Customer Reviews

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a programmer. I really love writing software, both personally and professionally. I've always wanted to start my own software business, but have never had the willpower in myself to make it happen.

Rob's book has totally changed that.

This book is an excellent resource for any developer who wants to start their own business. I feel like Rob was writing directly to me when he wrote this, as he answers my questions one at a time in order, and leaves me wondering nothing.

The book contains practical advice for planning your business, starting it, marketing it, and running with it post-launch. It also discusses what to do once you've grown your business (do you want to automate it? sell it?).

After reading Rob's book, I couldn't help but feel empowered. The practical, logical advice presented in this book is a great tool for any programmer who wants to start their own business. Follow these principles, use your skill set, and you can't go wrong.

Rob, if you're reading this, thanks for writing this book.

If you've ever looked into turning a software idea into a viable product, this book is a great guide. Clear and simple descriptions with a little humor mixed in make it easy to turn a few pages into action items. You'll read through once to know what you are in for and then use the book as a constant reference to keep you moving in the right direction. This book won't tell you what the right decision for your product is, but it will help force you to ask yourself good questions to make decisions with better information. With so many unknowns in launching your own product, it makes it a little less scary to have a simple blueprint to follow to make sure you stay focused, spend your time wisely, and don't miss important facets to make your product successful. Even if you decide to wait on launching your own product, the advise in the book will be helpful as a consultant, employee, and even in your life outside of work.

The main thing I got from the book: stop writing code.

The author explains in a convincing way why an Internet startup is not about coding but about founding a great niche, building a product that executes at a plateau and make it run automatically. And repeat this proces to be serial startup founder. Nr 1 lesson: Out-source your manual tasks to virtual assistants.

The book goes into depth, how to build sustainable traffic for your website and how to validate your businessplan before spending months building.

The book is written in a blog-like reader friendly style. Short paragraphs and without unneccessary fluff.

This book goes against the common thinking that you have to build the next big web app, receive millions of dollars in funding, and then get bought out by Google. Instead of an all-or-nothing approach, Rob describes from his real-world experiences how a portfolio of niche software products and websites added up can allow you to make a great living doing what you love. As developers, many ways of how we think are challenged, but make sense when focusing on profit and freeing up time. Emphasize marketing before product development. Test a market before investing too much on building. Outsource to virtual assistants and possibly other developers. Rob has around 10 products at any given time himself, each with their own unique situations on how they were built, bought and/or managed, and he uses them as case studies throughout the book. If you're like me you'll be taking tons of notes and referencing the myriad of links and resources it has as you start building out your software ideas.

As some other reviewers stated, most of the advice in this book boils down to:

1) You're not Facebook, so stop dreaming and find a niche market for your product. Advertise using niche keywords, in niche magazines, etc.

2) Outsource tasks that aren't worth your time. If you're worth $50 an hour, a Virtual Assistant at $6/hour is more cost-effective.

I'm not ready to develop such narrow products. He gives examples like: [...] CollegeCoachFinder, and others whose front pages look like the software equivalent of late-night-TV-inspired products.

I grew up in the Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare/Vimeo generation and I'd rather develop web applications with broad appeal, large user bases, and substantially less revenue per user. So, if you're looking for advice along those lines, this book is NOT for you.

If instead you'd rather develop an paid application for zoos to keep records on their livestock, or for auto mechanics to bill their clients on time, this is the book. It's for solving real, niche problems in an industry you have a pain point in. Given my leanings, I still learned some valuable advice from this book, but it wasn't worth the money.

Get Getting Real instead.

Like other reviewers, I'm a big fan of the 37 signals' books like Rework. But what sets Rob apart is providing actionable advice to get started on. He lays out how to get started and actual steps to take. I sincerely appreciated the focus on marketing and getting started early. For those of you that assume that you're going to launch your product and just wait for sales, think again! I can't recommend this book enough. The audio version on Rob's website is excellent as well!

For those that look to further their education, I also highly recommend checking out the podcast by Rob Walling and Mike Taber titled "Startups for the Rest of Us".

Great read. The author does a nice mix of adding the basics of marketing with specific information for software developers. But don't shy away from this book if you are not selling software online. This book is a must read for ANYONE who is starting a small online business and needs to market their product/website. Period.

I have made many notes and plan on going back through this book a few times to squeeze out every idea and work it into my business plan(s).

And when I say the author has added the basics of marketing - it is distilled down to something actionable. This information is very similar to information that I personally have learned in those very expensive 4-day marketing workshops. Little things like dollarizing your product's worth / your time. Settings goals. Writing them down. And many other classic teachings condensed into something fun to read.

Add to that [solid marketing info] modern examples and tool referrences and you have a book that very current. Specific current online marketing techniques are reviewed. He even breaks down effective ways to design your website for maximum conversion.

If you're still not sure... Google the book's title and you will be able to download/sample the first chapter for free. That's what hooked me! Or save yourself the hassle and buy it now!

Short, fun, and to the point. Completely changed the way I used to think about having and running a software startup.

In this book you will find a lot of *useful* information about the real process of launching a new company/product/software this days. It is clear that Rob has first hand experience about this matter and also that he knows the developers' mindset :-). I can only highly recommend this book to anyone that it is thinking about start his/her own online business and has a technical background.

This book is an excellent source for anyone who is excited about launching a start up. It offers step by step instructions on what you can do to create a business of your own with very little start up costs. The business tips offered in this book will help you to not only launch your product, but create a database of customers that you can sell to for years to come. Learn from Mr. Walling's experience. You will not be disappointed with this book.