Entrepreneurship


High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars
by Charles H. Ferguson

If you've ever gone out to lunch with a coworker and suddenly found yourself witness to a savage stream of unflattering assessments of bosses, wicked gossip, and the-emperor-has-no-clothes analysis of your industry, you'll know what it's like to read High Stakes, No Prisoners. Ferguson, an MIT Ph.D., started up a company called Vermeer Technologies in 1994, a rough time for startups in Silicon Valley. The country was coming out of a recession, the stock market was stagnant, and the Internet wasn't yet taken seriously by those with money to invest. Vermeer had a software program called FrontPage that only someone who understood the coming power of the Net could appreciate. Even in Silicon Valley, few were so prescient. Most of High Stakes is the story of Vermeer, from its startup to its sale to Microsoft. (Now bundled with Microsoft Office, FrontPage is used by more than 3 million people worldwide.) Along the way, Ferguson met the players in the Valley and formed strong opinions of them. He describes Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale as an egomaniac and technological dolt in way, way over his head. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is "severely warped." One of his best lines sums up Silicon Valley as a place where "one finds little evidence that the meek shall inherit the earth."

But this isn't just the technological equivalent of WWF trash-talking. Ferguson is very tough on himself, too, and details his own shortcomings as a person and a businessman. Mostly, it's a gloves-off account of how things really get done in high technology today, as refreshingly honest and acerbic an account as you'll ever read.

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The Monk and the Riddle : The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur
by Randy Komisar, Kent L. Lineback

Prospective entrepreneurs may think they know everything there is to know about starting a business in Silicon Valley. They can draw up business plans, have meetings with venture capitalists, maybe even get funded and actually launch a start-up. However, in The Monk and the Riddle, Silicon Valley sage Randy Komisar reasons that's only half the equation for success. And it may not be the important half. Komisar has worked with a number of companies--Apple, LucasArts Entertainment (the gaming division of George Lucas's empire), and WebTV among them--and has come to a rather startling conclusion: if you can't see yourself doing this business for the rest of your life, don't start it. In other words, he wants to see passion and purpose in business, not just spreadsheets and a by-the-numbers business model.

To illustrate, Komisar takes the reader through a hypothetical Silicon Valley start-up, with an eager entrepreneur named Lenny trying to get funding for an online casket-selling business. As Komisar helps Lenny find the real purpose of the business, the passion behind the revenue projections, he reflects back on his life as an entrepreneur. Komisar emerges as a master storyteller, the kind of guy you'd feel honored to share a bottle of wine with. And you believe his conclusion: "When all is said and done, the journey is the reward." It's great if you've made billions on the journey, but the important thing is that you do something you can truly throw yourself into.

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Getting Everything You Can Out of All You'Ve Got : 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition
by Jay Abraham

Marketing wiz Jay Abraham provides some powerful strategies for boosting your career or business in Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got. Abraham believes that anyone can advance in life by tapping into hidden assets and developing the right mindset. He writes, "You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don't see them." Over the course of 21 chapters, he shows how to get ahead by treating bosses and clients as valued friends; find better and more exciting ways of doing things; develop "unique selling propositions"; persuade people to follow your lead; master the art of selling on the telephone; craft a formal referral system; sell on the Internet; and forge strong, established business relationships. Abraham's central theme is that everyone is in sales. In almost any profession, people must be skilled at selling themselves and their ideas, not just their company's product or service. Engagingly written, the book features more than 200 examples of people and companies who have successfully used these techniques, from Bill Gates and Dennis Rodman to Sharper Image and Federal Express.

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Start Your Own Business The Only Start-Up Book You'll Ever Need
by Rieva Lesonsky (Editor), John McKinley (Illustrator)

Make your dreams of starting a business come true! It's easy with this step-by-step guide. Packed with expert advice, this book demystifies the start-up process with plain-English answers to the most commonly asked questions about starting a small business. It's like having your own personal start-up expert. You get in-depth information on:

Evaluating your business idea
Conducting market research
Choosing a business structure
Creating a winning business plan
Where to find financing
Bookkeeping and taxes
And much more

Hundreds of illustrations, tip boxes, forms and worksheets make understanding even the most complex issues a breeze. There's even a special quiz you can take to see if you have the "right stuff" to become a business owner.

