Summary: The Art of the Start

Review and Analysis of Kawasaki's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Publisher: Must Read Summaries
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9782806229755
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

The must-read summary of Guy Kawasaki's book `The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything`.

This complete summary of the ideas from Guy Kawasaki's book `The Art of the Start` shows how starting a business is an art. In his book, the author explains a step-by-step approach for starting any business project, from launching a start-up to creating a new product. He also demonstrates the importance of giving meaning to everything you do to make things happen and achieve success.

Added-value of this summary: 
• Save time
• Understand the key concepts
• Expand your business knowledge

To learn more, read `The Art of the Start` and find out everything you need to know about starting a new business and how to make it a success!

Summary of The Art Of The Start (Guy Kawasaki)

1. The Art of Starting

Gathering information is useful but ultimately it’s what you actually do that counts. To spend more time doing rather than endlessly learning what to do:

1. Decide how you can make a difference.
2. Develop a mantra rather than a mission statement.
3. Get your product into the marketplace.
4. Define your business model – how you’ll make money.
5. Compile lists of milestones, assumptions and tasks.

1. Decide how you can make a difference – because nobody really knows in advance whether he or she is genuinely cut out to be an entrepreneur. Instead of going through an extensive aptitude test, strike out on your own if:
   • You want to make the world a better place.
   • You want to increase people’s quality of life.
   • You want to right a terrible wrong.
   • You want to prevent the end of something laudable.
2. Develop a mantra rather than a mission statement – because nobody ever remembers a long winded mission statement. Instead, come up with a mantra everyone will know:
   • “To do something insanely great”.
   • “Authentic athletic performance”.
   • “Fun family entertainment”.
   • “Better than driving”.
3. Get your product into the marketplace – that is, instead of worrying about writing a business plan, get started. Build a prototype, launch your service business or begin selling version 1 of your product, even if it isn’t as good as you’d like. Get into the marketplace and start selling rather than endlessly strategizing about what you’ll do in the future. Think big, use your prototype to do your market research and try to do things that will polarize people for and against you.
4. Define your business model – how you’ll make money – because you won’t be able to actually change the world if you’re broke. In practice, this will mean:
   • Selecting a niche to focus on initially.
   • Keeping it simple – describe in 10 words or less.
   • Copying what others are already doing to make money.
5. Compile lists of milestones, assumptions and tasks – because these will keep you on track and focused.
   • Milestones are the significant steps along the road to long-term success. The timing of achieving your milestones will dictate how rapidly your business will move forward. The seven key milestones are
     1. Prove your concept.
     2. Complete your design specifications.
     3. Finish a prototype.
     4. Raise capital.
     5. Ship a testable version to actual customers.
     6. Ship the final version to paying customers.
     7. Achieve breakeven.
   • By listing the assumptions you’ve made going in, you can then continuously track these and react quickly if your initial assumptions were misguided or incorrect.
   • A tasks list will help you appreciate the true enormity of what you need to accomplish and ensure nothing important falls between the cracks and is ignored.

2. The Art of Positioning

Positioning dictates what the heart and soul of the new organization will be in a powerful way that will differentiate the organization clearly and distinctively. Positioning will specify:

1. Why the organization’s founders started the business.
2. Why customers should patronize it.
3. Why good people should work for this organization.

Positioning is a fundamental task of the aspiring business builder. It is a practical exercise that allows you to make your firm become relevant to the needs of your customers. Positioning also allows you to differentiate yourself distinctively.

The natural tendency of most entrepreneurs is to aspire to serve the general marketplace. This is unrealistic. All of history’s most successful companies have started out serving a niche market first, and then adding one niche after another until they dominate the market. You need to do the same, and therefore your positioning (and also the name of your enterprise) should reflect your specialization.

Good positioning is:

• Positive – that is, you exist to serve customers with great products rather than to put some other company out of business. Customers don’t care about destroying any evil empires. All they want to know is what you can do for them.
• Customer-centric – meaning you help your customers in some practical way rather than to become “the leading company in your field” (which is impossible to prove and of no use to your customers whatsoever).
• Empowering – what you do makes the world a better place in one way or another.
• Self-explanatory – and practical.
• Stated in plain English – rather than in the technical terminology of your industry.
• Personal – in that it specifies what you’ll do for each customer individually.
• Distinctive – it doesn’t use the usual generic but meaningless terms like “high-quality”, “robust”, “easy-to-use” or “fast”. Everyone tries to use these already whic...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Book Presentation
• Summary of The Art Of The Start (Guy Kawasaki)
• About the Summary Publisher
• Copyright