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A Good Hard Kick in the Ass: Basic Training for Entrepreneurs
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List Price:
$25.95
Special Price:
$18.94
Your Savings: $ 7.01 ( 27% )
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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Crown Business
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.421
EAN: 9780609609507
ISBN: 0609609505
Label: Crown Business
Manufacturer: Crown Business
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2002-01-29
Publisher: Crown Business
Release Date: 2002-01-29
Studio: Crown Business
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Editorial Reviews:
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Every day, Rob Adams helps entrepreneurs find true markets for their products, design solid business models, and hire great teams—because that’s what it takes to build a successful company. While this sounds self-evident, far too many entrepreneurs have forgotten these fundamentals. They’ve been influenced by what Adams calls “business porn,” myths lingering like a bad hangover from the easy success days of the late ’90s. These entrepreneurs believe a unique idea is the key to igniting a great business. They think their industry experience already makes them experts on customer needs. They have simplistic, self-defeating illusions about sales, marketing, financing, and more.
They say things like “I have a million-dollar business idea for a new product.” Wake up, says Adams: Good ideas are not scarce—they’re a dime a dozen. Businesses are successful not because of a unique idea but because of extraordinary execution. They offer a better, faster, or cheaper product or service, or they change the way the world solves a problem.
In short, these entrepreneurs need just what Adams doses out in the pages of this book: a good hard kick in the ass. Adams debunks the myths and smashes the illusions—and he knows what he’s talking about, because he stands at the hub of many new startups. His firm, AV Labs, provides entrepreneurs with early financing as well as the management expertise they need to get off the ground.
A Good Hard Kick in the Ass offers detailed, hard-hitting guidance for smart, sophisticated entrepreneurs and established businesspeople alike—along with vivid, in-depth examples of companies that are walking the walk right now. Adams’s straightforward, no-nonsense approach is just what’s needed in the post-bubble economy.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Necessary Reading For Entrepreneurs
Comment: This book is a great place to start for any entrepreneur. Despite the slightly odd title, the book does kick some reality into readers. The book is very interesting, and I'd highly recommend reading it to get some ideas of what is expected of you when you want to develop an idea into a business.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good basic treatise on marketing
Comment: Rob Adams delivers a fair amount of info about marketing for new high tech products. Most of what is said is very sound and based on practical experience.
Customer Rating:
Summary: We probably all need a good, hard kick - I know I did!
Comment: What a wakeup call! Too bad I didn't read this book sooner - before I learned some of the lessons the hard way. All entrepreneurs and those aspiring to be entrepreneurs "need" this book.
If you're starting up a company, then read this book. If you've already started a company, stop and read this as soon as possible - before you screw things up even worse.
Adams runs AV Labs, with plenty of time in the trenches. So listen up. The 1990's really messed with entrepreneurs heads. Instead of identifying a solid market need and building products that meet those needs, entrepreneurs were told - by Venture Capitalists, and the Media, to take on the world. Business models were thrown out the window. Forget profits, or even revenues, just catch as many "eyeballs" as possible and you'll be the next Microsoft. Well, we all know what happened ... Crash!
Assembled into ten kicks, the book is overflowing with true wisdom:
1. Good Ideas Are a Dime a Dozen
2. You Don't Know Your Customer As Well As You Think You Do
3. Don't Wait to Ship a Killer Product---Get to Market Fast
4. You Don't Need the Big Bucks Right Out of the Gate
5. Investors Fund Great Teams---Not Business Plans
6. Investors Will Wait for Quality Returns---from Quality Companies
7. Advertising and Marketing Are Not Synonymous
8. Nobody Else Can Sell Your Product for You
9. Big Companies Need to Act More Like Startups
Final Kick: This One's Yours to Give in the Marketplace!
We probably all need a good, hard kick - I know I did. Focus first and foremost on knowing who your customer is and that they really will open their wallet (validate your market). Second, Be sure you can make money - preferably lot's of it (create a profitable business model). And third, remember it's all about people executing strategy.
