities are rather astonishing... everything from veterans of startups who have "been there, done that" to youngsters who happened to be at the right place at the right time, and organically grew an idea into a money-generating website. Some of the individuals couldn't get a venture capitalist to listen to them, and others decided not to go that route in order to retain control. But in all cases, these entrepreneurs were able to successfully negotiate that tightrope between growth and funding.

While I learned a lot from each of the interviews, I also found Mitra's commentary quite valuable. She points out a number of flaws in our current VC mindset that cause many good companies to die off too early. Running a company for the first time is hard, and mentoring is even more valuable in many cases than money. Normal VC arrangements don't do a good job in close mentoring. Instead, it's a push to build up the value so the VCs can cash out. Angel investors are more likely to work closely with the business, helping them reach their potential without sacrificing the longer-term potential of the business. Very valuable advice...

If you're starting your own business in the technology industry, Mitra's book might well give you some perspective on initial funding that you may not have considered. And given what's at stake, you will want to take the couple of hours you'll need to read this.

I just finished reading Entrepeneur Journeys Volume 2. Like the first volume, this book uses an interview style presentation, which may be a put off to some people, but I rather like it. You feel more like you're truly getting the information from the source. A number of interesting insights came to mind while reading:

-Marketing segmenting is more than just race, gender and age
-Passion is essential to entrepeneurial success (not exactly new, but yet another reminder)
-Niches abound within niches

This last one really struck me in a couple of the interviews. The author never states it outright, but a number of the successful companies found their success by locating niches within niches. I'm going back to my marketing team now to ask, "What is the most valuable 10-20 percent group within our customer base? How do we provide unique value to them? How do we communicate this value?"

Thanks once again Sramana for an excellent read.

I ordered this book for my wife, who is embarking on her own bootstrapping journey to start her own business and raise capital secondarily. What we have found is that the book has some great stories to tell, but that the analysis was disappointing. The biggest reason for this was the clear presence of bias and neo-con views that creep out in the stories. There seemed to be some underlying political assumptions that just didn't jive with us, but again the stories had merit so the book wasn't a total waste.

Sramana Mitra has put together 13 interviews with highly successful entrepreneurs. Her interview style first gives us their background and then traces the struggles and successes of each in bootstrapping their company.

All of the companies have a few things in common. First they are all cutting edge technology. Secondly each entrepreneur at some point in their journey raises money from angel investors or venture capitalist. Since the book is basically interviews with the different entrepreneurs and both Sramana and the entrepreneur speak the same language, there is some information they assume the average reader knows. If you are not familiar with the terms and concepts of raising money from investors, you might find that part of the book a little disappointing. While raising money was an integral part of these businesses, the book is not about tips and techniques for raising money.

It would be easy to dismiss the book because the stories are about leading edge technology and each has raised huge sums of money to fund their venture. But there is no profit in taking that approach.

The value in the book is to "read between the lines", read the stories each person tells and learn the lessons that made each entrepreneur a success. There are some recurring themes in each story. They are recurring because they are basic principles required for success.

Here are some of the more important principles:
Make sure there is a market for your product. Do that by talking to prospects. Follow the SDBS model. Sell, Design, Build and Sell. Most failures design, build and then try to sell. Prove the concept before you sink your time and resources into designing and building a product.

Focus on cash flow. Cash flow is the life blood of a start-up. Concentrate most of your efforts and energies on getting to positive cash flow.

Find out who are your potential customers and spend time with them. Make sure you are solving a real problem not producing something that is new and exciting but no one needs.

Do not wait for a product to be perfect before going to market. Entrepreneurship is all about trial and error. Get the product in the hands of the end user and be continually improving.

In addition to the many valuable insights, Sramana also gives some personal and insightful business and political commentary on where we are and where we are headed. Her views will resonate with most entrepreneurs.


