The Startup Checklist: 25 Steps to a Scalable, High-Growth Business

by David S. Rose Narrated by Gildan Author

Overview

25 Steps to Found and Scale a High-Growth Business The Startup Checklist is the entrepreneur's essential companion. While most entrepreneurship books focus on strategy, this invaluable guide provides the concrete steps that will get your new business off to a strong start. You'll learn the ins and outs of startup execution, management, legal issues, and practical processes throughout the launch and growth phases, and how to avoid the critical missteps that threaten the foundation of your business. Instead of simply referring you to experts, this discussion shows you exactly which experts you need, what exactly you need them to do, and which tools you will use to support them-and you'll gain enough insight to ask smart questions that help you get your money's worth. If you're ready to do big things, this book has you covered from the first business card to the eventual exit. Over two thirds of startups are built on creaky foundations, and over two thirds of startup costs go directly toward cleaning up legal and practical problems caused by an incomplete or improper start. This book helps you sidestep the messy and expensive clean up process by giving you the specific actions you need to take right from the very beginning. Understand the critical intricacies of legally incorporating and running a startup Learn which experts you need, and what exactly you need from them Make more intelligent decisions independent of your advisors Avoid the challenges that threaten to derail great young companies The typical American startup costs over $30,000 and requires working with over two dozen professionals and service providers before it even opens for business-and the process is so complex that few founders do it correctly. Their startups errors often go unnoticed until the founder tries to seek outside capital, at which point they can cost thousands of dollars to fix. . . or even completely derail an investment. The Startup Checklist helps you avoid these problems and lay a strong foundation, so you can focus on building your business.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

2016-10-14
An entrepreneur outlines how to build a venture that can successfully go public or be acquired in this business guide. Rose, a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and founder and CEO of funding platform Gust, draws on "the aggregate experience of providing the tools used by more than half a million startups around the world." He offers a 14-page introductory "crash checklist" of "25 Key Action Steps (Plus One) for Every Entrepreneur." These are then fleshed out in subsequent chapters to "avoid the biggest bone-headed errors made by many bright-eyed and enthusiastic first-time company founders." His first nine steps examine the due diligence required before launch, with Step 0 involving education in the art of entrepreneurship, with a "Startup Reading List" appendix included in this book. Steps 9 to 18 cover the various mechanics of launching and building the business, providing an array of planning tools. These tools include reprinting the Osterwalder "Business Model Canvas," which charts value propositions, potential customers, and more, and showcasing a strategy to allocate stock equity among a founding team. Rose's final pointers focus on fundraising and keeping "your eye on the exit," including when and whether to sell or go public. Rose also delivers appendices presenting samples of an investor due diligence request, founder accord (to "control any future disagreements among the Founders"), convertible note and preferred stock term sheets, and information on starting a U.S. corporation from a foreign country. Rose (Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money and Having Fun Investing in Startups, 2014) effectively expands on his brand franchise in this new book. While acknowledging there are already "93,210 books listed" in the start-a-business category, "many of which are quite good," Rose ably sticks to his target of a "very specific type of business starter: the entrepreneur who is deliberately setting out to create a scalable, high-growth business." By providing a helpful overview checklist, then deftly expanding on these topics within this volume, Rose indeed has created a reference that can be a "companion along the way." Handy, distilled insights about startups from a CEO and investment expert.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171503611
Publisher:	Ascent Audio
Publication date:	06/01/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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