The Art of the Start summary

Many start-ups operate in a state of constant chaos: no one really knows where the company is going or how much progress it’s making.

Don’t let this happen to your company. Instead, use the MAT framework: define Milestones, Assumptions and Tasks.

One area where start-up organizations frequently falter is positioning, which means the way in which customers perceive the company. But positioning need not be complicated. The most important thing is that it clearly answers one question: “What do you do?” Find a great answer to that question and communicate it to the market – giving the customer a reason to buy your product.

So what do you need to do to achieve great positioning?

Everyone knows that no entrepreneur can succeed if she’s the only person excited about her idea. This is why a key part of entrepreneurship is pitching: presenting your business idea so that others get excited about it too.

To pitch properly, you need to keep a few things in mind.

There’s more than a grain of truth to the age-old saying, “If you don't plan to succeed you plan to fail.” Traditionally, firms use the business plan: a formal written document outlining goals and the methods for reaching them.

Because the business plan is such a formal document, writing one may seem like a useless chore for a start-up contending with a ton of unknowns. But in fact, it does have several benefits.

Many start-ups owe their existence to investors who fund them in the early stages. But you can also build a start-up by bootstrapping: running it without any external investment.

To succeed at bootstrapping, you need to focus primarily on generating cash flow, or getting money into your bank account. After all, you need it to pay your bills, rent, salaries, and so forth.

No matter what industry you’re in, you can’t run a successful company without a great team of people behind it. So how do you ensure that you build this team?

First of all, never be afraid of hiring someone who’s better than you. This is essential for success.

Start-ups can’t remain start-ups forever – they either grow or fail. And one of the tactics that can help your start-up grow is making partnerships with other businesses.

Let’s look at a few factors that make your partnerships successful.

Every founder dreams of her start-up one day becoming an internationally recognized household name. So how can you brand your product so that it becomes a legend?

Your main focus should lie in creating products that are contagious – people should be infected with the enthusiasm to try them.

You may never have heard of it, but once upon a time, a company called Univac led the computing market. But the company made a crucial error of judgment: it saw its computers as sophisticated tools to be used by scientists only, and therefore only produced machines suitable for complicated scientific calculations. At this time, however, another company realized that businesses were also interested in the potential of computing, and so it began building machines targeted at this new consumer market. Though the name Univac is long forgotten, you may have heard of this second company. It’s IBM.

So what’s the lesson?

The key message in this book:

Companies should be started because the founders want to make meaning, not because they want to make money. Focus on generating cash flow and pursuing unexpected market opportunities, and you can thrive even without external funding.