Download or read book Starting a Tech Business written by Alex Cowan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The non-technical guide to building a booming tech-enabled business Thinking of starting a technology-enabled business? Or maybe you just want to increase your technology mojo so you can do your job better? You do not need to learn programming to participate in the development of today’s hottest technologies. But there are a few easy-to-grasp foundation concepts that will help you engage with a technical team. Starting a Tech Business explains in practical, actionable terms how to formulate and reality test new ideas package what you learn into frameworks that are highly actionable for engineers understand key foundation concepts about modern software and systems participate in an agile/lean development team as the ‘voice of the customer’ Even if you have a desire to learn to program (and I highly recommend doing whatever unlocks your ‘inner tinkerer’), these foundation concepts will help you target what exactly you want to understand about hands-on technology development. While a decade ago the barriers to creating a technology-enabled business required a pole vault, getting started today only requires a determined step in the right direction. Starting a Tech Business supplies the tools prospective entrepreneurs and business enterprises need to avoid common pitfalls and succeed in the fast-paced world of high-tech business. Successful execution requires thoughtful, evidence-based product formulation, well-articulated design, economic use of systems, adaptive management of technical resources, and empathetic deployment to customers. Starting a Tech Business offers practical checklists and frameworks that business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals can apply to any tech-based business idea, whether you’re developing software and products or beginning a technology-enabled business. You’ll learn: 1. How to apply today’s leading management frameworks to a tech business 2. How to package your product idea in a way that’s highly actionable for your technical team 3. How to ask the right questions about technology selection and product architecture 4. Strategies to leverage what your technology ecosystem has to offer 5. How to carefully define the roles on your team, and then effectively evaluate candidates 6. The most common disconnects between engineers and business people and how to avoid them 7. How you can apply process design to your tech business without stifling creativity 8. The steps to avoid the most common pitfalls tech founders encounter Now is one of the best times to start a technology-enabled business, and anyone can do it with the right amount and kind of preparation. Starting a Tech Business shows you how to move a product idea to market quickly and inexpensively—and to tap into the stream of wealth that a tech business can provide.

Download or read book What Every Engineer Should Know About Starting a High Tech Business Venture written by Eric Koester and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an experienced business lawyer in the technology, scientific and engineering community, this publication is for the engineer with an innovative high-tech idea or concept who needs those crucial business insights and strategies to move that idea forward. It offers key analysis on how to leave a current employer, gain access to technologie

Download or read book High Tech Start Up Revised And Updated written by John L. Nesheim and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2000-09-22 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised and updated edition of Nesheim's underground Silicon Valley bestseller incorporates twenty-three case studies of successful start-ups, including tables of wealth showing how much money founders and investors realized from each venture. The phenomenal success of the initial public offerings (IPOs) of many new internet companies obscures the fact that fewer than six out of 1 million business plans submitted to venture capital firms will ever reach the IPO stage. Many fail, according to start-up expert John Nesheim, because the entrepreneurs did not have access to the invaluable lessons that come from studying the real-world venture experiences of successful companies. Now they do. Acclaimed by entrepreneurs the world over, this practical handbook is filled with hard-to-find information and guidance covering every key phase of a start-up, from idea to IPO: how to create a winning business plan, how to value the firm, how venture capitalists work, how they make their money, where to find alternative sources of funding, how to select a good lawyer, and how to protect intellectual property. Nesheim aims to improve the odds of success for first-time high-tech entrepreneurs, and offers an insider's perspective from firsthand experience on one of the toughest challenges they face -- convincing venture capitalists or investment banks to provide financing. This complete, classic reference tool is essential reading for first-time high-tech entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs already involved in a start-up who want to increase their chances of success to rise to the top.

Download or read book Why Startups Fail written by Tom Eisenmann and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Download or read book Engineering Your Start up written by James A. Swanson and published by Professional Publications Incorporated. This book was released on 2003 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinking of starting your own business in high-tech? Do yourself a huge favor by reading this book first. The authors, both veterans of many start-ups, address topics vital to your start-up success, such as: Finding start-up opportunities Leaving your current employer but keeping your ideas Protecting your intellectual property Managing the five critical elements of a successful start-up Securing start-up financing Dealing successfully with venture capitalists Writing a winning business plan Creating a management team Handling employment and compensation--who to hire and how to pay them Avoiding the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make Understanding company valuation and exit strategies James Swanson and Michael Baird lay out all the basic concepts clearly, step by step. They demystify the start-up process with frank advice, insiders' tips, and "been there" examples. On-point case studies show you what to do--and what to avoid. An expanded list of resources steers you to help when you need it. You'll learn what it takes for you to create and manage a start-up, and the personal characteristics required to be successful in your new venture. In good economies and bad, entrepreneurs will continue to lead the way to new markets, new ventures, and new technologies. With this comprehensive new guide, you have a great start to start-up success! _____________________________ Since 1975 more than 2 million people preparing for their engineering, surveying, architecture, LEED�, interior design, and landscape architecture exams have entrusted their exam prep to PPI. For more information, visit us at www.ppi2pass.com.

