10 Reasons why startups and business owners should read “Rework”

1. "If given a choice between investing in someone who has read REWORK or has an MBA, I'm investing in REWORK every time.  This is a must read for every entrepreneur."
--Mark Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and Broadcast.com and owner of the Dallas Mavericks

2. The book makes a great case against all the elements of doing business (planning, raising capital, meeting, communication, workplace, organizing, etc.)

3. The book offer some good idea when it comes to marketing and hiring and more importantly it offers you a chance to break out of business traditions that has been built over decades

4. Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition.

5. "Inspirational...REWORK is a minimalist manifesto that's profoundly practical. In a world where we all keep getting asked to do more with less, the authors show us how to do less and create more."

--Scott Rosenberg, Co-Founder of Salon.com

6. This book is a great read and has concepts that will stick for lifetime. The book does not promise to be revolutionary and isn't filled with magic bullets. Instead, what you get is crisp advice in bits and pieces that you can read anywhere, anytime!

7. I think you either love or hate the format of the book, but I personally thought it was great. This is such a breath of fresh air, "here's a concept. Here's why it works. Here's a quick analogy. Done." Awesome.

8. There is no better source of knowledge than that which is proven in practice. This book and its authoring company refreshingly show what happens when common-sense, confidence, and diligence rule a business. No tricks, perceptive deception, are advocated. It's a great reminder that honesty and self-accountability can take us much further.

9. “The wisdom in these pages is edgy yet simple, straightforward, and proven. Read this book multiple times to help give you the courage you need to get out there and make something great.”

-Tony Hsieh, CEO, of Zappos.com

10. You can read it in a two-hour flight. It's a quick read.
Really good and insightful. It's broken into chapters, each chapter has many tips. Each tip has a one page sketch for the tip which makes it super fun to read.

5 Hot New Books for Startups

Title: Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days
USP: Sprint is a unique five-day process Created by three partners at Google Ventures and aimed at helping businesses to deliver the best results in the least time Initially tried and tested on everything from Google Search to Chrome to Google X, the sprint is a 'greatest hits' of business strategy, innovation, behaviour science and design thinking - packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use

Link: http://amzn.to/1TXhgjB

 

Title: Marketing Magic for Entrepreneurs: The New Rules For Selling Your Dreams Online
USP: The world of online sales is growing faster each day. This book puts you ahead of the pack with innovative and unheard strategies and explanations.

Link:  http://amzn.to/1TXhMOz

Title: Networking for Newbies: Take Your Networking from Behind the Screen to on the Scene
USP: Create epic, fruitful relationships that will make a difference to your brand. Imagine attending your next event and knowing EXACTLY what to say (and do) to land your next client?

Link: http://amzn.to/1TXiw69

Title:  Getting in the Game, Second Edition
USP: Learn how to successfully build and finance your startup using the advice of a venture lawyer with over $6 billion in corporate finance experience

Link: http://amzn.to/1TXiKdD

Title:  The Science of Growth: How Facebook Beat Friendster--and How Nine Other Startups Left the Rest in the Dust
USP: Research reveals, just a handful of choices-among, who to partner with, how to finance growth, and how to use data-make all the difference in the world. With such intriguing examples as LinkedIn vs. Spoke, Facebook vs. Friendster, and McDonald's vs. White Castle, Author shows the secret of "the science of growth" and how to cultivate it.
Link:   http://amzn.to/1JldU4m

The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs

According to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, more than 565,000 new businesses were created in 2010 in the United States alone—each one of them hoping to strike gold. This is a serious competition, you need solid advice to cut through this level of competition.

Face-to-face interviews with 40 founders give readers key insights into what it took to build PayPal, LinkedIn, AOL, TED, Flickr, and many others into household names. Special sections include topics ranging from how to select the right idea to pursue to finding funding and overcoming inevitable obstacles.

Author David Kidder, a respected serial entrepreneur in his own right, talked to the best minds in the business. From those conversations he picked out the golden nuggets that make or break one's entrepreneurial journey.

Reading The Startup Playbook is like being mentored by some of the smartest entrepreneurs around. You can think of it as a companion volume to "Founders at Work", getting to hear the actual stories behind the companies, supplemented by more concrete "do this, not that" advice. There's so much great content in here, I think it's better to pace yourself, only read one story a day.

