The Web Startup Success Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If there’s a software startup company in your developer heart, this is the book that will make it happen.

The Web Startup Success Guide is your one-stop shop for all of the answers you need today to build a successful web startup in these challenging economic times. It covers everything from making the strategic platform decisions as to what kind of software to build, to understanding and winning the Angel and VC funding game, to the modern tools, apps and services that can cut months off development and marketing cycles, to how startups today are using Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook to create real excitement and connect to real customers.

Bob Walsh, author of the landmark Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality, digs deep into the definition, financing, community–building, platform options, and productivity challenges of building a successful and profitable web application today.

What you’ll learn

• How to define the value your web app will deliver to its users
• Evangelizing your startup via social media—from Twitter to Facebook, from YouTube to your own social network
• Which web app pricing strategies work, and which don’t
• What alternatives to traditional business structures will let you launch and run your startup without all the legal mumbo–jumbo
• What services and web apps exist today to help your startup succeed
• How to get meaningful online press for your web app

Plus, interviews with David Allen (Getting Things Done), Rafe Needleman (CNET), Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb), Guy Kawasaki (Garage Technology Ventures), Dharmesh Shah (OnStartups, HubSpot), Joel Spolsky (Fog Creek Software), Eric Sink (SourceGear), Pamela Slim (Escape from Cubicle Nation), and 40 other people who can help your startup succeed.

Who is this book for?

If you are a software developer (web, desktop, or mobile—it doesn’t matter) who wants to create successful, revenue–producing web businesses, The Web Startup Success Guide is for you. And if you’re just curious about how someone goes about creating an online business from the ground up, this book is an excellent choice.

About the Author

Bob Walsh 47 is the founder of 47Hats, a consulting firm/blog/startup dedicated to helping startups succeed, the author of Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality, podcaster in chief of the Startup Success Podcast, co-moderator of the Joel on Software's Business of Software forum, and creator of StartupToDo.com, a online productivity app and community for startup and microISVs.

At his company, Safari Software, Inc., Bob was a contract software developer for over 20 years before launching, selling and ultimately selling off a Windows personal task manager commercial application. Before getting into IT, Walsh was a reporter for several news organizations, most worth bragging about being United Press International (UPI).

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (July 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430219858
• ISBN-13: 978-1430219859
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #71,840 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Will get you thinking through many modern startup essentials., July 22, 2009

By	Mark Roseman (Edmonton, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let's start with the bottom line first. If you're interested in, considering, or currently involved in any kind of small (1-5ish person) tech startup, get this book. The investment in terms of price, and more importantly your time, will be easily recouped many times over. From that point of view, it's a no-brainer.

If you're familiar with Bob's other books, you know what to expect in terms of style and approach. You'll first of all find in depth, well-written and engaging discussions about a number of topics: how to identify the problem your startup will solve (its value), the newly expanded world of modern technology platforms, valuable tools and organizations, raising money, leveraging social media, creating and delivering your message, and startup productivity issues.

Targeted to a technology but not business savvy audience, this is a reasonable selection of topics to cover. Obviously it's not exhaustive, but it does draw attention to the areas where technology people tend to have the biggest blind spots, which is really the point - to get people thinking about those areas that they otherwise wouldn't.

The quality of how each topic was covered varied a bit. Some were excellent - the choice and tradeoffs of platforms, defining your problem, social media and crafting your message (two areas covered in more detail in previous ebooks he's written, but summarized well here). The money chapter, an area that Bob freely admits is outside his personal experience, I found asked far too basic questions (perhaps something most techies need, but even then it doesn't take them far enough, and they really need professional help) and doesn't deal heavily enough with the "costs" of raising money (e.g. control and direction issues, opportunity costs), something that should be treated far more seriously by more potential startups. The productivity chapter is too exclusively GTD-focused for my liking, and a topic more technology people are probably already more familiar with than others in the book.

