The Startup Adventure: How create an environment for entrepreneurial success. - Foreword by Alexander Osterwalder (founder of Business Model Canvas) A UNIQUE STUDY CARRIED OUT AT SIX INCUBATORS LOCATED ON FIVE DIFFERENT CONTINENTS. The Startup Adventure is a concrete and visually rich benchmarking of successful and innovative methods of stimulating and encouraging entrepreneurism. This book provides people who are interested in this field with several practical examples of proven working methods from around the world. With the help of entrepreneurs, politicians and incubators in six different countries on five continents, Erik Wallin thoroughly analyzes one central question: How do we create the right conditions that will allow entrepreneurs to succeed? In this book, Erik presents the results of his study, while also addressing the following questions: What motivates entrepreneurs in Kenya? How do they put together successful teams in India? How are future entrepreneurs recruited in China? How do they optimize the learning curve for startups on New Zealand? What brand support do they provide entrepreneurs with in Brazil? How do they create the right environment for entrepreneurism in Silicon Valley? How can you implement these methods and insights in your company, your municipality, your incubator, your country, or even your life? Come join me on this adventure around the world as we learn the secrets of successful entrepreneurship.

Kaplan, a well-known figure in the computer industry, founded GO Corporation in 1987, and for several years it was one of the hottest new ventures in the Valley. Startup tells the story of Kaplan's wild ride: how he assembled a brilliant but fractious team of engineers, software designers, and investors; pioneered the emerging market for hand-held computers operated with a pen instead of a keyboard; and careened from crisis to crisis without ever losing his passion for a revolutionary idea. Along the way, Kaplan vividly recreates his encounters with eccentric employees, risk-addicted venture capitalists, and industry giants such as Bill Gates, John Sculley, and Mitchell Kapor. And no one - including Kaplan himself - is spared his sharp wit and observant eye.

The famed political advisor to Uber, FanDuel, Lemonade, Tesla and other startups reveals what really happens at the intersection of politics, tech and business Most new startups today are in highly regulated industries with strong incumbents - transportation, hotels, drones, energy, gaming, education, health care, cannabis, finance, liquor, insurance. The more startups try to snatch a piece of the establishment's pie, the more they risk running into a political wall. That's where Bradley Tusk comes in. Described as "Silicon Valley's Political Savior" (Fast Company) "Uber's Political Genius" (Vanity Fair) and "Silicon Valley's Favorite Fixer" (TechCrunch) Tusk deploys the skills and knowledge he developed working with Chuck Schumer, Michael Bloomberg, Rod Blagojevich, and other political and business legends to help startups fight back. This book goes behind the scenes on how he helped stop the taxi industry from killing Uber in its infancy, how he held insurance companies at bay while startup Lemonade launched in each state, and how he helped online sports betting sites FanDuel and Draft Kings escape the regulatory death grip casinos tried to put on them. As Tusk writes, "Every new company is essentially a tech startup. And when you disrupt someone in any industry, they don't say thank you. They punch you in the nose. These are the lessons startups need to learn to punch back and survive the clutches of politics." Combining a firsthand glimpse behind the curtain with tangible advice for how any new venture can play the political game, THE FIXER is a must-read for aspiring entrepreneurs.

