The Idea Is the Easy Part

Myths and Realities of the Startup World

Brian Dovey

• Publisher: Matt Holt Books
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781637744055
• Subtopic: Business Development
• Index: Business

"Innovation & Creativity" winner in the 2023 Porchlight Business Book Awards

"The Idea is the Easy Part is an honest and realistic look at the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering starting a business.”

—Chris Barton, Founder of Shazam, three-time entrepreneur, inventor, and tech investor

Venture capitalist and former executive Brian Dovey offers readers a personal, humorous, and story-driven compendium of practical and accessible advice for navigating the risky entrepreneurial journey.

Part business manual, part memoir, The Idea Is the Easy Part counters widespread myths of failure and success with lessons learned from Dovey’s decades of hands-on business experience.

Today’s renowned businessmen and entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, Peter Thiel, and more can earn celebrity and billionaire status. Our books, movies, and TV shows seem to say that with a big idea and a jazzy elevator pitch, anyone can quickly earn funding for their own startups and achieve massive financial success. In these stories, a brilliant innovation—and the funding you’ll easily acquire—are all you need for success.

The reality, however, is vastly different. Getting funding is incredibly hard, and success depends on many factors, strategies, and decisions.

Between serving as the president of the company that developed the groundbreaking EpiPen, bringing entrepreneurship to a Fortune 500 company as president, working in venture capitalism for several decades, and being involved in the development of nearly 300 startups, Brian Dovey is well acquainted with entrepreneurship—its reality as well as its mythology. In The Idea Is the Easy Part, Dovey debunks common myths about businesses and lays out an enthusiastic but realistic guidebook for aspiring entrepreneurs guiding them with the right growth mindset to make better decisions at every stage of the entrepreneurial process.

The Idea Is the Easy Part is a reliable guide to navigating entrepreneurial waters, replacing today’s misleading notions with objective and actionable advice.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Brook Byers
• Introduction
• 1. The Entrepreneurial Mystique: Myth Versus Reality
• 2. Going for It: Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Successful Entrepreneur?
• 3. The Idea Still Counts: Recognizing a “Good Enough” Opportunity and Creating a Plan
• 4. What VCs Look For: The Care and Feeding of Your Investors
• 5. The Team: Do Old Adages Still Apply?
• 6. Execution Is the Hard Part: Least Appreciated but Most Critical
• 7. Endgames: The Good (IPO, Acquisition), the Bad (Bankruptcy, Living Dead), and the Ugly (You’re Out!)
• Final Thoughts: Advice on Seeking Advice, Followed by Some Advice
• Appendix: Doveyisms
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author