Book Review - Entrepreneur Journeys Volume 1 by Sramana Mitra
Category Book Review Sramana Mitra Entrepreneur Journeys Volume 1
It takes guts, determination, and more than a little luck to start your own business and grow it to a multimillion dollar company. In Sramana Mitra's book Entrepreneur Journeys Volume 1, she sits down and interviews a number of those gutsy entrepreneurs as to what makes them tick, where they came from, and what happened to bring them to this particular point in their journeys.
Contents:
Prologue
BootStrapping: Bootstrapping To Billions - Jerry Rawls - Finisar; Happily Bootstrapping - Sridhar Vembu - AdventNet
Taking On Giants: Connecting With Your Intimate Bot; The Gap In Google's Defenses - Steve Hafner - Kayak; Google's Achilles' Heel - Gautam Godhwani - SimplyHired; Virtal Ad Networks - An Emerging Trend - Russ Fradin - Adify
Disruptive Business Models: The Next VMWare - Phillippe Courtot - Qualys; A Recession-Proof Corner Of The Tech Sector - Steve Singh - Concur
Addressing Unmet Market Needs: Latin America's E-Commerce Leader - Marcos Galperin - MercadoLibre; A Technological Fix for Education - Edward Fields - HotChalk
Tackling Plant Scale Problems: Hydro-Alchem - Hans Peter Michelet - Energy Recovery Incorporated (ERI); Mobile Microfinance - Carol Realini - Obopay; Lighting The Way In India - Harish Hande - SELCO
Epilogue
Instead of focusing on the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world, Ms. Mitra goes after the "smaller" companies, the ones that have built up a sizable business in a market or niche that may not (yet) be familiar to you. In addition, she focuses on certain aspects of a small business, like raising funding vs. doing it with your own money. The style of writing is pure interview, where you see her question, followed by the answer given by the person across the table. All in all, a very effective approach to get to know the people she selected.
For me, I think I most enjoyed the section titled Taking On Giants. It's tempting to think that you can't win against companies like Microsoft or Google. But you need to remember that those companies also started out small, fighting against the incumbents of their time. But they had a good idea that was executed well, and the net result is that they went from the role of underdog to giant themselves. For instance, Steve Hafner went from Orbitz to a new startup he formed called Kayak. He felt that Google wasn't able to deliver specific travel results in a one-stop search, and other travel sites still had you hunting all over the web for different types of reservations. Kayak bucked the trend by crawling all those travel sites and consolidating the results in a single step. Add to that an acquisition of a major competitor who had a sales system to complement their existing engineering skills, and Hafner now has a business started in October 2004 that generates solid revenue with bright prospects for the future.
If you are thinking about starting your own business, you WILL make mistakes. Learning from the mistakes of others can save you a lot of pain, time, and money. Reading Entrepreneur Journeys is one of those sources where you can do just that.
It takes guts, determination, and more than a little luck to start your own business and grow it to a multimillion dollar company. In Sramana Mitra's book Entrepreneur Journeys Volume 1, she sits down and interviews a number of those gutsy entrepreneurs as to what makes them tick, where they came from, and what happened to bring them to this particular point in their journeys.
Contents:
Prologue
BootStrapping: Bootstrapping To Billions - Jerry Rawls - Finisar; Happily Bootstrapping - Sridhar Vembu - AdventNet
Taking On Giants: Connecting With Your Intimate Bot; The Gap In Google's Defenses - Steve Hafner - Kayak; Google's Achilles' Heel - Gautam Godhwani - SimplyHired; Virtal Ad Networks - An Emerging Trend - Russ Fradin - Adify
Disruptive Business Models: The Next VMWare - Phillippe Courtot - Qualys; A Recession-Proof Corner Of The Tech Sector - Steve Singh - Concur
Addressing Unmet Market Needs: Latin America's E-Commerce Leader - Marcos Galperin - MercadoLibre; A Technological Fix for Education - Edward Fields - HotChalk
Tackling Plant Scale Problems: Hydro-Alchem - Hans Peter Michelet - Energy Recovery Incorporated (ERI); Mobile Microfinance - Carol Realini - Obopay; Lighting The Way In India - Harish Hande - SELCO
Epilogue
Instead of focusing on the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world, Ms. Mitra goes after the "smaller" companies, the ones that have built up a sizable business in a market or niche that may not (yet) be familiar to you. In addition, she focuses on certain aspects of a small business, like raising funding vs. doing it with your own money. The style of writing is pure interview, where you see her question, followed by the answer given by the person across the table. All in all, a very effective approach to get to know the people she selected.
For me, I think I most enjoyed the section titled Taking On Giants. It's tempting to think that you can't win against companies like Microsoft or Google. But you need to remember that those companies also started out small, fighting against the incumbents of their time. But they had a good idea that was executed well, and the net result is that they went from the role of underdog to giant themselves. For instance, Steve Hafner went from Orbitz to a new startup he formed called Kayak. He felt that Google wasn't able to deliver specific travel results in a one-stop search, and other travel sites still had you hunting all over the web for different types of reservations. Kayak bucked the trend by crawling all those travel sites and consolidating the results in a single step. Add to that an acquisition of a major competitor who had a sales system to complement their existing engineering skills, and Hafner now has a business started in October 2004 that generates solid revenue with bright prospects for the future.
If you are thinking about starting your own business, you WILL make mistakes. Learning from the mistakes of others can save you a lot of pain, time, and money. Reading Entrepreneur Journeys is one of those sources where you can do just that.
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