The Idea Is the Easy Part: Myths and Realities of the Startup World

by Brian Dovey

Overview

"Innovation & Creativity" winner in the 2023 Porchlight Business Book Awards

"The Idea is the Easy Part is an honest and realistic look at the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering starting a business.”
—Chris Barton, Founder of Shazam, three-time entrepreneur, inventor, and tech investor

Venture capitalist and former executive Brian Dovey offers readers a personal, humorous, and story-driven compendium of practical and accessible advice for navigating the risky entrepreneurial journey.

Part business manual, part memoir, The Idea Is the Easy Part counters widespread myths of failure and success with lessons learned from Dovey’s decades of hands-on business experience.

Today’s renowned businessmen and entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, Peter Thiel, and more can earn celebrity and billionaire status. Our books, movies, and TV shows seem to say that with a big idea and a jazzy elevator pitch, anyone can quickly earn funding for their own startups and achieve massive financial success. In these stories, a brilliant innovation—and the funding you’ll easily acquire—are all you need for success.

The reality, however, is vastly different. Getting funding is incredibly hard, and success depends on many factors, strategies, and decisions.

Between serving as the president of the company that developed the groundbreaking EpiPen, bringing entrepreneurship to a Fortune 500 company as president, working in venture capitalism for several decades, and being involved in the development of nearly 300 startups, Brian Dovey is well acquainted with entrepreneurship—its reality as well as its mythology. In The Idea Is the Easy Part, Dovey debunks common myths about businesses and lays out an enthusiastic but realistic guidebook for aspiring entrepreneurs guiding them with the right growth mindset to make better decisions at every stage of the entrepreneurial process.

The Idea Is the Easy Part is a reliable guide to navigating entrepreneurial waters, replacing today’s misleading notions with objective and actionable advice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781637744055
Publisher:	BenBella Books, Inc.
Publication date:	10/03/2023
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	330,440
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Brian Dovey was a partner at the venture capital firm Domain Associates—which has invested $2.8 billion in startups—from 1988 until his passing in August, 2023. He was involved in the development of ~300 pharmaceutical and life sciences startups and served on the boards of more than 35 companies (and as chairman of six) with a combined value of more than $50 billion. Dovey also taught business students part-time, including a long-running acclaimed course at San Diego State University called “Managing the Growing Firm.”

A native of New Jersey, Dovey received his B.A. in mathematics from Colgate University and his MBA from Harvard Business School. He is survived by his wife Elizabeth, their three children, and eight grandchildren.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Anyone interested in starting a business or investing in venture capital should read this book . . . Brian Dovey will help you understand the numbers and will inspire you to listen for the music. Ultimately venture capital is a very human enterprise and Brian has honed his humanity and technical understanding. ”
—Bill Bradley, former US Senator and investment banker
 
“In The Idea is the Easy Part, veteran venture capitalist Brian Dovey confronts myths about entrepreneurs, startups, and Shark Tank as he challenges would-be business owners to look before they leap. Encouraging and thought provoking, this book is a great read.”
—Ken Blanchard, coauthor of Simple Truths of Leadership and Leading at a Higher Level
 
"The Idea is the Easy Part is an honest and realistic look at the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering starting a business.”
—Chris Barton, Founder of Shazam, three-time entrepreneur, inventor, and tech investor
 
“This book is so well done. The topics are spot on, and the content and examples are pertinent.  It’s easy to read but the rich, deep insight is incredible. ”  
—Bonnie Anderson, Executive Chairman, Veracyte
 
“Brian Dovey’s storytelling approach is so helpful because it is a real-world experience filled with context and color. He brings readers into the stories so that we can appreciate the information we would experience under the same circumstances. ” 
—Mary Fisher, CEO, Colorescience

“Well-written and understandable—no jargon, technical terms, or words one has to look up. It’s an easy read, which is essential.” 
—Richard Schiding, former President, Vasont Systems
 
“If you want an excellent, realistic, straight-talking, often amusing introduction to the entrepreneurial world, you’ve come to the right place.”
—Brook Byers, cofounder, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
 
“Brian Dovey is a master storyteller. He dispenses profound wisdom about the entrepreneurship process based on his involvement in more that 300 new ventures as an investor, board member and entrepreneur. He generously shares his thought processes on a wide range of issues that come up in any type of startup venture.” 
—Alex DeNoble, Professor of Management, San Diego State University
 
“This should be well received because it doesn’t repeat the prevailing wisdom. It avoids the trap of providing dozens of war stories to make your points and avoids generalities.” 
—Jim Blair, Domain Associates
 

Editorial Reviews

2023-10-11
Venture capitalist Dovey offers a no-nonsense guide for entrepreneurs who want to honestly confront the challenges they might face before starting a business.

Would-be business owners take note: Your million-dollar idea matters much less than the practical application of a solid business plan. So says the author, a longtime venture capitalist who doesn’t shy away from telling it like it is in this posthumously published work. He was a Harvard Business School graduate with decades of experience who served on the boards of more than 35 companies, and in these pages, he plainly lays out various challenges that first-time business owners tend to overlook. He also supplies the "Five Criteria of Great Startup Ideas,” including whether they truly fulfill an unmet need, or whether they have advantages that will prevent others from simply copying the idea. He points out that certain companies succeed through true innovation (such as Google), but most “integrate previously existing ideas in new ways rather than inventing something utterly original.” Dovey then walks readers through a range of topics, such as the notion that a good business founder shouldn’t be excessively focused on making money, common myths about good startup ideas, and how to write a pitch deck and supporting proposal. He also offers an insider’s view of what a venture capitalist looks for in a pitch, along with advice on how to navigate offers to find the right fit for one’s company. A section on studying the competition investigates what strategies they might use to take a new business down. A “Questions To Ponder” section at the end of each chapter invites critical thinking and a chance for further reflection with queries such as “Which two or three factors will make your startup distinctive and deliver the most value to your customers?”Dovey’s approach to potentially complicated topics is consistently calm, clear, and encouraging. Even as he warns of potential pitfalls, such as discounting the power of existing brand loyalty, he does so in the warm tone of someone who wants his readers to succeed. He emphasizes that there’s not just one path to success; for instance, he provides examples of successful business founders who were high school or college dropouts, such as Walt Disney, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and Nintendo’s Hiroshi Yamauchi. For visual learners, there are occasional diagrams and charts, such as one comparing the perception and reality of entrepreneur characteristics. The guide’s most appealing aspect is the author’s unwavering honesty, and his disclosure that there’s no foolproof strategy for business success—not even his own: “You might ignore every suggestion I’ve made in the preceding chapters and wind up richer and more famous than you ever dreamed. Or else you might follow every guideline and watch your startup die a painful death.” Readers interested in possible worst-case startup scenarios—and the concrete steps to take to help avoid them—will learn a lot from this accessible labor of love.

A refreshing and informative startup manual that offers an abundance of professional wisdom.

Kirkus Reviews