October 3rd, 2007

Book Review: The Art of the Start

A while back I was made aware of a great opportunity by my friend and associate Ron Johnson of CyberOptik.net. He dropped me an email about a Guy Kawasaki contest on his blog. After participating by adding the Truemors Application to my Facebook I sent an email to Guy and I was one of the lucky first 200 to receive a free autographed copy of The Art of the Start – The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything.

My overall opinion of The Art of the Start was that it was a book written with true personal experience from a business veteran. In reading the pages and absorbing the information as best I could (I am dyslexic so my reading takes a while) I really felt like the thorough advice I was receiving was from a man who knew what the hell he was talking about. This is a growingly uncommon feeling in reading Business books now a days.

Briefly, here is a history of Guy Kawasaki’s career. He started out working as a Mac Evangelist for Apple Computers, Inc. in the 80’s and grew a reputation as the key Apple Fellow in spreading the word about this great machine to programmers and engineers in the infant stage of the Personal Computer.

After getting out of Apple (once he had established the brand enough to move on) he took on several ventures and then went back to Apple in the 90’s with the intention of recovering the damage done by an idiot CEO and Board of Directors (the guys who let Steve Jobs go). Once Guy left Apple again he co-founded his current company called Garage Technology Ventures, a Startup Capital firm.

In his latest book (of 8 written) he addresses exactly what the title implies, the excitement and pure chaos of starting a new venture from scratch. He runs through all the types of practice a person will need in starting their venture and gives a lot of great insight into the world of starting something new in pursuit of Changing the World.

The fundamental aspect I took away from this book over everything else is that one should not go into business to make money but instead do so to make Meaning or in otherwords make the world a better place. If a person can accomplish this, money will come (it is almost inevitable).

Most will give a star, number, or letter rating in their reviews but I have to say I think it would demean a book’s intentions to rate it in such a simplistic way so instead I am going to use a sentence to show my rating of the book.

Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start is an excellent read for people starting a new business venture because it gives the reader the fundimentals but leave room open for them to make personal meaning in their new Startup, whatever it may be.

To check out more about Guy and his new book go to…
www.artofthestart.com