Every day, Rob Adams helps entrepreneurs find true markets for their products, design solid business models, and hire great teams?because that?s what it takes to build a successful company. While this sounds self-evident, far too many entrepreneurs have forgotten these fundamentals. They?ve been influenced by what Adams calls ?business porn,? myths lingering like a bad hangover from the easy success days of the late ?90s. These entrepreneurs believe a unique idea is the key to igniting a great business. They think their industry experience already makes them experts on customer needs. They have simplistic, self-defeating illusions about sales, marketing, financing, and more.
They say things like ?I have a million-dollar business idea for a new product.? Wake up, says Adams: Good ideas are not scarce?they?re a dime a dozen. Businesses are successful not because of a unique idea but because of extraordinary execution. They offer a better, faster, or cheaper product or service, or they change the way the world solves a problem.
In short, these entrepreneurs need just what Adams doses out in the pages of this book: a good hard kick in the ass. Adams debunks the myths and smashes the illusions?and he knows what he?s talking about, because he stands at the hub of many new startups. His firm, AV Labs, provides entrepreneurs with early financing as well as the management expertise they need to get off the ground.
A Good Hard Kick in the Ass offers detailed, hard-hitting guidance for smart, sophisticated entrepreneurs and established businesspeople alike?along with vivid, in-depth examples of companies that are walking the walk right now. Adams?s straightforward, no-nonsense approach is just what?s needed in the post-bubble economy.
Rob Adams--an ex-Marine and former technology executive who now runs an "accelerator venture fund" that works like an entrepreneurial boot camp--offers A Good Hard Kick in the Ass to wake up and shake up today's would-be business owner. The era when virtually any wannabe could turn an intriguing idea and slick presentation into a hefty bankroll is long past, of course. Adams believes the current environment calls instead for a return to elementary but oft-ignored rules expressed here through blunt admonitions (good ideas are a dime a dozen, you don't know your customers as well as you think you do, you don't need big bucks right out of the gate) meant to counter the "startup myths and misconceptions" many hopefuls still harbor. Each chapter breaks down one delusion-busting assertion into specific suggestions (assemble a team with solid "execution intelligence," validate the market, forge a strategy for getting out there quickly) and is fleshed out with the real-life experiences of both big-name techno-ventures and some of the embryonic participants in Adams's AV Labs. Any time you step up to the plate to start a company, you take a chance on striking out, he says, but following these steps should at least get you into the game. --Howard Rothman
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