The non-technical guide to building a booming tech-enabled business Thinking of starting a technology-enabled business? Or maybe you just want to increase your technology mojo so you can do your job better? You do not need to learn programming to participate in the development of today’s hottest technologies. But there are a few easy-to-grasp foundation concepts that will help you engage with a technical team. Starting a Tech Business explains in practical, actionable terms how to formulate and reality test new ideas package what you learn into frameworks that are highly actionable for engineers understand key foundation concepts about modern software and systems participate in an agile/lean development team as the ‘voice of the customer’ Even if you have a desire to learn to program (and I highly recommend doing whatever unlocks your ‘inner tinkerer’), these foundation concepts will help you target what exactly you want to understand about hands-on technology development. While a decade ago the barriers to creating a technology-enabled business required a pole vault, getting started today only requires a determined step in the right direction. Starting a Tech Business supplies the tools prospective entrepreneurs and business enterprises need to avoid common pitfalls and succeed in the fast-paced world of high-tech business. Successful execution requires thoughtful, evidence-based product formulation, well-articulated design, economic use of systems, adaptive management of technical resources, and empathetic deployment to customers. Starting a Tech Business offers practical checklists and frameworks that business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals can apply to any tech-based business idea, whether you’re developing software and products or beginning a technology-enabled business. You’ll learn: 1. How to apply today’s leading management frameworks to a tech business 2. How to package your product idea in a way that’s highly actionable for your technical team 3. How to ask the right questions about technology selection and product architecture 4. Strategies to leverage what your technology ecosystem has to offer 5. How to carefully define the roles on your team, and then effectively evaluate candidates 6. The most common disconnects between engineers and business people and how to avoid them 7. How you can apply process design to your tech business without stifling creativity 8. The steps to avoid the most common pitfalls tech founders encounter Now is one of the best times to start a technology-enabled business, and anyone can do it with the right amount and kind of preparation. Starting a Tech Business shows you how to move a product idea to market quickly and inexpensively—and to tap into the stream of wealth that a tech business can provide.

Budding entrepreneurs face a challenging road. The path is not made any easier by all the clichés they hear about how to make a startup succeed—from platitudes and conventional wisdom to downright contradictions. This witty and wise guide to the dilemmas of entrepreneurship debunks widespread misconceptions about how the world of startups works and offers hard-earned advice for every step of the journey. Instead of startup myths—legends spun from a fantasy version of Silicon Valley—Rizwan Virk provides startup models—frameworks that help make thoughtful decisions about starting, growing, managing, and selling a business. Rather than dispensing simplistic rules, he mentors readers in the development of a mental toolkit for approaching challenges based on how startup markets evolve in real life. In snappy prose with savvy pop-culture and real-world examples, Virk recasts entrepreneurship as a grand adventure. He points out the pitfalls that appear along the way and offers insights into how to avoid them, sharing the secrets of founding a startup, raising money, hiring and firing, when to enter a market and when to exit, and how to value a company. Virk combines lessons learned the hard way during his twenty-five years of founding, investing in, and advising startups with reflections from well-known venture capitalists and experts. His candid advice makes Startup Myths and Models an ideal guide for those readers just embarking on the startup life and those looking for their next adventure.

The venture capital model doesn’t work—at least not for 99% of startups and small businesses. In this 99% are a lot of companies with incredible potential: businesses headed by female founders and those from diverse racial backgrounds, organizations headquartered outside of venture capital hubs, and purpose-driven enterprises that are creating social and environmental impact alongside financial success. Counter to what the press-savvy venture capital world would have you believe, there are a lot of funding options out there for startups and small businesses. Adventure Finance is designed to help you understand some of these options, and walk you through real examples of how other founders and funders have put them to use. In simple, approachable language, the book breaks down the different types of funding options available from revenue-based financing to recoverable grants to redeemable equity to distributed ownership and more. Through a mix of storytelling and frameworks, based on a decade of research and experience in investing in early-stage companies, this book will give you the ability to determine how each of these structures can contribute to your own funding journey. The goal for this book is to shift the conversation about startup funding and help founders and funders widen the spectrum of “mainstream” investment options in order to make the venture financing world more inclusive and purpose-driven.

Almost 10 years ago, I wrote a book entitled Start-up, what we may still learn from Silicon Valley. If I had to do a second edition, I don't think I'd change much despite all the flaws and blunders of the exercise. Yet one morning in February 2016, I had a look at ten years of supporting start-up entrepreneurs and decided to send again old and also new messages to those that the world of innovation and high-tech entrepreneurship puzzles or interests.