Posts from — January 2008

Edward G. Rogoff

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
entrepreneurial ventures

The secrets behind creating compelling and successful business plans sure to attract financial backers are revealed step-by-step in this invaluable guide. Containing detailed information on Risk Management Association (RMA) data and clear explanations of the guidelines that banks, venture capital firms, and the Small Business Administration (SBA) use to grant loans and other financial support to businesses, the resource equips potential business owners with a wealth of knowledge on lending procedures. Hundreds of useful ideas for developing, operating, marketing, and building a profitable business are included as are copious examples and resources for further study. By demonstrating how to make each business plan uniquely suited to a particular endeavor—such as home-based businesses, sole proprietorships, and franchise operations—this comprehensive handbook ensures that anyone can embark on a new business venture with confidence.

View More about Bankable Business Plans: Second Edition

Adam M. Brandenburger

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
Now available in paperback, with an all new Reader’s guide, The New York Times and Business Week bestseller Co-opetition revolutionized the game of business. With over 40,000 copies sold and now in its 9th printing, Co-opetition is a business strategy that goes beyond the old rules of competition and cooperation to combine the advantages of both. Co-opetition is a pioneering, high profit means of leveraging business relationships.

Intel, Nintendo, American Express, NutraSweet, American Airlines, and dozens of other companies have been using the strategies of co-opetition to change the game of business to their benefit. Formulating strategies based on game theory, authors Brandenburger and Nalebuff created a book that’s insightful and instructive for managers eager to move their companies into a new mind set.

View More about Co-Opetition : A Revolution Mindset That Combines Competition and Cooperation : The Game Theory Strategy That’s Changing the Game of Business

Nice recent writeup on success: 10 Secrets to Success

Read up, follow this advice and get your biz running like the well-oiled machine that it is destined to be!

Aspatore Books Staff

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
The Raising Venture Capital Collection is the definitive resource for venture capital and the only reference material you will need for securing venture capital, working with VCs, understanding, drafting and negotiating deals or whatever your initiative might be in your partnership with venture capitalists. The collection features ten books that collectively, provide a thorough examination of every aspect of venture capital. Within these 2,000+ pages lies a wealth of critical information, which every executive looking to raise capital should have at their fingertips. In addition, these volumes feature examples of 50+ legal documents which delineate and govern venture-based transactions, as well as a plethora of expert analysis and indispensable advice on negotiation points and tactics. Each book is authored by leading partners from top venture capital firms, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, Mellon Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners, EuclidSR Partners, Battery Ventures, TA Associates, Motorola Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures, Bertelsmann Ventures, and many more. The collection also highlights the insights of top attorneys in the venture capital arena from such firms as Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Hunton & Williams, Reed Smith and many more. The collection includes the following books (at a savings of 40% off buying the titles individually, the equivalent of getting 4 titles for free): 1.) Pitching to Venture Capitalists - Essential Strategies for Approaching VCs, Entering Into Negotiations and Securing Funding - Written by Leading VC Patrick Ennis 2.) Raising Capital for Entrepreneurs - Industry Insiders on Venture Capital, Angel Funding & Growth Money from Private Investors ? Includes Highlights on Advantages and Disadvantages of Each 3.) Term Sheets & Valuations - Line by Line Descriptions of Each Clause and Negotiation Points 4.) Deal Terms - The Finer Points of Venture Capital Deal Structures, Valuations, Stock Options and Getting Deals Done 5.) Venture Debt Alternatives and Evaluation Guidelines - A Comprehensive Look at the Venture Debt Marketplace Along With a Systematic Framework for Approaching the Debt Capital Markets, Increasing Transaction Transparency and Avoiding Common, Costly Mistakes - An Option Every Entrepreneur Should Consider in Addition to Venture Capital 6.) Venture Capital Best Practices - Leading VCs & Lawyers Keys to Success in Doing Venture Capital Deals with Management Teams 7.) Compensation Structures for Venture Backed Companies - How VCs Want to See the Structure of Management & Employee Compensation, Stock Options, Retirement, Debt & Bonus Plans 8.) The Role of Board Members in Venture Backed Companies - Rules, Responsibilities and Motivations of Board Members - From Management & VC Perspectives 9.) Venture Capital Valuations - Top VCs on Step-by-Step Strategies and Methodologies for Valuing Companies at All Stages 10.) The Venture Capital Legal Handbook - Industry Insiders on the Laws and Documents that Govern VC Deals, Raising Capital, M&A and More - Includes Every Major Document Used in Pre & Post Funding VC Deals With Analysis & Negotiation Points - Save Thousands in Legal Fees

View More about The Raising Venture Capital Collection: 10 Books That Cover Every Aspect of Working with VCs, Valuations, Angel Financing & Term Sheets for Entrepreneurs & Executives

Paul Hawken

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
Nearly everyone harbors a secret dream of starting or owning a business. In fact, 1,000,000 businesses start in the United States every year. Many of them fail, but enough succeed so that small businesses are now adding millions of jobs to the economy at the same time that the Fortune 500 companies are actually losing jobs.

