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Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook
What avoidable problem destroys more young startups than any other?Why is it a mistake to ask for introductions to investors?When do you play the CEO card?Should you sell out?
Author and four-time founder/CEO Dan Shapiro tells the stories of dozens of startups whose companies lived and died by the advice in these pages. From inception to destruction and triumph to despair, this rollercoaster read takes aspiring entrepreneurs from the highs of billion-dollar payouts and market-smashing success to the depths of impostor syndrome and bankruptcy.
Hot Seat is divided into the five phases of the startup CEO
Founding explains how to formulate your idea, allocate equity, and not argue yourself to deathFunding provides the keys to venture capital, angels, and crowdfunding, plus clear advice on which approach to chooseLeadership lays out a path to build a strategy and culture for your team that will survive good times and badManagement reveals how to manage your board, argue with your team, and play the CEO cardEndgame explains how to finish a company's existence with grace, wealth, and minimal litigation
Author and four-time founder/CEO Dan Shapiro tells the stories of dozens of startups whose companies lived and died by the advice in these pages. From inception to destruction and triumph to despair, this rollercoaster read takes aspiring entrepreneurs from the highs of billion-dollar payouts and market-smashing success to the depths of impostor syndrome and bankruptcy.
Hot Seat is divided into the five phases of the startup CEO
Founding explains how to formulate your idea, allocate equity, and not argue yourself to deathFunding provides the keys to venture capital, angels, and crowdfunding, plus clear advice on which approach to chooseLeadership lays out a path to build a strategy and culture for your team that will survive good times and badManagement reveals how to manage your board, argue with your team, and play the CEO cardEndgame explains how to finish a company's existence with grace, wealth, and minimal litigation
436 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 7, 2015
64 people are currently reading
871 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
July 13, 2015
This book didn't have anything groundbreaking in it, but it did do a great job of showing how startups are run. It seems like a good source for basics that a lot of other books would assume you already knew, and it also has good references to other books for more info.
October 11, 2017
This was a much better read than I was expecting! I'm generally wary of titles that include 'guidebook'.
Fortunately Shapiro writes a very coherent book about the duties, responsibilities, difficulties, and life cycle of a startup CEO. I highly rate Hot Seat for three main reasons:
- Readability: The language was very concise and footnotes included tidbits of humor making it an enjoyable read. Chapters are very short and well divided to keep ideas clear.
- Specific with many examples: The author is a veteran of the startup game and references many high profile examples to support topics.
- Logical flow was sound: Nonfiction books run the risk of sounding like a school textbook when they are deliberately teaching a field instead of holding a strong opinion/thesis. Hot Seat avoided this problem well and I imagine most readers would find it entertaining even without specific interest in entrepreneurship.
I was also surprised to learn some unintuitive things about startups from the book, namely that profitable firms should likely not seek VC funding and that all VC funded companies are "for sale".
Fortunately Shapiro writes a very coherent book about the duties, responsibilities, difficulties, and life cycle of a startup CEO. I highly rate Hot Seat for three main reasons:
- Readability: The language was very concise and footnotes included tidbits of humor making it an enjoyable read. Chapters are very short and well divided to keep ideas clear.
- Specific with many examples: The author is a veteran of the startup game and references many high profile examples to support topics.
- Logical flow was sound: Nonfiction books run the risk of sounding like a school textbook when they are deliberately teaching a field instead of holding a strong opinion/thesis. Hot Seat avoided this problem well and I imagine most readers would find it entertaining even without specific interest in entrepreneurship.
I was also surprised to learn some unintuitive things about startups from the book, namely that profitable firms should likely not seek VC funding and that all VC funded companies are "for sale".
February 2, 2017
Pros:
Comprehensive book for a startup that's looking for co-founders and funding.
Applicable to software startups.
Cons:
Not applicable to product startups.
If you're a founding company and want to be a solopreneur like Gary Erickson (Clif Bar) and Sara Blakely (SpanX) then this book isn't for you. It doesn't talk about the biggest pain point products face - customer acquisition, which in the beginning is the CEO's job to facilitate.
Comprehensive book for a startup that's looking for co-founders and funding.
Applicable to software startups.
Cons:
Not applicable to product startups.
If you're a founding company and want to be a solopreneur like Gary Erickson (Clif Bar) and Sara Blakely (SpanX) then this book isn't for you. It doesn't talk about the biggest pain point products face - customer acquisition, which in the beginning is the CEO's job to facilitate.
February 17, 2020
Great guideline to beginner entrepreneurs. Doesn't matter if you own a start-up or a traditional business.