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The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses
by Amar V. Bhide

Bhidecautions the reader that this is not a how-to book on the popular subject of entrepreneurship; rather, it looks at entrepreneurs mainly from an economic point of view. His work represents systematic research about starting and growing a new business, and Bhidecontends this approach is unique in the field. The book examines the nature of the opportunities that entrepreneurs pursue, problems and tasks they face, traits and skills they require, and the social and economic contributions they make; and then compares those realities with features of large, established companies. Entrepreneurs pursue opportunities with different levels of uncertainty, investment requirements, and likely profit. They survive and prosper because of an ongoing ability to adapt to opportunities and problems, are subjected to many detours, and stumble often along the way. This theory book will find a welcome reception in business schools that are focusing on courses in entrepreneurship and may also appeal to corporate executives who are trying to instill an entrepreneurial spirit in their employees.

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Burn Rate : How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet
by Michael Wolff

Journalist Michael Wolff is a recognized pioneer in the business of cyberspace, meaning he has been developing products and services for the online world since the dark ages of 1994. During the intervening years, however, not all the activities he engaged in, nor all the people he dealt with, left a pleasant taste in his mouth--although, to be sure, his cumulative adventures certainly have been very lucrative. In Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, Wolff pulls few punches as he candidly and methodically recounts the single steps forward and multiple steps back that marked his experiences while trying to transform a fledgling print media enterprise into a towering New Media colossus. After developing a series of "NetGuide" books that proved hugely successful, he attempted to transfer the concept to a variety of online offshoots and in so doing connected with Wired magazine, Time-Warner's Pathfinder, the late Robert Maxwell's media empire, AOL, assorted venture capitalists, sundry competitors, and numerous would-be partners. Burn Rate is a fascinating tale that might best be characterized by the old adage that warns us to "be careful what we wish for, for we just might get it."

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The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success
by Brian Tracy

The scrappy spirit of Horatio Alger is alive and well in success guru Brian Tracy. He may not be a household name yet like his colleagues Warren Bennis and Anthony Robbins, but (his publisher tells us) he still lectures hundreds of thousands annually on personal and professional development, including top cats at IBM and Arthur Andersen. This, his latest of some 10 books (including the "bestseller" Maximum Achievement), is exactly what its title suggests--100 maxims and MOs everyone must learn and live by to make it big, broken down into the laws of Life, Success, Business, Leadership, Money, Selling, Negotiating, and Time Management. Each law is followed up by anecdotes and quotes through history, plus bulleted points on "How You Can Apply This Law Immediately," which provide welcome structure and practicality.

In fact, Tracy's 100 laws are so cheerily practical, such an astoundingly uncomplicated affirmation of good old American bootstrap self-determinism, they recall the days when Alger's fictional bootblacks and newsboys finally made it big through pluck, elbow grease, and wide-grinning high hopes alone. (And, consciously or not, Tracy does seem to reside in a boys' world: among the countless men of means he cites here--from Emerson, Twain, and Lincoln to Henry Ford, Sam Walton, and, uh, Jesus Christ--this reviewer counted a whopping two women.) At times, Tracy's laws read like a Rotarian's shameless plug for capitalism ("The free market is the most efficient way for millions of people to have their needs met at the lowest possible cost"), an expression of Nietzschean contempt ("People are poor because they have not yet decided to become rich"), or, in a few instances, the kind of declaration that sets survivors of totalitarian regimes all a-tremble ("Power gravitates to the person who can use it most effectively to get the desired results"--yikes!).

That said, Tracy's pronouncements are more than usually correct; an unfailing boost to the indecisive, underconfident, or fatalistic soul ("You are completely responsible for everything you are and for everything you become and achieve"); and even occasionally astute, especially in matters of sales ("Top money-earners in sales are viewed as consultants, helpers, counselors, and advisors to their customers, not as salespeople"), where he had his own humble beginnings. You won't find anything especially new in Tracy's 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws, so think of it as all the best advice for improvement of your self, career, and business you'll ever read or hear, packed into one turbocharged go-getter's almanac. At the book's start, Tracy promises us that just by writing down 10 of our goals in the first-person present tense ("I actually AM too rich and too thin!"), eight will have come true in a year's time. I ask you: Did even your own mother ever have that much faith in you?

