A friend (Dan Norris) wrote a book to help people bootstrap startups in 7 days. I read this when it was released and found it contained a lot of decent advice. If you can stick with the plan for 7 days it may help you get going fast.
My critique (for the first edition):
1) The book could do with more illustrations – if nothing else to break up the text a bit.
2) It would be good to have a summary section at the end to act as a quick reference. I find this invaluable in ebooks which are a pain in the bum to make notes on.
3) I think it might be worth playing up the whole ‘when to give up’ thing. This would dovetail well with your setting metrics for success, they are also gates for when to bail. One of the ‘senses’ I thought I’d get from a book on starting up a company in 7 days was that most startups fail (9 out of 10 if you believe the stats), if it takes you 7 days to bootstrap, you can afford to fail whilst learning. There is a thread of this sentiment in the book but it was not to the fore.
4) The flip side of failing fast and potentially shutting down endeavours with customers is the reputational / brand damage you might do. I know you can cut this many different ways as to how important/or not it is but I felt I needed more reassurance that I wouldn’t have angry customers assailing me with virtual torches and pitchforks !
But to reiterate – great book, sage advice.
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