A collection of best practices from successful startups. A how to guide for entrepreneurs or business people that want to think like an entrepreneur. Very entertaining.

Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup

Can you create and capture value? This book will help you make that determination fast!

This book lays out step by step with specific directions and real examples of what to do and how to do it. It just doesn't say "develop your value proposition", it tells you how to! It doesn't say "what is your Cost of Customer Acquisition", it guides you to the correct way to do so. This fills huge gap in the literature on entrepreneurship.

There are more entrepreneurs than ever who are getting seed funded. So, while there is a significant amount of Series A venture capital money available, the law of numbers say that most young companies will struggle to get funded by the venture capital community. But if you are an entrepreneur and you want to make it through this tough passage, I strongly suggest that you get this book and use it as your guide. It provides a prescriptive checklist of what you need to do in order to build a company and make yourself attractive to series A investors

If you have an idea and don't know where to start, start here reading this book.

This book provides you with one of the most fundamental checkpoint both to determine how viable your business is using the Lifetime Value (LTV), and to make sure you clearly understand what will drive the sustainability and profitability of your business so that you stay focused going forward. I also recommend that you buy the book Automatic Customers by John Warrillow to complement your understanding of Lifetime Value (LTV).

Excellent and deep dive material particularly for someone who's not familiar with this TAM, SAM, SOM world.

It provides a clear framework which fully explains not only the steps that are necessary to becoming an entrepreneur, but also how they can be implemented and applied to a real world setting.

It will help you  save a significant amount of time going down roads that are not relevant, focusing us on markets that offer potential, and keeping your  talented but relatively inexperienced management team at high productivity levels.

Linked to Influence: 7 Powerful Rules for Becoming a Top Influencer on Linkedin

You know that significant business opportunities exist on LinkedIn, but perhaps you feel overwhelmed and uncertain about how to capitalize on them. You may have these questions:

• How can I tap into LinkedIn’s vast database of professionals to find and attract my ideal clients?
• How can I stand out on LinkedIn as the influential, trusted, go-to expert in my industry, market, or niche?
• How can I have the greatest impact on LinkedIn and achieve meaningful results without spending hours of my time?
• How can I build a solid referral network on LinkedIn that works for me while I sleep?

In this book, you will learn these 7 powerful rules for LinkedIn success:

• How to power up your LinkedIn profile with precision
• How to grow your LinkedIn visibility through value
• How to network smarter on LinkedIn
• How to go ‘one-to-one’ with anyone on LinkedIn
• How to get LinkedIn to groups
• How to become a trusted thought leader on LinkedIn

 “You can leapfrog your competitors by applying what you learn in this book.” Author shows you how to build a "smarter" network, where to put your keywords so that you come up in searches more often, and how to get more visibility both for your posts and your profile. 

Essential Startup Guide - For Entrepreneur, Small Business & Online Business

This is a simple guide that you must get if you are serious about starting your own business. In the end, you will have an up and running business in a very short time. Get the book and read it right through. Jot down notes as you go along and refer to them from time to time. Success is possible.

Here are some examples of what you will learn with this book...

1. How you can create an effective business plan

2. Most efficient ways to building capital for your business

3. Market research techniques only used by the pros

4. Plenty of first hand accounts of business that found success through rapid, experimentation-driven iteration as well as those that lost their way by assuming that they were headed down the right path.

5. This book is like a good tutor that explains step by step the mistakes to avoid and the steps you must follow to make your enterprise work properly. Basically, this is the ultimate guide you need if you are planning to start into this field.

6. Unlike many other books, author keeps you motivated and helps you to develop the passion that you will need to face the obstacles and go through the adventure of starting your own business.

7. With this book you will exactly be able to understand why several small businesses go down without really making any profit.

This book about starting a business is very dedicated on its advice. It is very practical to calculate first if you feel you are that ready and you have the mindset to start owning a business. Short read but straight to the point ideas. As a starter, it is best to start reading books like this one before concluding to own a business.

The Agile Startup: Quick and Dirty Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know

With The Agile Startup as your guide, you'll learn exactly what it takes to succeed in your entrepreneurial endeavors.

An inspiring and impactful compilation of the most important lessons of entrepreneurship
The tools of a digital age make it easier than ever to start a new business.