Paul Hawken — entrepreneur and best-selling author — wrote Growing a Business for those who set out to make their dream a reality. He knows what he’s talking about; he is his own best example of success. In the early 1970s, while he was still in his twenties, he founded Erewhon, the largest distributor of natural foods. More recently, he founded and still runs Smith & Hawken, the premier mail-order garden tool company. And he wrote a critically acclaimed book called The Next Economy about the future of the economy.

Using examples like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream, and University National Bank of Palo Alto, California, Hawken shows that the successful business is an expression of an individual person. The most successful business, your idea for a business, will grow from something that is deep within you, something that can’t be stolen by anyone because it is so uniquely yours that anyone else who tried to execute your idea would fail. He dispels the myth of the risk-taking entrepreneur. The purpose of business, he points out, is not to take risks but rather to get something done.

View More about Growing a Business

These are the early days of the new Work From Home generation.

Today, Read-Write-Web has a nice little write-up on working from home. Pretty obvious pros and cons, but still a good reminder.

I recently re-setup my “at home office” and it makes all the difference in the world. Having a clear distinction between your place at home to do work vs. everything else is essential.

Jay Conrad Levinson

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
When Guerrilla Marketing was first published in 1983, Jay Levinson revolutionized marketing strategies for the small-business owner with his take-no-prisoners approach to finding clients. Based on hundreds of solid ideas that really work, Levinsons philosophy has given birth to a new way of learning about market share and how to gain it. In this completely revised and expanded fourth edition, Levinson offers a new arsenal of weaponry for small-business success in the next century. Filled with strategies for marketing on the Internet (explaining when and precisely how to use it), tips for putting other new technologies to work, programs for targeting prospects and cultivating repeat and referral business, and management lessons in the age of telecommuting and freelance employees, this book will be the entrepreneurs marketing bible in the twenty-first century.

View More about Guerrilla Marketing, 4th edition: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your SmallBusiness

Steven Pressfield

Our Rating:

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
DO YOU:-+dream about writing the Great American Novel?-+regret not finishing your paintings, poems, or screenplays?-+want to start a business or charity?-+wish you could start dieting or exercising today?-+hope to run a marathon someday?If “yes,” then you need#133;THE WAR OF ARTNow, in this powerful, straight-from-the-hip examination of the internal obstacles to success, bestselling author Steven Pressfield shows readers how to identify, defeat, and unlock the inner barriers to creativity. THE WAR OF ART is an inspirational, funny, well-aimed kick in the pants guaranteed to galvanize every would-be artist, visionary, or entrepreneur.Steven Pressfield enjoys great international success as a bestselling novelist.But in order to reach the top he had to do a lot of work to fight the inner demons that told him he couldn’t make it.THE WAR OF ART is his challenge to creative block, and his succinct, straight-from-the-hip style will help every reader unleash their personal ambitions, be they literary, artistic, or business-minded.According to Pressfield, the internal obstacle to success is Resistance.Resistance is the difference between the life you lead and the life you want to lead, and can take many forms.Pressfield shows readers how to identify and defeat Resistance at every turn and challenges them to change their amateurish, unsuccessful habits into a professional attitude that can get the job done. Finally, Sun Tzu for the soul!Inspirational, funny, and a great kick in the pants, THE WAR OF ART is the perfect book for anybody who had a goal circumvented by life and circumstance:which is to say, you and everybody you’ve ever met.

View More about The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Michael Masterson

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
This book walks readers through a focused strategy designed to get their business ventures started and moving toward profitability as quickly as possible. Masterson feels that too many people are distracted when they’re starting their business and stop by focusing on the obstacles. The book will start with the most important moves that an entrepreneur needs including: not spending too much time planning, not spending too much money, getting operational fast, getting quick cash and not looking for a team but focusing on what the founder can do on his or her own. Then, the book discusses in detail the other necessary steps to success from effective communication, selling, hiring a team, expanding one’s business, being a mentor, etc.

View More about Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat (Agora Series)

John Battelle

Our Rating:

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
springq.com says: When Google launched at the very end of the 90’s, people thought they were crazy because the search problem was “already done”. Well we know how the story ended; this is a great account of how it happened.

How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek Bestseller
Finalist for the Goldman Sachs/FT Business Book of the Year Award

What does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question in all its shades of meaning can unlock the most intractable riddles of business and arguably of human culture itself. And for the past few years, that’s exactly what Google has been doing.

But The Search offers much more than the inside story of Google’s triumph. It’s a big- picture book about the past, present, and future of search technology and the enormous impact it’s starting to have on marketing, media, pop culture, dating, job hunting, international law, civil liberties, and just about every other sphere of human interest.

BACKCOVER: The Search is a superb story, well written and feverishly researched. Whether you are a student, techie, business executive, budding visionary or just enjoy pop culture, this is a book not to be missed.
USA Today

John Battelle is Silicon Valley’s Bob Woodward. One of the founders of Wired magazine, he has hung around Google for so long that he has come to be as close as any outsider can to actually being an insider.The result is a highly readable account of Google’s astonishing rise.
The Economist

It’s a fascinating story, and Mr. Battelle tells it well.
The Wall Street Journal

A surprisingly gripping storyThe Search yields impressive results, pairing a reportorial eye for detail with an evangelical zeal to help readers understand the import of the search revolution.
Wired News

View More about The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture