Starting a Business? What You Need to Think About, Know, and Do Planning a business needs to start somewhere. This playbook is it. The objective of this manageable and plainspoken playbook (and workbook) is to sometimes gently, and sometimes less so, prod you toward making an informed decision about your proposed entrepreneurial undertaking or, conversely, help you realize and understand why you need to let go, walk away, and look elsewhere for opportunities. That’s the “go/no-go” crossroads, likely the most important business decision you will ever have to make. Think of this as a race to the starting line. Get ready to walk through 30 consecutive tough and sometimes personal (even mildly cringe-worthy) step-by-step milestones.

According to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, more than 565,000 new businesses were created in 2010 in the United States alone—each one of them hoping to strike gold. The Startup Playbook will help them succeed. Going insider to insider with unprecedented access, New York Times bestselling author and Clickable CEO, David Kidder, shares the hard-hitting experiences of some of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs and CEOs, revealing their most closely held advice. Face-to-face interviews with 40 founders give readers key insights into what it took to build PayPal, LinkedIn, AOL, TED, Flickr, and many others into household names. Special sections include topics ranging from how to select the right idea to pursue to finding funding and overcoming inevitable obstacles. In an economy demanding change, The Startup Playbook is the go-to for entrepreneurs big and small.

Get the real guidance you need to create and build your first startup company from founders who have been there many times before. The first run printing of The Startup Playbook SOLD OUT! So, we revised, expanded, and improved this second edition, including a new foreword by Brad Feld, author of Venture Deals. We still give our personal, how-to guide for building your startup from the ground up. You'll find a collection of the major lessons and shortcuts we've learned that will shift the odds in your favor. We're sharing our tips, secrets, and advice in a frank, founder-to-founder discussion with you. We make no bones about our bias. We're on your side, the founder's side. While venture capitalists, investors, and accelerators/incubators can add great value in the startup ecosystem, this book isn't about their points of view. We'll tell you where our interests as founders diverge from those on the other side of the table—investors, bankers, advisors, board members, and others—and what to do when that happens. The Startup Playbook is not a recipe, it's not a template, it's not a list of tasks to do. It's our insider's guide to starting a company and running it successfully in those critical early months. Between us, we've started over a dozen high-tech software companies and raised over $500 million in investment capital. We've acquired over thirty-five companies, had three of our startups go public, sold six of them, and we made billions of dollars for shareholders. We've also invested in over eighty startups, advised and mentored over two hundred companies and actively worked with venture capitalists (VCs), incubators, and accelerators to help launch many other new startups. We've had plenty of failures, too. And we've probably learned more from those than from the successes. We share those lessons as well. The Startup Playbook is full of our advice, guidance, do's, and don'ts from our years of experience as founders many times. We want to share our hard-earned knowledge with you to make success easier for you to achieve. "This book is extraordinarily fresh and exciting. In an accessible, straight talk fashion, this book is a manual, and an inspiration. The Startup Playbook is smart and avoids the 'I am so smart' over-writing endemic to the genre. Read this as it is presented. You'll be doing yourself a tremendous favor." —Amazon Reviewer

Powerhouse Business Mentorship is the Definitive Business/Entrepreneurial Mentoring Handbook Mentoring embraces vision-building, handholding, numbers-crunching, and encouragement. It’s a two-way street consisting of the mentor (advisor/coach) and the mentee (the committed participant). For the mentor, Powerhouse Business Mentorship offers powerful, success-oriented techniques and proven strategies that can assure a mutually effective mentorship experience. For the mentee, this book counsels on how to choose a mentor, how to control the process and how to get the most out of the relationship. Mentoring is not all about ‘You need to do it this way, my way’, but more so ‘Tell me what you are trying to do and where you want this opportunity to take you’. Powerhouse Business Mentorship also recounts Jay’s mentoring journeys. Some were great and delivered memorable outcomes, some merely good, and others best described as...‘colorful’. Everything Jay has learned from his mentoring encounters has found its way into Powerhouse Business Mentorship. Anyone leading or participating in mentorship needs to have Powerhouse Business Mentorship as their indispensable handbook.

"Ed has taken thirty years of battle-hardened experience running managed services businesses as a systems integrator, communications provider, equipment manufacturer, offshore provider and an independent start-up and put it in a highly readable, yet incredibly detailed and indispensable book." Bob Boles CEO, Hostway Corporation "The Managed Services Playbook is the blueprint for building and running a successful managed services business. The explosion in managed services at Avaya was fueled by many of the strategies and plans Ed has outlined in this book." Mike Runda President, Avaya Client Services "Successfully running a managed services business is a difficult task with many nuances which make it very different from other IT services. Ed has unlocked these secrets which have eluded so many businesses. The advice in The Managed Services Playbook is priceless." Chris Formant President, Verizon Enterprise Solutions "Ed's proven ability to build high growth, high profit managed services businesses has made him one of the top managed services executive in the industry. The Managed Services Playbook details the keys to success for all those involved in managed and cloud businesses and can be mapped to proven, measurable results." George Humphrey Senior Director, Research and Advisory - Managed Services, Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) "As IT vendors of all shapes and sizes rush to move their businesses to the cloud and managed services, The Managed Services Playbook should be required reading for anyone involved in those businesses." Dave D'Aprano Group Executive - IT Outsourcing, Dimension Data

Rethink your business for the digital age. Every business begun before the Internet now faces the same challenge: How to transform to compete in a digital economy? Globally recognized digital expert David L. Rogers argues that digital transformation is not about updating your technology but about upgrading your strategic thinking. Based on Rogers's decade of research and teaching at Columbia Business School, and his consulting for businesses around the world, The Digital Transformation Playbook shows how pre-digital-era companies can reinvigorate their game plans and capture the new opportunities of the digital world. Rogers shows why traditional businesses need to rethink their underlying assumptions in five domains of strategy—customers, competition, data, innovation, and value. He reveals how to harness customer networks, platforms, big data, rapid experimentation, and disruptive business models—and how to integrate these into your existing business and organization. Rogers illustrates every strategy in this playbook with real-world case studies, from Google to GE, from Airbnb to the New York Times. With practical frameworks and nine step-by-step planning tools, he distills the lessons of today's greatest digital innovators and makes them usable for businesses at any stage. Many books offer advice for digital start-ups, but The Digital Transformation Playbook is the first complete treatment of how legacy businesses can transform to thrive in the digital age. It is an indispensable guide for executives looking to take their firms to the next stage of profitable growth.

Creating Startup Junkies focuses on the unique proposition of building sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems in Unexpected Places. Arkansas, and many other states and communities, are well-positioned to inspire and empower entrepreneurs and innovators through the intentional cultivation of talent, a collaborative culture, engagement of their local community, and the capitalization of early-stage ventures. Creating Startup Junkies outlines this genesis through knowledge, anecdotes, tools, and a framework to transform your community and to create your own team of Startup Junkies.In Creating Startup Junkies, you will:- Discover the Four Pillars of sustainable ecosystem building and how to apply them in your own community. - Read stories and anecdotes about how other "Unexpected Places" have deployed and cultivated these pillars to build sustainable venture ecosystems.-Learn to use the Venture Ecosystem Building Canvas to assess your own community against the Four Pillars in order to build a plan for long-term success.- Receive valuable tools, insights, and anecdotes that will fire your imagination, fuel your actions, and enable your success.