Advice on how to build a startup is plentiful online with countless blogs by seasoned entrepreneurs or consultants, successful or not. So it begs the question: why write a book in 2009 about starting your own web startup? “The Web Startup Success Guide” by Bob Walsh answers with a resounding yes!
Despite all the information at your fingertips with Google, a book presents a more coherent story, from start to finish. Paper is still the better approach when you decide it’s time to go past random nuggets of wisdom and get serious about entrepreneurship.
Software developers are the natural target audience for the Success Guide. The author makes the right choice in assuming that you already know technology, so it focuses instead on the business and marketing aspects of creating a startup. Its strength is in being up to speed with the current online social media trends, without succumbing to fads. In comparison, most other startup books now read more like dated advice from the times past.
The book does a very good job of walking you through the steps of building a modern startup. The first chapter reviews your possible motivations for starting your own company and where to get ideas. The second chapter forces you to refine and challenge your original idea. At a minimum, you owe it to yourself to check the sidebar titled “what startups not to pursue” because we are all guilty of making those mistakes at least once.
Together, those two first chapters do a great job of getting you excited and pumped up so you want to start right away, but also making sure that you don’t wander off in the wrong direction.
The Success Guide then covers various platforms such as Google App Engine, Amazon, or the iPhone in a way that will surprise you. This is not a technical review of whose cloud is better. Rather, it forces you to think as a business and make the right decision based on which customers you are targeting and what kind of business model and revenue you expect. As an example, the author favors B2B2C, meaning that selling to businesses that sell to consumers is the easiest path to a profitable company, rather than selling to consumers directly. Such choices can impact your target platform.
Next comes a comprehensive section about the current best online tools to build your startup. For instance, the book reviews GetSatisfaction, UserVoice, 99designs, and more. It’s a great chapter but it’s probably the part of the book that will become obsolete the fastest. Another criticism is that it reads more like a collection of descriptions rather than reviews and advice. The reader can’t quite tell which product to use. For instance, is CrazyEgg better than Google Analytics? It doesn’t clearly say.
A major strength of the book is the chapter on social media. In my experience, new software or web startups have strong technical background. They don’t need much help with technology and can build great products. However, many don’t have a clue how to spread the word and reach their customers. The Success Guide does a great job of guiding the reader and use the latest tools – facebook and twitter included. Without succumbing to twitter-mania. The book will show you why and how to become your own community manager.
Publicity is another important topic that software developers struggle with. How do you convince the press to cover your product? The age of the press release and an article in the New York Times is long gone. This chapter is the key to finding success in today’s world and is focused on the right approach for a company with a handful of developers, not a large corporation. You could call this “guerilla marketing 2009, the lost manual.”
As a side note, I also looked at StartupToDo.com, a web site from the same author. Bob Walsh formatted the same startup advice two ways. First, in the form of this book. But also as a website that will force you to apply the recipes of the book to your actual situation. Once you think about it, it makes total sense.
The book concludes with in-depth interviews of six role models for entrepreneurs.
The book could use some better formatting. Sometimes, a sidebar will spread multiple pages, which looks strange. Some interviews are presented as sidebars. Others flow like regular text, which is inconsistent.
Those minor editing weaknesses do not change the fact that “The Web Startup Success Guide” is an excellent book for all web entrepreneurs, with advice that is not only excellent and timely, but also actionable. If you don’t spring into action after reading this book, you should keep your cushy corporate job because entrepreneurship is not in you.
You can download a free chapter or visit Bob Walsh’s blog which contains extra information about the book.
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