17 May 2012

The $100 Startup Review

Chris Guillebeau's book The $100 Startup has been out for just over a week. I finally finished it a few days ago and got my post up on Amazon, but I was really excited to read it and highly recommend it.


"In the interests of full disclosure, I received a copy of the $100 Startup in advance, but was so slow reading it because of all the notes I was taking that I’m just now getting to writing my review.

I found this to be a very understandable and approachable guide to starting a microbusiness. There’s no background knowledge assumed or exclusive demographics. The whole book builds on your intentions to provide something worthwhile and your desire to accomplish something independently.

There is very actionable guidance for all stages of starting your own business, from generating your ideas and setting up, to relationship building and marketing up to scaling (or not!) your business operations. I particularly liked the case studies across a variety of industries. There are also worksheets (and additional resources provided online) to work through questions, business plans, product launches and on and on...

Regardless of the stage of your small business, this book has insights waiting to be yours."

2 comments:

  1. It's better than most of these kinds of self-help books. The writing style was casual, and although I found problems seeing the practicality of many of the examples for most people wanting to make a living with a $100 startup, in instances where the solutions and work throughs were more detailed they could get interesting-- and that is probably the writer's point.

    There are lots of business ideas given. My opinion is that it would be a better book if there were fewer vignettes with more applications of his suggested strategies worked through in greater detail. Not saying he didn't do that at all, just saying concentration might be better.

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  2. That's certainly a fair point, I think concentration and detail are useful. Given the diversity of his audience, though, I think hitting a broad range of examples was intended to get *more* people to overcome their initial inertia.

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