The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company [Hardcover]

Steve Blank (Author), Bob Dorf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2012

Power your startup to success with The Startup Owner's Manual. 
 
This near-encyclopedic guide unlocks the secrets to startup success - walking you, step-by-step, through the tested and proven Customer Development process created by startup expert Steve Blank. 
 
Whether you're launching a physical channel startup or one that will sell through web/mobile channels, on these pages, you'll learn how to:

•  Use the Customer Development method to bring your business idea to life
•  Conduct your search for a scalable, profitable business model
•  Incorporate the Business Model Canvas as the organizing principle for startup hypotheses
•  Find Product-Market fit
•  Get, Keep and Grow customers 
•  Fuel growth with metrics that matter
•   Avoid the 9 deadly sins startups commit most often

The Startup Owner's Manual lays out the best practices, lessons and tips that have swept the startup world, offering a wealth of proven advice and information for entrepreneurs of all stripes. 
 
It is the go-to resource for thousands of startups, leading universities (including Stanford, U.C. Berkeley and Columbia) and the U.S. National Science Foundation, among many others.

Use it in conjunction with The Startup Owner's Manual -- Founder's Workbook (bit.ly/SlPQqc), an interactive tool for tracking your progress through the Customer Development process.

 

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The most valuable book on entrepreneurship in the past 25 years!"
— Tim Huntley, An Entrepreneurial Life

"To avoid infant/instant mortality of your venture and boost success chances, this book is a 'must-have' and must practice.'"

-- Alexander Osterwalder, author, "Business Model Generation"

"... a seminal text in the new experiential and inquiry-based methods of entrepreneurship education."

-- Patrick Vlaskovits, co-author, "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development"

"the best $40 investment you make in your startup."

-- EdSurge

"... The book has material for every type of entrepreneur ..."

-- XConomy

"Brilliantly Simple 2-step Process for Success in Products and Services!"

-- Kimberly Wiefling, author, entrepreneur

“A ‘bible’ for entrepreneurs who owe it to themselves and their investors to read … and re-read.”
-- Founder

“A must-have for all aspiring, first-time and seasoned entrepreneurs.”
-- Ben Mappen, founder

“truly a blueprint on how to build a Silicon Valley style scalable startup.”
-- Founder

“By taking this book BEFORE you spin up, founders can save thousands of dollars and man hours in mistakes.”
— Scott Hoffman, author, speaker, small business advocate

“ (Blank is) one of the smartest and most commonsense thinkers I know on starting a company and harnessing creativity for start-ups.”
-- Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

"The Startup Owner's Manual is ... going to be a game changer."
-- India Business Blog

"Many, including myself, consider the 'Four Steps to the Epiphany' to be the bible of entrepreneurship. ... The Startup Owner’s Manual is a definitive manual for building successful new companies – for entrepreneurs in startups and large companies."
— Conrad Egusa, Brownstein & Egusa

"The process outlined in The Startup Owner’s Manual will prevent the waste, mistakes, and failures that come from launching too soon or too expensively- perhaps exactly what’s needed."
— Kia Davis, Wamda.com

About the Author

About Steve Blank
Steve Blank is a driving force in innovation, helping to radically reshape how startups are built and how entrepreneurship is taught. His new Startup Owner's Manual is his latest addition for entrepreneurial practitioners. Steve created the Customer Development methodology that spawned the Lean Startup movement. He teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley and Columbia. His blog, steveblank.com, is "must" reading among entrepreneurs. In 2011, Steve created the Lean LaunchPad, a hands-on class using Customer Development to train students as well as elite teams of scientists and engineers selected and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Steve arrived in Silicon Valley in 1978, as boom times began, joining his first of eight startups. After 21 years the results were two deep craters, several "base hits," one massive "dot-com bubble" home run, and immense experiential learning that resulted his first break-through book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany.
 
About Bob Dorf
Bob Dorf is a serial entrepreneur, founding his first success at age 22 and, since then, six more--"two homeruns, two base hits, and three great tax losses," as he puts it. He's advised and/or invested in a score more startups since. Dorf is often called the "midwife of Customer Development," having critiqued early drafts of The Four Steps to the Epiphany; he and Steve have been friends and colleagues ever since. Entrepreneurial from his teens, Bob received his last W-2 almost 40 years ago, when he quit his editor's job at New York's WINS Radio to launch his first successful startup. When he's not running K&S Ranch Consulting with Steve, Dorf teaches "Introduction to Venturing," on Customer Development and getting startups right, as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: K & S Ranch; 1 edition (March 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0984999302
• ISBN-13: 978-0984999309
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (93 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > New Business Enterprises
  • #16 in Books > Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Entrepreneurship

