I recently read the Web Startup Success Guide by Bob Walsh and liked it. It was chock full of useful information and helpful tips about how to go from a programmer to an actual Owner. In the words of Michael Gerber, it helps you work on your business, and not in it.
Brief Thoughts
- The Venture capital chapter was quite informative, and reinforced my thought of “Are you sure you need this” regarding VC funding.
- The Social Media marketing chapter was excellent, and I have sent the link to the book to many of my friends in the advertising and marketing biz to help them get a handle on how to handle FaceBook, Twitter, and the rest
- For the most part the interviews were useful and informative, particularly Joel Spolsky’s interview. For my purposes, a couple of them could have been removed with no damage doen to the book, but I imagine they applied to someone.
- The interview with David Allen was informative as well. Conversations about the GTD methodology tend to resemble Ayn Rand discussions on philosophy too much, but this interview worked for it’s purposes
I recommend this book to everyone starting an ISV (like me!), or thinking about starting one. My only quibble is that there was no central guide to the links mentioned in the book, either as an appendix to the book or online. There were numerous mentions of useful websites, but it is easy to lose them as they are spread out all over the book. This is a minor quibble though. If you’re reading this, and this applies to you, go ahead and buy it. You’ll be glad you did.
Cross posted at the Digital Tool Factory blog.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
