The Web Startup Success Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) eBook: Robert Walsh: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Product Description

If there’s a software startup company in your developer heart, this is the book that will make it happen.

The Web Startup Success Guide is your one-stop shop for all of the answers you need today to build a successful web startup in these challenging economic times. It covers everything from making the strategic platform decisions as to what kind of software to build, to understanding and winning the Angel and venture capital funding game, to the modern tools, apps and services that can cut months off development and marketing cycles, to how startups today are using social networks like Twitter and Facebook to create real excitement and connect to real customers.

Bob Walsh, author of the landmark Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality, digs deep into the definition, financing, community–building, platform options, and productivity challenges of building a successful and profitable web application today.

What you’ll learn

How to define the value your web app will deliver to its users
Evangelizing your startup via social media—from Twitter to Facebook, from YouTube to your own social network
Which web app pricing strategies work, and which don’t
What alternatives to traditional business structures will let you launch and run your startup without all the legal mumbo–jumbo
What services and web apps exist today to help your startup succeed
How to get meaningful online press for your web app

Plus, interviews with David Allen (Getting Things Done), Rafe Needleman (CNET), Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb), Guy Kawasaki (Garage Technology Ventures), Dharmesh Shah (OnStartups, HubSpot), Joel Spolsky (Fog Creek Software), Eric Sink (SourceGear), Pamela Slim (Escape from Cubicle Nation), and 40 others whose advice can help your startup succeed.

Who this book is for

If you are a software developer (web, desktop, or mobile—it doesn’t matter) who wants to create successful, revenue–producing web businesses, The Web Startup Success Guide is for you. And if you’re just curious about how someone goes about creating an online business from the ground up, this book is an excellent choice.

Introduction: What Was Is Not What Is
Value Is the Core of Your Startup
So Many Platforms, So Many Options
Tools and Groups for Startups
Money: Raise, Manage, Make
Social Media and Your Startup
Clarity Matters
Getting It Done
Six Wise People
What's Next?

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Must-have primer for any geek wanting to set up a product-based software business 11 Aug 2009

By Neil Davidson

Format:Paperback

Bob Walsh's "The Web Startup Success Guide", wisely and following its own advice, is targeted very specifically. If you're a software developer, are thinking about setting up (or have just set up) a product-based start-up, and are prepared to work - damn hard - at something you love doing then this book is for you. Equally importantly, if you're more than a few months into your start-up, or if this is your second start-up, or if you aren't a geek, or if you want to set up a consulting business, or if you want to get rich quick, then this book isn't for you.

On the whole, this book is outstanding. There is a lot of information here, but its fast-paced, colloquial writing style make it digestible. What's more, the book is well thought-out, balanced, well structured and accurate. It's an excellent combination of fact, anecdote, theory, analysis and practical advice. The interviews alone (Joel Spolsky, Dharmesh Shah, Eric Sink, David Allen and Guy Kawasaki are among the fifty in-depth, thought-provoking interviews in the book) make it worth reading.

If there's one thing extra I wish this book had, it's more information on sales and marketing. Finding people who like your product and persuading them to actually buy it is the single biggest issue that startups, bogged down in the technology, forget about.

Overall, this is an excellent, must-have primer for any geek wanting to set up a product-based business. Buy it.

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Excellent as a to do list for a online startup. 22 Jan 2010

By Ryan O'neill

I've been taking my time reading this book as I've got so much out of it, I keep pausing to try out the ideas. It is not a typical computer book, it's for people who have plenty of ideas and are looking to put them into practice in starting up a new web based business. Targeted at software developers turned entrepreneur it also works well for anyone servicing customers over the web and trying to create a decent online presence.

The book is very motivating and well written. The author Bob Walsh also publishes a free podcast on the subject of startups (The Startup Success Podcast) so you can see if what he has to say is of interest before shelling out for the book.

I would definitely recommend this book as it is very useful in helping plan your startup and hopefully will save you a bundle of mistakes.

Didn't find it very useful 15 Dec 2009

By Romanski

If you have read up on the subject online you're not going to find anything new in this book. I found it iterates a lot of the obvious stuff, or stuff you'd already know if you were ever interested in web startups before.

It wasn't gripping, either, but maybe it wasn't meant to be.

Overall, I'd rather I hadn't bought this.