The Four Steps to the Epiphany
hn-books.com
hn-books.com
Compare "Four Steps" to "do more faster", another highly recommended startup book.
First, both books have off-putting titles. I'm much more likely to buy a book called "The Customer Development Model" than anything that sounds like it's marketed to the naive or flaky: "epiphany?", "do more faster?". Can we please stay pragmatic and grounded?
Apart from that, the books are worlds apart. "Four Steps" is pragmatic and grounded. The "do more faster" book starts with an essay by Tim Ferriss, the author of "The 4-hour workweek."
As long as we're talking about Steve Blank, here's a couple of other books that I've read and liked because of things I've read on his blog/book:
* Business Model Generation, by Osterwalder & Pigneur
* Crystal Fire, by Riordan & Hoddeson
* A Radar History of World War II, by Brown
The last two book because of his "secret history of silicon valley" posts.
(E-)book that summarizes the 4 Steps into a usable reference guide, with case studies mixed in.
I think this leads to a lot relevant lessons to be learned between the sectors - mostly international development learning from entrepreneurship. Just started a series of blog posts on this here: http://theborrowedbicycle.ca/2010/11/tech-startups-and-human...
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That's really whacked. It's also whacked that a kindle format isn't out. Lots of folks who would like to read this book -- and would benefit from it -- can't seem to get connected. We need to fix that.
It was a reasonable price and shipping was actually very fast and not too expensive. Give it a shot, it's worth it.