Authors of start-up books assume too much. Because something is, as our US cousins put it, motherhood and apple pie to them, they assume their audience knows it too.
But with start-ups it’s different.
Certainly the starter-upper is probably well versed in what they are about to do: dog-grooming, house-building, architecture, wood-turning etc, but their knowledge of basic business isn’t there at all.
I greatly enjoyed Richard Branson’s ‘Losing my virginity’ but you can’t really advocate starting a business on a tax fraud, can you? Similarly, I was incensed by ‘Anyone can do it’ by Sahar Hashemi – cofounder of the Coffee Republic. Reading her book gave me no confidence at all that a potential start-up would learn any of the basic business steps to support their chosen activity.
My own first book: ‘It’s all cobblers!’ was, I found at my 45th reading, in a similar vein to the two above – more autobiographical and less helpful to a start-up to whom I thought I had addressed it. In fact, reviewing the market I couldn’t find a book for start-ups that explained in bite sized chunks, why you need to do things in start-up mode at all.
So I wrote it. ‘Take the plunge – 101 things you need to know before starting your own business’. Available from Amazon in paper or as an eBook – with all Amazon’s ‘look inside’ features.
I came, I read this artcile, I conquered.