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gain an unfair advantage ... June 18, 2012

By James J. Hornthal

Format:Hardcover

Having started 8 business and invested in over 50 more, I wish I had this resource a long long time ago. It is an entrepreneur's job to manage the risks of their enterprise, and to allocate resources where they are most needed. Before The Startup Owner's Manual, most of us were left to our own devices, randomness, and serendipity. The near-death experiences of most successes have been glorified with the buzz word "pivot". But what does that really mean, and can you expect to learn when, why and how to iterate successfully? The answer is yes; the recipe calls for equal parts of the business model canvas and customer development, with a healthy dose of constant agile development and customer interactions. Combining the right ingredients in the right order is a process, and how to best navigate that process is revealed in this invaluable guide book for anyone who wants to figure out if their great idea can become a great business. It also gives angel and venture investors an edge in evaluating proposals, looking to see if the team has gotten out of the building enough to know their target market, can articulate a compelling value proposition, and know how to get, keep and grow customers.

78 of 89 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant authors, less brilliant editing October 30, 2012

By Uffe Thomsen

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have no doubt that this book is written by really cool people, who actually know what they are taking about.

Running a small startup myself, I however would never find time to actually read a book this size - let alone filling out the 42 different checklist at the end. This book suffers, from what we in Europe would call what could be translated to the "American texbook disease". You guys are paid per word when you write stuf, and that shows.

So please Blank & Dorf - next time look to your friend Osterwalder (Businews Model Generation) to se how you can make deep insights easy acessible. I have have no doubt that you're brilliant people, but either you haven't done the Customer Development yourself this time - or startup owners are just not the intended customer.

If you could write something quickly accessible (i.e. shorter), i would be happy to pay the same amount - or even more for such a book. - Just to give you some customer feedback :-)

Best Regards (and I mean it)

Uffe Thorup Thomsen

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Ho-hum: Nothing much new here December 1, 2012

By Whippet

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Blank's book contains nothing that will be news to seasoned startup entrepreneurs and VCs. It's not up to the hype.

The book is aimed at startups that eventually will seek VC cash. It expects a startup to have a board of directors, and sneers at so-called "lifestyle" businesses. Blank disparages businesspeople in what I take to be a crass play for popularity among his geek audience.

Overall I cannot recommend it as a primary text, although it's fine to read in accompaniment.

My credentials: successful VC and software company founder.

46 of 61 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, typical content-lite business book June 17, 2012

By Knowledge Sponge

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I was tempted by this from an excerpt I saw on the web. Sadly, it follows the usual pattern of business books: an interesting idea that could be explained in a couple of pages, expanded by means of much repitition and many almost identical anecdotes, to fill a complete book. The idea is sound enough: don't build a plan and then execute it slavishly, thereby ending up with a product nobody wants. Instead, find yourself some customers early on, continuously get their feedback, and be prepared to reinvent your product and company, possibly several times. There, I just saved you the purchase price. All the examples are drawn from Web 2.0 type businesses, and the title should really be "The Web Service Startup Owners Manual". Web-delivered services, such as social networking, lend themselves very well to continuous revision - there is no deployed software to update, and changes are cheap and easy. This of course is why such companies are so fashionable amongst VCs. The concept is much harder to apply to a traditional software or infrastructure company, and pretty well impossible with hardware or silicon.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How can you debate systemic, venture innovation rooted in common-sense? July 22, 2012

By DJ

Format:Hardcover

How can you debate systemic, venture innovation rooted in common-sense? I mean that. When you get at the root of Lean Process & Agile Software Development - which is where Blank is pulling alot of the fundamental principles on which this book is based - it is centered around the reality that no one can accurately predict the future based upon the exact same set of assumptions for an extended period of time. Attitudes change, ideas develop and evolve; resources shrink and grow in abundance. Couple this with the fact that you must satisfy a customer dilemma - known or unknown, need or high desire - in a manner that they feel is effective, relatively efficiency and worth compensation. This book helps entrepreneurs & business leaders focus on using feedback from marketplace to develop both product/service improvement as well as create branding and buying with potential purchasers. This just makes sense right? Almost common sense, no? I mean what is more effective than identifying your potential early adopters and getting them to participate the in the "refactoring" process? Why it took so long for this book and Business Model Generation to be written, I will never know. All I know is that when you put them together with Lean Startup & Service Design Thinking , You really start to understand the meaning of the phrase "Game Changer". Because after reading them, you won't do anything that doesn't position yourself as a Game Changer yourself, ever again. Seriously.