As with any such book, it pays to think critically about the material presented. What are the unstated assumptions behind each point? What situations does it apply to, and where doesn't it apply? The point is by working through this book, it will raise the issues you need to seriously think about. Whether or not you do... well, there are reasons that not every startup is a success.

Complementing Bob's own discussion of these issues are a large number of interviews with leading experts on different topics. As with his other books, these interviews are a real highlight, and something that makes his books stand out from others. You'll also find brief introductions to a large number of tools and resources that can help startups. Any one of these alone justifies the price and time investment of this book. I know I learned about several tools I had no idea about that I've already found incredibly useful, and others I knew about in passing that now deserve a fresh look.

With these interviews and tool overviews, you're really saving yourself a ton of time going out looking for things on your own, as well as the costs of not using things that could easily put your startup way further ahead. Instead, you're getting the benefit of the many long hours that Bob spent doing this research for you, at a tiny fraction of the cost. This is a huge part of the book's appeal and value.

I did miss a checklist at the end of each chapter, but it sounds like the new site [...]that he is launching will more than eclipse that need...

While this is by no means the definitive comprehensive guide to web startups, it's an incredibly useful and thought-provoking book that you should consider essential reading as part of your own startup adventures.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Must-have primer for any geek wanting to set up a product-based software business, August 10, 2009

By	Neil Davidson (Cambridge, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bob Walsh's "The Web Startup Success Guide", wisely and following its own advice, is targeted very specifically. If you're a software developer, are thinking about setting up (or have just set up) a product-based start-up, and are prepared to work - damn hard - at something you love doing then this book is for you. Equally importantly, if you're more than a few months into your start-up, or if this is your second start-up, or if you aren't a geek, or if you want to set up a consulting business, or if you want to get rich quick, then this book isn't for you.

On the whole, this book is outstanding. There is a lot of information here, but its fast-paced, colloquial writing style make it digestible. What's more, the book is well thought-out, balanced, well structured and accurate. It's an excellent combination of fact, anecdote, theory, analysis and practical advice. The interviews alone (Joel Spolsky, Dharmesh Shah, Eric Sink, David Allen and Guy Kawasaki are among the fifty in-depth, thought-provoking interviews in the book) make it worth reading.

If there's one thing extra I wish this book had, it's more information on sales and marketing. Finding people who like your product and persuading them to actually buy it is the single biggest issue that startups, bogged down in the technology, forget about.

Overall, this is an excellent, must-have primer for any geek wanting to set up a product-based business. Buy it.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Badly written with little useful content, September 13, 2009

By	Tarun Upadhyay (Great Falls, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This should be a couple of blog entries in a B+ blog, not a $20 book.

The book is not only badly written, it does not hardly any useful content either. Everything said here should be obvious to any person who has lived for any time near any web business. The author has unnecessarily made the book fat by having many long interviews with his friends - most of them add little to the content .

If you find this book useful - you should ask if you are the right person to run a business and perhaps spend sometime learning "basic business stuff" first.

Here is my recap of content:
* Chapter 1: Introduction: Funding a web startup today is easier than ever and many options exist including self-funding (duh!!)
* Chapter 2: Create value. There is no shortage of just "ideas" (duh, again !!)
* Chapter 3 & 4: There are lot of tools available to you like SaaS platforms, open source cms and local meetup groups (duh, duh ,duh !!)
* Chapter 5 is about raising money. It is filled with meaningless generalizations ("raising money is like falling in love") - none of them of much use.
* Chapter 6 is about social media. More generic stuff. Nothing said here is so remarkable that you cannot find it online - just google "how to market on social media" and just read the top 5 links. you will be WAY AHEAD of this book.
* Chapter 7 - The summary is - You need to be clear about what your USP is (duh !!)
* Chapter 8 - A long chapter on GTD methodology. There is no reason for it to be in this book. If GTD is your way, read a book on GTD.
* Chapter 9 - a needlessly long chapter about author's recommendation of 6 blogs to read.

Throw this book in fireplace - that will be more useful.