January 1, 2023
Vào ngày đầu tiên trong vai trò người sáng lập kiêm CEO, chắc chắn bạn sẽ phải quay cuồng với biết bao câu hỏi sống còn:
◆ Chúng ta nên làm gì là tốt nhất?
◆ Chúng ta nên tập trung vào điều gì?
◆ Người nào làm việc gì mới phù hợp?
◆ Tôi có thật sự là CEO không?
Số lượng nhà khởi nghiệp đã ít, tỷ lệ người khởi nghiệp thành công còn ít hơn nữa. Chỉ một trong cả trăm nghìn công ty thực sự có thể lên sàn, tạo ra cả tỉ đô-la và làm thay đổi thế giới.
Thế đấy, không dễ làm được điều đó!
Vậy bạn đã sẵn sàng ngồi vào ghế nóng chưa? Cuốn sách này sẽ giúp bạn ra quyết định.
Đọc xong quyển này thấy tràn ngập hy vọng vào cơ hội lẫn sự thách thức.
Thế mới thú vị😝
Hẳn là Luôn là phụ nữ khí chất không giỏi đời không nể🤓🤓🤓
01.01.2023
◆ Chúng ta nên làm gì là tốt nhất?
◆ Chúng ta nên tập trung vào điều gì?
◆ Người nào làm việc gì mới phù hợp?
◆ Tôi có thật sự là CEO không?
Số lượng nhà khởi nghiệp đã ít, tỷ lệ người khởi nghiệp thành công còn ít hơn nữa. Chỉ một trong cả trăm nghìn công ty thực sự có thể lên sàn, tạo ra cả tỉ đô-la và làm thay đổi thế giới.
Thế đấy, không dễ làm được điều đó!
Vậy bạn đã sẵn sàng ngồi vào ghế nóng chưa? Cuốn sách này sẽ giúp bạn ra quyết định.
Đọc xong quyển này thấy tràn ngập hy vọng vào cơ hội lẫn sự thách thức.
Thế mới thú vị😝
Hẳn là Luôn là phụ nữ khí chất không giỏi đời không nể🤓🤓🤓
01.01.2023
June 19, 2017
A very useful book for new startup founders trying to get the hang of the processes and jargons in the startup world. Although the author wrote the book in the context of Silicon Valley, majority of the materials are relevant for founders in developing countries. This is a short book, but has valuable and interesting insights from author’s life as a startup founder, as well as relevant stories of other successful/unsuccessful founders. This is well-worth a read, especially if you’re wading through the uncharted territory of founding and running a startup.
February 24, 2022
I found the content of this book to be quite shallow. I felt that the structure itself (ie: just reading the chapters' titles) represents 90% of the added value of this book.
Disclaimer: I have read several books on this topic already, so maybe this book is better for people that are just starting their journey.
Disclaimer: I have read several books on this topic already, so maybe this book is better for people that are just starting their journey.
March 26, 2021
Vào ngày đầu tiên trong vai trò người sáng lập kiêm CEO, chắc chắn bạn sẽ phải quay cuồng với biết bao câu hỏi sống còn:
◆ Chúng ta nên làm gì là tốt nhất?
◆ Chúng ta nên tập trung vào điều gì?
◆ Người nào làm việc gì mới phù hợp?
◆ Tôi có thật sự là CEO không?
◆ Chúng ta nên làm gì là tốt nhất?
◆ Chúng ta nên tập trung vào điều gì?
◆ Người nào làm việc gì mới phù hợp?
◆ Tôi có thật sự là CEO không?
August 16, 2017
Readable and highly tactical advice for Startup CEOs. Recommend you read this from one smart cookie.
November 3, 2019
Must read for every startup CEO.
January 14, 2020
Highly recommend it for those who consider starting a startup.
July 6, 2015
This book just came out and I loved it. If you are starting a company, or thinking of it, you need to read this book. Period.
Dan covered a whole range of topics very succinctly, and in easy-to-follow language. When and how to raise funds. What all those terms mean. Who should (and should not!) be on your board, and why. How to allocate shares and ownership between co-founders. Where to incorporate your company (Dan has strong opinions on this!). How to create (and then also maintain) company culture. A great section on decision making. A section on “Hiring” in the context of the Manhattan project vs the moon shot Apollo project that I think every engineering hiring manager should read before building a team. Several true stories about startups where co-founders mismatches caused company threatening problems (trivia: 6 of 10 startups lose a co-founder in early days). And some good (and bad!) stories of how important trust was.
Some great quotes that resonated with me:
“You have limited resources of time and money. When they run out, you go bankrupt. The important thing is not cost/benefit: it’s opportunity cost.”