You'll discover you're not alone in your entrepreneurial endeavors, and that almost every challenge a startup can face has already been faced, and overcome, by someone in the past.

1. Contains lessons culled from decades of creating successful companies, which includes possessing a flexible mindset
2. The Agile Startup breaks some business book rules. It features one page discussions and advice on cogent start-up topics. On opposing pages are cartoons depicting the topic under consideration. A unique format.
3. Provides valuable insights, based on a market-driven philosophy, regarding launching and managing products, businesses, and brands
4. Written by two authors who have a combined sixty-plus years of startup experience and understand the reasons behind their successes and failures. A companion Website contains supplementary material that allows you to learn in a hands-on fashion long after closing the book
5. The Agile Startup is helpfully broken into sections that are aligned with different aspects of starting a company, such as ideation, customer acquisition, business & revenue models, pitching investors, and building a founding team. 

The Viral Startup: A Guide to Designing Viral Loops

If you’re interested in what it takes to grow a business from 10 users to 10 million, you should check out this collection of Andrew Chen’s most compelling writings on viral marketing. You’ll learn how to conduct awesome A/B tests and how to find out exactly what your customers truly want from your product.

This book covers most aspects of product creation and distribution. The book addresses all these topics from both engineering and business perspectives. Authors shoot straight to the point extremely well.

It's interesting to follow along the series of blog articles. The embedded links may be the best part of the book as they share the author's core research well.

Many product developers dont like the concept of a simple MVP. After reading this book, you will get a clear picture and better alternatives to MVP which are in the same category but look more logical and acceptable.

The author discusses numerous great ideas and alternatives for software product development from the point of view of marketing and then leaves you to decide what path you want to follow with links to useful blog articles. One needs to read this book several times to digest the wealth of information that it presents.

Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle - Book Review

START-UP NATION addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel-- a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK?

With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality-- all backed up by government policies focused on innovation. In a world where economies as diverse as Ireland,Singapore and Dubai have tried to re-create the "Israel effect", there are entrepreneurial lessons well worth noting. As America reboots its own economy and can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressive, surprising clues.

Where does this culture come from? Mainly, the Israeli military. "You have minimal guidance from the top," Messrs. Senor and Singer write, "and are expected to improvise, even if this means breaking some rules.



Quote from page 52:
"I was in Israeli army units where we threw out the officers," Oren told us, "where people just got together and voted them out. I witnessed this twice personally. I actually liked the guy, but I was outvoted. They voted out a colonel." When we asked Oren in disbelief how this worked, he explained, "You go and say, 'We don't want you. You're not good.' I mean, everyone's on a first-name basis... You go to the person above him and say, 'That guy's got to go.'... It's much more performance-oriented than it is about rank. "The phrase 'It was not my fault' does not exist in the military culture”.

Israel is a country, it seems, where everyone knows everyone.
A good business book , a good history book for people bored by history, and a good Israel book

Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids

With over 700,000 sold, this affordable book will have children rolling on the floor with laughter. A great gift idea for any child.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Over 1 million sold!


Q: Who keeps the ocean clean?
A: The mermaid.

Q: How do you make a hot dog stand?
A: Take away its chair.

Q: What happens to race car drivers when they eat too much?
A: They get indy-gestion.

The laughter won't stop with Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids. With hundreds of one-liners, knock knock jokes, and tongue twisters, this book is sure to have kids rolling on the floor! These good, clean jokes are perfect for the young comedian in your family.

Rob Elliott has been a publishing professional for more than fifteen years and lives in West Michigan, where in his spare time he enjoys laughing out loud with his wife and four children.

About the Author

Rob Elliott is the author of Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids, Laugh-Out-Loud Animal Jokes for Kids, and Knock-Knock Jokes for Kids, and has been a publishing professional for more than fifteen years. 

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

By Marybeth Whalen on November 24, 2010

Format: Paperback

My 8yo son carried this book around with him. Even slept with it! He had his nose stuck in it, occasionally looking up to tell me a joke but mostly just enjoying giggling at the humor that is perfect for the older elementary set. Kids don't realize that reading this book is helping them improve their language skills. I loved this book and recommend it highly as a gift for a kid in your life. And it's the perfect size to fit in a Christmas stocking.