My final piece of advice - If you read only one business book this year, this should be the one.
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Michael Davis - Editor, Byvation
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great on validating the market in early stage start-ups
Comment: This excellent book describes the early start up stage of a new business in great detail. The author has experience with pre-funded start-ups and their efforts to validate their markets. There are few books that describe this early stage activity for entrepreneurs, where it's difficult to judge a market. Thus, this book is highly recommended.
Pluses
- Puts proper weights on crucial start up tasks with an emphasis on the execution team. The author says execution and the execution team is more important than the idea. He makes a good point but I don't think having a good execution team is adequate reason to create a startup. You still need an organizing idea that offers overwhelming advantage.
- Recommends that you apply new technology to existing market to ease an existing pain. He particularly likes applying new technologies to business processes (of course Dell is one of the examples here).
- Asks you to repeatedly hypothesize and then prove/disprove the pain of your prospects. The area of customer need has to have a felt pain. The search for pain increases the likelihood of success, and makes marketing easier.
- Recommends rigorous upfront market research into prospects and influencers. Talk to at least 100 potential customers. After doing this the author says the business plan is easier to write.
- I liked his comments on talking to affinity groups, trade pubs, user groups, trade shows, and industry influencers.
- Get to the market quickly with a product that solves their immediate pain.
Minuses
- Relies on quantitative market research for initial phase instead of one-on-one. His defense is that our goal is to be doing market research, not selling our solution. However, I believe the best market research comes from one on one discussions. See Barry Feig's books on market research for more on this, "Marketing Straight To the Heart" etc..
Questionable Items
- Your idea does not have to be unique. "There is no new idea." To the author, ideas are commodities, it's teams that can execute that are scarce. While I agree, I can't see starting up a company unless you have a competitive advantage that goes beyond our subjective opinion of a start-up crew.
- First to market is no big thing, it's an unsustainable advantage. Execute to dominate, not define a space. I generally disagree, but he makes a good point. I also believe in first mover advantage made popular by Geoffrey Moore ("Crossing the Chasm") and also in Ries's recommendation to create a new niche to dominate (See "The Origin of Brands" by Al and Laura Ries). But I also believe, like the author suggests, great execution is often a deciding factor. I think he gives these other ideas short shrift because he sees so many companies failing on execution.
- Partner, partner, partner. I think the startup should try for a complete product rather than give up large pieces of the solution. But I can see how some situations demand this.
There's a lot more to this book than the few points I listed above. He gives more details on the execution team which were particularly good.
Overall, I think this is an excellent book. It should be required reading for all MBA students of entrepreneurial studies as well as anyone in the early stages of a startup who is trying to validate the company's market.
John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: Like other reviewers have noted, this book is aimed at a very particular audience: successful executives with significant experience, starting a technology company.
I figured I was close enough to that audience that I'd love the book. Turns out, I was wrong. This book is overwhelmingly focused on enterprise companies. I am the CEO of a consumer-focused company, and felt like the book was misleadingly positioned. Maybe "Basic Training for Entrepreneurs selling into the Enterprise" wouldn't have been as catchy... but it would be much more accurate.
I also found Rob's book troubling for softer reasons. For me, probably the most important decision I ever made was my choice of co-founders. Absolutely, you want a smart team just like Rob recommends... but you also want a team of people you can *trust* with your life. I was surprised by Rob's total focus on hard skills/experience in hiring.
But upon reflection, his focus on hard skills makes sense here, since the book is overwhelmingly about making money. If you want to build a team of people who want to change the world... or make a difference... this book is not for you. I'm not talking about non-profits or government; I'm talking about creating products that have an impact on the world (Apple, Sony, Google, Harley, Ben & Jerry's, Intuit, etc.).
This book has zero talk about creating a shared sense of purpose/mission. That's ok, because companies targeting the enterprise rarely have that sort of vibe. That's too bad, because I think that every company can use a "soul". And to be frank, creating a sense of purpose/mission can dramatically increase customer and employee retention. Maybe all this soft stuff can translate into hard dollars after all...
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