Have a startup idea? Want to launch it fast? People often spend years on working on startup ideas that fail—and they could have known long before, had they asked the hard questions earlier. Five-time tech founder Dave Parker has been there, and in Trajectory: Startup he offers a path to get you from ideation to launch and revenue in just six months. With a track record of starting companies from scratch, raising both angel and venture capital, and participating in eight exits as founder, operator, and board member, Parker's experience is practical and actionable. Having sold three of his own startups and closed two, Parker learned just as much from his failures as from his successes, and he brings this wit and wisdom into his writing in a transparent way. Parker shares advice on: • What makes a good idea that makes money • Recruiting and working with cofounders • Asking customers what product they want (customer development) • How to build a tech product even as a non-tech founder • How to get out of your head, ship a product, and make your first sale Trajectory: Startup removes the mystery from the startup process and outlines a roadmap of tasks and timeframes, with monthly milestones and resources. This pre-accelerator program will help you get the momentum you need. Skip the Executive MBA and go make money! This guide makes starting a company accessible to a broad range of founders, investors, and employees who have the spark of innovation and drive to follow their dreams.

Entrepreneurial Life tells the fascinating history of CaptiveAire, the largest commercial kitchen ventilation company in North America. From the beginning, CaptiveAireÕs story is not a typical one. Forged by Bob Luddy during a growing recession, with little capital, and as a newcomer to the regionÑhis startup should not have survived, much less taken the trajectory it has had. In these pages, Luddy shares some of the values he learned as one of eight children in a Òhard-scrabble, can-doÓ family and details his take on the type of leadership, innovation, financial management, and marketing strategy that has spurred his manufacturing company to grow at a remarkable pace over the course of forty-plus years at the helm. Entrepreneurial Life reveals LuddyÕs philosophy on all things entrepreneurship, character, and the skills necessary for achieving your fullest potential, no matter what your calling.

Founded is the go-to reference for first-time entrepreneurs, providing lessons and inspiration to empower anyone starting a new project or business. Melissa Kaufman and Mike Raab, the directors of Northwestern’s renowned student entrepreneurship program, The Garage, show you how to tap into the superpower of thinking and acting like an entrepreneur based on their experience guiding hundreds of early-stage startups. Founded explains—through the authors’ own expertise and interviews with successful young founders—how to • make the best possible decisions when launching your business, • avoid the common mistakes of first-time entrepreneurs, • take immediate, concrete steps to get started on a new idea. In this essential book for first-time and student founders, you will learn why entrepreneurship is for everyone, “failure” is inevitable (and why that’s a good thing!), and how to make sure you’re building something people want. Founded will shatter your misconceptions about starting a business and help you get started turning your ideas into something real today!

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

If Owen Chase can't find a way to turn his company around in the next nine days, he'll be forced to shut it down and lay off all of his employees. He has incurred substantial debt and his marriage is on shaky ground. Through pure happenstance, Owen finds himself pondering this problem while advancing steadily as a contestant at the World Series of Poker. His Las Vegas path quickly introduces him to Samantha, a beautiful and mysterious mentor with a revolutionary approach to entrepreneurship. Sam is a fountain of knowledge that may save his company, but her sexual advances might prove too much for Owen's struggling marriage. All In Startup is more than just a novel about eschewing temptation and fighting to save a company. It is a lifeline for entrepreneurs who are thinking about launching a new idea or for those who have already started but can't seem to generate the traction they were expecting. Entrepreneurs who achieve success in the new economy do so using a new "scientific method" of innovation. All In Startup demonstrates why four counterintuitive principles separate successful entrepreneurs from the wanna-preneurs who bounce from idea to idea, unable to generate real revenue. You will likely get only one opportunity in your life to go "all in" in on an idea: to quit your job, talk your spouse into letting you drain the savings account, and follow your dream. All In Startup will prepare you for that "all in" moment and make sure that you push your chips into the middle only when the odds are in your favor. This book holds the keys to significantly de-risking your idea so that your success appears almost lucky. Join Owen and Sam for this one-of-a-kind journey that will set you on the right path for when it's your turn to put everything on the line.

Know how your company can accelerate growth by not only tapping into new growth vectors, but also by adapting its organization, culture, and processes. To oversee growth from an idea to a company with billions in revenue, CEOs must reinvent many aspects of their company in anticipation of it reaching ever-higher revenues. Author Peter Cohan takes you through the four stages of scaling: winning the first customers, building a scalable business model, sprinting to liquidity, and running the marathon. What You'll LearnDiscover how founders keep their CEO positions by managing the organizational change needed to reach the next stage of scalingRead case studies that illustrate how CEOs craft growth strategies, raise capital, create culture, build their organizations, set goals, and manage processes to achieve themDiscover principles of successful scaling through comparisons of successful and less successful companies Use the Scaling Quotient to assess your startup's readiness to growFollow a road map for turning your idea into a company that can change the world Who This Book Is For Entrepreneurs, aspiring CEOs, capital providers, and all other key stakeholders

Get from Idea to Product/Market Fit in B2B. The world has changed. Nowadays, there are more companies building B2B products than there’s ever been. Products are entering organizations top-down, middle-out, and bottom-up. Teams and managers control their budgets. Buyers have become savvier and more impatient. The case for the value of new innovations no longer needs to be made. Technology products get hired, and fired faster than ever before. The challenges have moved from building and validating products to gaining adoption in increasingly crowded and fragmented markets. This, requires a new playbook. The second edition of Lean B2B is the result of years of research into B2B entrepreneurship. It builds off the unique Lean B2B Methodology, which has already helped thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators around the world build successful businesses. In this new edition, you’ll learn: - Why companies seek out new products, and why they agree to buy from unproven vendors like startups - How to find early adopters, establish your credibility, and convince business stakeholders to work with you - What type of opportunities can increase the likelihood of building a product that finds adoption in businesses - How to learn from stakeholders, identify a great opportunity, and create a compelling value proposition - How to get initial validation, create a minimum viable product, and iterate until you're able to find product/market fit This second edition of Lean B2B will show you how to build the products that businesses need, want, buy, and adopt.