Download or read book The Lean Startup written by Eric Ries and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Download or read book Starting a Tech Business written by Alex Cowan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-03-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The non-technical guide to building a booming tech-enabled business Thinking of starting a technology-enabled business? Or maybe you just want to increase your technology mojo so you can do your job better? You do not need to learn programming to participate in the development of today’s hottest technologies. But there are a few easy-to-grasp foundation concepts that will help you engage with a technical team. Starting a Tech Business explains in practical, actionable terms how to formulate and reality test new ideas package what you learn into frameworks that are highly actionable for engineers understand key foundation concepts about modern software and systems participate in an agile/lean development team as the ‘voice of the customer’ Even if you have a desire to learn to program (and I highly recommend doing whatever unlocks your ‘inner tinkerer’), these foundation concepts will help you target what exactly you want to understand about hands-on technology development. While a decade ago the barriers to creating a technology-enabled business required a pole vault, getting started today only requires a determined step in the right direction. Starting a Tech Business supplies the tools prospective entrepreneurs and business enterprises need to avoid common pitfalls and succeed in the fast-paced world of high-tech business. Successful execution requires thoughtful, evidence-based product formulation, well-articulated design, economic use of systems, adaptive management of technical resources, and empathetic deployment to customers. Starting a Tech Business offers practical checklists and frameworks that business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals can apply to any tech-based business idea, whether you’re developing software and products or beginning a technology-enabled business. You’ll learn: 1. How to apply today’s leading management frameworks to a tech business 2. How to package your product idea in a way that’s highly actionable for your technical team 3. How to ask the right questions about technology selection and product architecture 4. Strategies to leverage what your technology ecosystem has to offer 5. How to carefully define the roles on your team, and then effectively evaluate candidates 6. The most common disconnects between engineers and business people and how to avoid them 7. How you can apply process design to your tech business without stifling creativity 8. The steps to avoid the most common pitfalls tech founders encounter Now is one of the best times to start a technology-enabled business, and anyone can do it with the right amount and kind of preparation. Starting a Tech Business shows you how to move a product idea to market quickly and inexpensively—and to tap into the stream of wealth that a tech business can provide.

Download or read book Start Your Own Business Sixth Edition written by The Staff of Entrepreneur Media and published by Entrepreneur Press. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tapping into more than 33 years of small business expertise, the staff at Entrepreneur Media takes today’s entrepreneurs beyond opening their doors and through the first three years of ownership. This revised edition features amended chapters on choosing a business, adding partners, getting funded, and managing the business structure and employees, and also includes help understanding the latest tax and healthcare reform information and legalities.

Download or read book Do More Faster written by Brad Feld and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical advice from some of today's top early stage investors and entrepreneurs TechStars is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator with operations in three U.S. cities. Once a year in each city, it funds about ten Internet startups with a small amount of capital and surrounds them with around fifty top Internet entrepreneurs and investors. Historically, about seventy-five percent of the companies that go through TechStars raise a meaningful amount of angel or venture capital. Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is a collection of advice that comes from individuals who have passed through, or are part of, this proven program. Each vignette is an exploration of information often heard during the TechStars program and provides practical insights into early stage entrepreneurship. Contains seven sections, each focusing on a major theme within the TechStars program, including idea and vision, fundraising, legal and structure, and work/life balance Created by two highly regarded experts in the world of early stage investing Essays in each section come from the experienced author team as well as TechStar mentors, entrepreneurs, and founders of companies While you'll ultimately have to make your own decisions about what's right for your business, Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup can get your entrepreneurial endeavor headed in the right direction.

Download or read book The Founder s Dilemmas written by Noam Wasserman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founder's Dilemmas examines how early decisions by entrepreneurs can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, including quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders as well as inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.

Download or read book Traction written by Gabriel Weinberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most startups don’t fail because they can’t build a product. Most startups fail because they can’t get traction. Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely. As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die. Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn’t the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team, or how much money you raise. It’s how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers (or, for a free service, users). That’s called traction, and it makes everything else easier—fund-raising, hiring, press, partnerships, acquisitions. Talk is cheap, but traction is hard evidence that you’re on the right path. Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base, and how to pick the right ones for your business. It draws on inter-views with more than forty successful founders, including Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (reddit), Paul English (Kayak), and Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot). You’ll learn, for example, how to: ·Find and use offline ads and other channels your competitors probably aren’t using ·Get targeted media coverage that will help you reach more customers ·Boost the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns by automating staggered sets of prompts and updates ·Improve your search engine rankings and advertising through online tools and research Weinberg and Mares know that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution; every startup faces unique challenges and will benefit from a blend of these nineteen traction channels. They offer a three-step framework (called Bullseye) to figure out which ones will work best for your business. But no matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.