I personally am not a big fan of interview style books. However this is certainly one of the better ones I have read. If you are an entrepreneur, you really should read this book. Although it is highly unlikely that you will be conducting business on the same revenue or technology level as those presented here, the lessons still apply. Don't just read the book, study it. Learn from others and enjoy more success as a result.

This book mirrors my own book "The Expert's Edge" in that it exhorts entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs to fight the good fight and to view themselves (rightly) as the true saviors and sparkplugs of the business world. It will also enlighten many to the fact that oodles of $$$ is not what's required for entrepreneurial success but rather creative spirit and determination. Mitra's book provides the backgroud and motivation to get out there and grow your enterprise. My own book offers a great how-to follow-up so action steps can be taken. Together our shared philosophies can help push business as a whole to new heights. Buy this book!

I was not sure what to expect from this book - however I read it cover to cover on a flight.
It was interesting and provided some useful tip and quotes for a team meeting.
It also gave me added motivation that bootstrapping a company can be successful - although no doubt hard work!

Mitra showcases a dozen entrepreneurs and their lessons from the bootstrapping trenches.

Some of the quotes from these interviews are below:

Ramu Yalamanchi, Hi5

* No matter how many businesses you start, it just takes one successful business to make up for all the other attempts.
* If you are going to build a service and it has a good chance of becoming very popular, make sure you address the scale needs up first.

Scott Wainner, SysOpt & ResellerRatings

* For me, being an entrepreneur is so much trial and error that I would rather make the mistakes in the lower dollar range than at the Super Bowl advertising level.

Beatrice Tarka, Mobissimo

* You can have the best technology and the best product on the market, but without good team chemistry your business will fail.

Greg Gianforte, RightNow

* Find an entrepreneurial mentor, and if you are going to bootstrap, find a mentor who has already bootstrapped a business
* Bootstrapping is a discovery process. Rather than building an ark, waiting for animals to come, and hoping the tide rises-you take an incremental approach and discover a legitimate, real world value proposition.


The book has done a good job at giving perspective, advice and insight into the necessities of never giving up and gives us the inspiration and tools to bootstrap. Nicely written.

Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction - It's a powerhouse of twelve inspirational stories of how aspiring entrepreneurs went from zero (or almost zero) to millions of a stable and sustainable business... Wait a minute, no, not by raising capital from VCs but by bootstrapping their projects and doing more with less... which is exactly what this book communicates to the aspiring entrepreneurs who are hung up on "I don't have the money" or "VCs are not interested" kind of excuses... If you've the will, you will make the way and if you need a guiding light, Sramana's book series of Entrepreneur Journeys is what you should get.

Personally, I can't wait to read her latest book Vision India 2020

Volume 2 of Sramana Mitra's 'Entrepreneur Journeys' series could do with a better title - 'reconstruction' refers to the ability of entrepreneur-fueled companies to resurrect and invigorate a recession-wracked economy. Wrapping that into a WMD pun doesn't work for me.

The book, thankfully, exceeds the clunky title - Ms. Mitra's background as entrepreneur herself and VC insider gives her knowledge of and access to inspirational and relevant tales of bootstrapped technology companies. These aren't the Jim Clark-style VC-fueled mega-startups, but instead are the type that started with one person at a kitchen table. As a journalist (she's a columnist for Forbes), Mitra's got the moxie to get to these founders and ask some good questions. Entrepreneur Journeys is laid out as a series of interviews between Mitra and the founders. Forget Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, et al...these are smaller, more relevant successes to which the reader can aspire.

Kudos to Ms. Mitra for her work in compiling these inspirational stories.

Getting money to fund their ideas/start-ups is always the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs. In this book, Mitra tells us about the other sources of funding, beyond the VCs.

This book is a collection of short interviews of successful entrepreneurs (~13-14) who were able to raise funds to bring their ideas to reality. What I liked most is that the interviews follow a common set of questions, which range from their backgrounds to the main start-up story.She has selected people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Most of the businesses covered are internet based, except one, which is in clean energy.

Essentially, each chapter or the interview is a tell-tale straight from the entrepreneur's mouth.