(in the context of how much travel was needed for all the in-person meetings with investors when raising funding) "...Alaska Airlines gave me MVP status for my efforts. In January."
“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources currently controlled”. Prof Stevenson, Harvard.
In a variation of the “fail fast” mantra in developer circles, Dan notes that “...while it might seem like cold comfort now, the sooner you fail, the sooner you can try again.” Oh, and he’s not just saying it - that was the ending of a chapter where he detailed the failure of one of his startups.
His tolerance for large volumes of coffee and pointer to suggested reading “Coffee, CYP1A2 Genotype, and Risk of Myocardial Infarction” was a great and unexpected tangent for me personally. (More info at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.a...)
“Startups don’t out think their competitors; they out-execute them.”
“If leadership is the forest, then management is the trees. Day to day, it’s what consumes your time, and its imperative that you get it right.”
It takes skill and seasoned-experience-in-the-field to have one person cover all these different topics. Even more skill to do so clearly, and concisely. Putting them all together in a way that makes sense was great. Just great. If you are starting a company, or thinking of it, you need to read this book. Period.
(Disclaimer: I bought this book because I'm starting my own company, and that is the basis of the above review. As this book is published by O'Reilly Press, it feels important to disclose that I am also currently doing some work with O'Reilly... which did not influence anything I wrote here.)
Dan covered a whole range of topics very succinctly, and in easy-to-follow language. When and how to raise funds. What all those terms mean. Who should (and should not!) be on your board, and why. How to allocate shares and ownership between co-founders. Where to incorporate your company (Dan has strong opinions on this!). How to create (and then also maintain) company culture. A great section on decision making. A section on “Hiring” in the context of the Manhattan project vs the moon shot Apollo project that I think every engineering hiring manager should read before building a team. Several true stories about startups where co-founders mismatches caused company threatening problems (trivia: 6 of 10 startups lose a co-founder in early days). And some good (and bad!) stories of how important trust was.
Some great quotes that resonated with me:
“You have limited resources of time and money. When they run out, you go bankrupt. The important thing is not cost/benefit: it’s opportunity cost.”
(in the context of how much travel was needed for all the in-person meetings with investors when raising funding) "...Alaska Airlines gave me MVP status for my efforts. In January."
“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources currently controlled”. Prof Stevenson, Harvard.
In a variation of the “fail fast” mantra in developer circles, Dan notes that “...while it might seem like cold comfort now, the sooner you fail, the sooner you can try again.” Oh, and he’s not just saying it - that was the ending of a chapter where he detailed the failure of one of his startups.
His tolerance for large volumes of coffee and pointer to suggested reading “Coffee, CYP1A2 Genotype, and Risk of Myocardial Infarction” was a great and unexpected tangent for me personally. (More info at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.a...)
“Startups don’t out think their competitors; they out-execute them.”
“If leadership is the forest, then management is the trees. Day to day, it’s what consumes your time, and its imperative that you get it right.”
It takes skill and seasoned-experience-in-the-field to have one person cover all these different topics. Even more skill to do so clearly, and concisely. Putting them all together in a way that makes sense was great. Just great. If you are starting a company, or thinking of it, you need to read this book. Period.
(Disclaimer: I bought this book because I'm starting my own company, and that is the basis of the above review. As this book is published by O'Reilly Press, it feels important to disclose that I am also currently doing some work with O'Reilly... which did not influence anything I wrote here.)
June 16, 2015
I loved this book. It was terrifyingly on point and brutally honest about what it takes to be a successful CEO. There were no glossed over details and there was no happy hand-waving, just truth and information. It was very readable despite being packed with information. I highly recommend this to anyone who may be starting a company or has started a company.
March 7, 2016
There's a lot of good info and ideas in this book about start-ups, entrepreneurship, and CEOship that I haven't found in other books. Foremost, the importance of the founding team - getting things right as you initiate this great journey, and then navigaing through the pitfalls and challenges. Highly recommended.
May 30, 2015
This is by far the most useful, encouraging book I've read on entrepreneurship (although it kinda reinforced my own sense of imposter syndrome which he spends so much time talking about in the book, just because Dan Shapiro's personal track record is eerily impressive).
October 9, 2015
I really enjoyed this book because it went into a lot of the details working with cofounders, investors and employees and the challenges involved in those details. It is better to understand those challenges before jumping into growing a business for the first time.
August 4, 2016
Funny, informative, on point.
December 6, 2016
It's fantastic. I read in 1 sitting, separated by 10 minutes walk to grab lunch.
April 30, 2017
This is one of the best startup books I've read. It says "CEO Guidebook" but it has utility for anyone in a startup.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews