Start Up Stand Up - Book Review

These are the days when everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Startups are mushrooming and we keep hearing stories of how a start in a living room or garage went on to become the next big thing. But at the same time we cannot forget that seven businesses out of ten get closed in their first year. So something is required to sustain the business. In her new book Start Up Stand Up Nandini Vaidyanathan provides a step by step guide for growing your business.

The author choses to call these lessons as sutras. She starts with why you should chose your first customer carefully. Creating an innovative business model and acquiring customers form parts of the following sutras. Finding a mentor and importance of organizational behaviour are stressed in the next chapters. Getting customers addicted to your products sounds interesting. The author has some sutras relating to this as well. Building a high performance culture, design thinking and its need as an entrepreneur are some important aspects in the book. Investors, types of equity investments, care to taken before investing and choosing investors are too discussed in the book. Art of negotiations and benefits of networking are stressed too.

The author cites a few case studies to make her point. I liked to read how naturals ice-cream began. It was given for free with snacks when it started. I was unable to understand few acronyms like B2B used by the author. The same stands true for some other jargons used in the book. This book is a sequel to the book Entrepedia. While Entrepedia was all about how to start your business, this book is about how to grow your business. May be that was the reason why I did not understand few concepts in the book.