Start-Well.com

Start-Well.com explores strategies to launch or grow new ventures by highlighting important works on entrepreneurship.

We present daily quotes from works that offer practical advice and lessons learned you can apply in your own startups. These are books that challenge common assumptions and reward deeper exploration. They should be on every entrepreneur's bookshelf!

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“ You should not let costs drive prices. Nor should you scale down utility because high costs block your ability to profit at the strategic price. When the target cost cannot be met, you must either forgo the idea because the blue ocean won’t be profitable, or you must innovate your business model to hit the target cost. The cost side of a company’s business model ensures that it creates a leap in value for itself in the form of profit…It is the combination of exceptional utility, strategic pricing, and target costing that allows companies to achieve value innovation—a leap in value for both buyers and companies. ”

W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“ There are, still, venture investors—and other kinds of investors as well—who continue to expect unrealistically quick returns. Be wary of them. Most often, these investors know zilch about the industries they’re entering. They don’t grasp their own responsibility to contribute beyond merely handing out money. They provide little if any support. They contribute virtually no solid business advice. And far too many entrepreneurs—sometimes out of desperation, more often out of sheer ignorance or an unwillingness to adhere to sound business principles—seek and receive funding from them. ”

Rob Adams, A Good Hard Kick in the Ass: Basic Training for Entrepreneurs

“ You need customer to build a business, not the other way around. In the beginning, you should do no more than what is absolutely needed to secure your first customers. As your customer base grows, you then develop and acquire the needed infrastructure, such as information and management systems. ”

Anthony L. Iaquinto, Stephen Spinelli, Jr., Never Bet the Farm: How Entrepreneurs Take Risks, Make Decisions—and How You Can, Too

“ Low costs of living and low costs of labor in a remote location might be tempting, especially if you already live there. After all, the Internet and Federal Express solve remoteness and allow companies to flourish wherever the entrepreneurial spirit blooms. But be careful…Location as a cost reduction bonus is often trumped by location as a strategic marketing, talent pool, and business-accumulating bonus. ”

Thomas K. McKnight, Will It Fly? How to Know if Your New Business Idea Has Wings…Before You Take the Leap

“ [P]eople starting new businesses are not different from the rest of the population on most measures of social networking. Moreover, on the few dimensions on which they are different, the study found that the entrepreneurs actually use their social networks for assistance less than the rest of the population. ”

Scott A. Shane, The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By

“ What we want is information that we can use to make decisions and changes rather than information about things beyond our ability to change. We are unabashedly more interested in fuzzy leading indicators than crisp lagging ones. ”

Rita Gunther McGrath, Ian C. MacMillan, The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty

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John Mullins, Randy Komisar, Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model

“ While figuring out what features to ship is important, knowing which features don’t matter is equally important. Which features did customers not care about? Can any features on the product spec be deleted or deferred? Remember, in a startup the Customer Development team is not supposed to be adding features; it is supposed to be finding out the minimum feature set for the first release, based on input from visionary customers. ”

Steven Gary Blank, Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win

“ In fact, most blue oceans are created from within, not beyond, red oceans of existing boundaries. Issues of perceived cannibalization or creative destruction for established companies proved to be exaggerated. Blue oceans created profitable growth for every company launching them, start-ups and incumbents alike. ”

W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“ In the early stages of a venture, successful entrepreneurs want to control and use resources, but are not obsessed with owning them. As Howard Stevenson put it, “All I need from a resource is the ability to use it. There are people who describe the ideal business as a post-office box to which people send cash.” In large organizations, control and use is assumed to require ownership, so that decisions center on how resources will be acquired and financed rather than used. ”

Jeffry A. Timmons, New Business Opportunities: Getting to the Right Place at the Right Time

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