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High Tech Start Up: The Complete Handbook for Creating Successful New High Tech Companies
by John L. Nesheim

You've got a hot idea for a new dot-com, and you're itching to join the folks who regularly show up on CNBC and at the Lexus dealerships in Silicon Valley. But you also know your odds of big-time success are about as long as Bill Gates's position in MSFT. What do you do? John Nesheim, an adjunct professor at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, who has personally structured over $300 million in new-venture deals, lays out the step-by-step skinny in High Tech Startup. Incorporating some two dozen case studies spanning the technology spectrum, he presents info specific to this industry that will help you get from concept to IPO. It begins with a 14-phase schedule itemizing time requirements, necessary assistance, typical participants, major costs, main risks, and desired results for each step. It then details all the critical stages (i.e., forming the company, preparing the business plan, assembling the team, dealing with venture capitalists and other funding sources). Nesheim focuses on practical strategies that should certainly improve your chances, but don't start prepping for that on-air interview with Mark Haines just yet: Only six out of 1 million high-tech ideas, he notes, ever become successful companies that go public.

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Leading Edge Business Planning for Entrepreneurs : Develop Your Vision, Utilize Technology, Obtain Venture Capital, Leverage Your Growth
by Jack Miller, James B. Arkebauer

Many new startups require a business plan approach that's not only meticulous and logical, but highly competitive as well. "Leading Edge Business Planning for Entrepreneurs" is directed specifically to the entrepreneur interested in aggressive growth. It incorporates the latest computer and Internet business operating techniques and technologies, and it shows you how to research your business's feasibility in the marketplace. Learn how to craft a winning business plan that can be presented not only to banks, but also to venture capitalists, micro-loan associations, or equity partners.

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Executive's Guide to E-Business : From Tactics to Strategy
by Martin V. Deise, Conrad Nowikow, Patrick King, Amy Wright, PricewaterhouseCoopers

An authoritative guide to becoming an industry leader through e-commerce Between 1993 and 1997, Internet users have soared from three million to more than 100 million. Driven by the Internet, consumers are redefining buying patterns and businesses are analyzing new strategies to leverage the power of the next generation of information technologies. Executive's Guide to E-Commerce shows businesses how to develop new relationships with customers, distributors, resellers/retailers, suppliers, logistics providers, and business partners through electronic commerce. Here, readers will discover how e-commerce can impact a corporation and improve business performance, and learn what can inhibit the growth of e-commerce. This book presents tailored e-commerce strategies for such industries as consumer products, entertainment, media, communications, financial services, the public sector, petroleum, and utilities. PricewaterhouseCoopers is a world-leading professional services organization. With 155,000 people in 150 countries, PricewaterhouseCoopers helps its clients solve complex business problems and measurably enhance their ability to build value, manage risk, and improve performance.

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B2B: How to Build a Profitable E-Commerce Strategy
by Michael J. Cunningham

In B2B, it is not a matter of winning or losing its about getting into the game that matters. Companies on the Internet fast track are buzzing about the unquestionable potential of B2B e-commerce. And why not? Reliable estimates suggest that trillions of dollars will be transacted over the Web in the next few years and the bulk of that will occur in the business-to-business space. For all of the discussion, however, this vast frontier of Internet commerce is still unexplored by most companies with the potential to profit. They simply dont know how to move beyond the hype to get started.

B2B provides the first definitive blueprint for creating a profitable business-to-business Web strategy. It describes phenomenal B2B success strategies such as those used by VerticalNet, Travelocity, and Cisco, and details smaller operations moving into the B2B market to illustrate how any company can navigate this space.

Michael Cunningham, a leading expert in B2B strategy and technology, breaks this previously cryptic topic down into actionable steps. B2B, Cunningham explains, is as old as business itself that is new is the speed at which new and more efficient business connections and services can be made. He describes specific ways B2B cuts transaction expenses, aggregates buying power, and exploits the efficiencies of single and specialized markets.

Not to be missed, B2B is the first book to provide a how-to game plan for succeeding at the greatest opportunity yet in online business.

"B2B is the first and most comprehensive account of the electronic B2B revolution. Michael Cunningham has separated the substance from the hype and provided the reader with a pragmatic approach to crafting a winning E-commerce strategy. Essential reading for today's leaders!" Christopher H. Greendale, Senior Partner, Internet Capital Group

"If you are a business executive looking for a clear, detailed explanation of the technologies used in Business-to-Business E-commerce applications, as well as an insightful review of the opportunities and market dynamics driving the digital economy, this is the book for you."

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