Download or read book Disciplined Entrepreneurship written by Bill Aulet and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-08-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 24 Steps to Success! Disciplined Entrepreneurship will change the way you think about starting a company. Many believe that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but great entrepreneurs aren’t born with something special – they simply make great products. This book will show you how to create a successful startup through developing an innovative product. It breaks down the necessary processes into an integrated, comprehensive, and proven 24-step framework that any industrious person can learn and apply. You will learn: Why the “F” word – focus – is crucial to a startup’s success Common obstacles that entrepreneurs face – and how to overcome them How to use innovation to stand out in the crowd – it’s not just about technology Whether you’re a first-time or repeat entrepreneur, Disciplined Entrepreneurship gives you the tools you need to improve your odds of making a product people want. Author Bill Aulet is the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship as well as a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. For more please visit http://disciplinedentrepreneurship.com/

Download or read book INSPIRED written by Marty Cagan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do today’s most successful tech companies—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla—design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than the vast majority of tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love—and that will work for your business. With sections on assembling the right people and skillsets, discovering the right product, embracing an effective yet lightweight process, and creating a strong product culture, readers can take the information they learn and immediately leverage it within their own organizations—dramatically improving their own product efforts. Whether you’re an early stage startup working to get to product/market fit, or a growth-stage company working to scale your product organization, or a large, long-established company trying to regain your ability to consistently deliver new value for your customers, INSPIRED will take you and your product organization to a new level of customer engagement, consistent innovation, and business success. Filled with the author’s own personal stories—and profiles of some of today’s most-successful product managers and technology-powered product companies, including Adobe, Apple, BBC, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix—INSPIRED will show you how to turn up the dial of your own product efforts, creating technology products your customers love. The first edition of INSPIRED, published ten years ago, established itself as the primary reference for technology product managers, and can be found on the shelves of nearly every successful technology product company worldwide. This thoroughly updated second edition shares the same objective of being the most valuable resource for technology product managers, yet it is completely new—sharing the latest practices and techniques of today’s most-successful tech product companies, and the men and women behind every great product.

Download or read book Managing High Tech Start Ups written by Duncan MacVicar and published by Butterworth-Heinemann. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Managing High-Tech Start-Ups equips engineers with a basic tool-kit for founding a high-tech manufacturing company. It gives would-be entrepreneurs insightful knowledge on how to attack such problems as developing a marketing plan, a sales plan, targets, pricing, hiring a sales force, evaluating marketing results, and correcting problems. The book emphasizes how to correctly identify a problem, so time is spent on its causes and not on its symptoms. Particular emphasis is placed on the marketing aspects of new engineering ventures, since marketing is usually not part of an engineer's experience, yet is so vital in the success or failure of a new venture. The authors take the reader step-by-step through the process of marketing evaluation and developing a product plan.

Download or read book Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting for High Tech Companies written by Frank J. Fabozzi and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Financial aspects of launching and operating a high-tech company, including risk analysis, business models, U.S. securities law, financial accounting, tax issues, and stock options, explained accessibly. This book offers an accessible guide to the financial aspects of launching and operating a high-tech business in such areas as engineering, computing, and science. It explains a range of subjects—from risk analysis to stock incentive programs for founders and key employees—for students and aspiring entrepreneurs who have no prior training in finance or accounting. The book begins with the rigorous analysis any prospective entrepreneur should undertake before launching a business, covering risks associated with a new venture, the reasons startup companies fail, and the stages of financing. It goes on to discuss business models and their components, business plans, and exit planning; forms of business organization, and factors to consider in choosing one; equity allocation to founders and employees; applicable U.S. securities law; and sources of equity capital. The book describes principles of financial accounting, the four basic financial statements, and financial ratios useful in assessing management performance. It also explains financial planning and the use of budgets; profit planning; stock options and other option-type awards; methodologies for valuing a private company; economic assessment of a potential investment project; and the real options approach to risk and managerial flexibility. Appendixes offer case studies of Uber and of the valuation of Tentex.

Download or read book Disrupted written by Dan Lyons and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An instant New York Times bestseller, Dan Lyons' "hysterical" (Recode) memoir, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "the best book about Silicon Valley," takes readers inside the maddening world of fad-chasing venture capitalists, sales bros, social climbers, and sociopaths at today's tech startups. For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong? HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."

Download or read book Start Ups Pivots and Pop Ups written by Richard Hall and published by Kogan Page Publishers. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST: Business Book Awards 2020 - Start-Up Inspiration Category Start-Ups, Pivots and Pop-Ups is a must read for anyone with a business idea and the desire to be successful. It gives the reader the skills and knowledge to survive in today's innovation and entrepreneurial-focused world. This book is about starting a business. It's about putting your toe in the entrepreneurial water - perhaps through doing a short term business gig or a pop-up business - and then seeing what happens. It shows you how to listen to the customer and work out why failures may happen, and when they do, you'll learn how to deal with them and create a new business that is robust and ready to grow. Start-Ups, Pivots and Pop-Ups shows you the best ways of starting, testing and growing a business. It shares the stories, experience and insights of those who've done it, and explains how to innovate, trial, refine and succeed. Even if your business idea struggles, you'll find out how to learn so much that you'll pivot your business, try again and then win big time. You'll learn from a range of organizations including Blue Cow Vodka, Sandows Cold Filtered Coffee, Monty's Bakehouse and Lagom Kitchenware.