Review: Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible
January 15th, 2011 Filed under: Internet Home Businesses — Small Home Business Author
Shoestring Venture-The Start-up Bible
All entrepreneurs – even the smallest operating on the tightest of budgets – have the opportunity to build powerful start-up organizations without ever really having to walk out the front door. Using global communications and data networks, even bootstrap entrepreneurs can staff an entire organization with every human resource and skill they need at rock-bottom prices.
It’s the magic of outsourcing. For, you see, globalization ain’t just for the big kids. We often hear about how globalization exports jobs overseas, but we rarely hear about the opportunities globalization creates for even the smallest of businesses, opportunities that allow even tiny businesses to compete with the majors on a global scale. In short, anyone can run a virtual organization using only a desktop or laptop computer.
Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible gives bootstrap entrepreneurs all the resources they need to build truly effective startups using the magic of outsourcing and offshoring.
A Consultant in a Book
For the millions who start a new business every year on the barest of resources, Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible is like hiring a high-level consultant to deal with the bewildering maze of issues from finance to marketing to technology that all entrepreneurs face.
Every business is nothing but a series of decisions which can make or break the business. You could say that, if there’s a science of business, it’s the science of making good decisions. And every bootstrap entrepreneur faces the daunting task of making ALL the business decisions, any one of which could either doom the enterprise or catapult it to stratospheric success. That meas that every entrepreneur has to quickly get up to speed on every issue their business faces.
Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible is the most exhaustive set of practical resources collected to empower entrepreneurs to make the right decisions on a limited budget, from business concept to product development to Web marketing. We call a “consultant in a book,” there to give considered and experienced answers to the infinite questions that come up.
Visit our blog at http://www.shoestringventure.com
Review:
This book is an incredibly comprehensive guide to the landscape that is starting up an entrepreneurial venture in the 21st century, using the Internet as your primary toolset.
I phrase it in that way, to make sure you- the reader- completely understand who this book is aimed at. If you’re new to being an entrepreneur, the information is priceless. If you’re an existing entrepreneur, the book still contains a lot of valuable info that might make you stop and really think of things you might not have known (or as Donald Rumsfeld put it: what we don’t know we don’t know). Either way, you cannot go wrong with picking this resource up and referring to it over and over again.
The book is clearly laid out, and takes you through each step of the way- chronologically in the logical order you would plan and execute a new business venture. It contains a LOT of useful advice and wisdom, and can be quite overwhelming, but as other reviewers have pointed out, the book doesn’t have to be read end-to-end to be appreciated or used. HOWEVER, if you’re brand new to entrepreneurial thinking, you had best read cover to cover before making your first move–you’ll really benefit from thinking over the whole process and what is truly required to get the endeavor moving in a successful direction!
Before you dismiss this review as all gushing and paid advertisement, let me tell you- I’m an entrepreneur myself, and I actually run a few businesses right now on a shoestring budget. I originally thought I wouldn’t get a lot out of this manual, especially considering the price of it–but after having read this, I really wish I had something like it back when I was starting out–I would’ve avoided a LOT of COSTLY mistakes had I read this book FIRST!! And even though I’m not `brand new’ to the process, and had to learn a lot of things in this book the hard way, I still found tremendous value. All the RESOURCES this catalogs [including mini-reviews on the value/services each provides!] for EACH step of the way is itself well worth the $ spent.
There is one issue I had- I don’t think the book detailed much regarding how to approach techniques to get your business out of `shoestring budget’ mode–although, I suspect a few of the business planning resources it points to would have articles on that..
BOTTOM LNE:
PLUS: Excellent resource outlining the steps you need to take to lay a well planned foundation for a new 21st century business.
MINUS: Highly focused on using Internet as a tool–if you don’t think you need the internet to be part of your business plan and aren’t open to using it as a tool – this book isn’t for you.
This is a road map to creating successful 21st century entrepreneurial businesses- as such, it won’t tell you everything about HOW to do it, but it does show you WHERE you can go to find out!
