Who Shouldn’t Read This Book

If you are dead set on raising venture capital and building a high-risk billion-dollar company, this book is not for you. I won’t be showing you how to hone your pitch deck, cozy up to venture capitalists, or evaluate a term sheet.

If you’re looking for excuses for not making progress on your startup, this book is not for you. I won’t be telling you that you deserve to be successful or that it’s going to be easy. I’ve been doing this too long to present it any other way.

If you’re looking to build a business on your own that pays your bills but doesn’t grow beyond that, this book will have mixed value for you. There’s a significant difference between launching a product that generates $20,000 per month and one that makes $200,000 per month, starting with foundational elements like the idea and the market.

If you want to build a business that allows you to stay small and live the four-hour workweek, I suggest checking out my first book, Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup (even if you’re not a developer).

That book focuses on starting small software companies for lifestyle purposes like quitting your day job or minimizing the hours you need to work. You might think of the book you’re currently reading as a sort of spiritual sequel to Start Small, Stay Small.

If you’re looking for the promise of riches followed by generic advice like “build an audience and ask them what they want,” “scratch your own itch,” and “follow your passion,” this book is not for you. It’s not a regurgitation of the feel-good entrepreneurial tropes on social media.