★★★★★ 4
Excellent book with a lot of solid advice
Format: Kindle
I thought this was an excellent book. It gave great advice that I found really helpful in thinking about and planning my startup, as many of the other comments have noted. The key ideas as far as I remember are that a) you should talk to as many potential users as you can and find out what their problems are, and b) be laser-focused on solving those problems instead of building what it is you want to build, because the thing you want to create might not be the thing that they want to buy. In fact I did just that; I talked with just one potential user and found that what I had thought would be their big problem wasn't a problem at all for them, and looking at some hard numbers as he advises, it isn't a problem for the industry as a whole, either. I had to go back and reformulate my approach. I now have a 100% better value proposition for them.
Just two words of caution:
1) The book assumes that your startup is an app of some sort. Much of what he's talking about is therefore specific to the tech business. Mine isn't. Mine is a real product that people can hold in their hands. That wasn't a deal breaker by any means as most of the lessons in the book are still applicable to my product and what I'm doing. Still, it would've been nice of him to acknowledge that someone's start-up may be a lemonade stand or something material and concrete like that.
2) Is the vulger language necessary? I mean, English isn't like some other languages where there's an enormous difference between the way a language is written and the way it's spoken, but still, do we need so many obscenities in a book on business? It reads in some places like you're in a bar with a tech bro who's had a few drinks and is lambasting your approach to your business. I could've done without all the four-letter-words. But maybe that's just my generation.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2025
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