Amazon.co.uk Review
There are two frontrunners for this year's technophobe award. One is the man who called his 24 hour computer support hotline wanting to know how to move the cursor on his screen. "Just roll the mouse in whichever direction you want it to go," he was told. "Yes," he replied, "but if I go any further, it's going to fall off the mat." Another is the executive whose introduction to the Web ended in a panicked phone call to his IT department after he mistakenly closed the application on his desktop. "Oh my God," he explained, "I think I've broken the Internet!" Many traditional businesses will have been wishing it was that simple. For the rest, getting online fast has been the order of the day. The online retail market is predicted to grow by more than 400 per cent between 2000 and 2002, reaching an estimated market value of £39 billion by 2005. The message is simple--if you can't break it, join it.

Tess Read, Callum Chace and Simon Rowe's Internet Start-Up Bible is one of the most accessible and intelligently written dot.com guides available. They dispense with the now familiar tale of what the Internet is and how it came about to focus on exactly what an entrepreneur needs to do and how they need to think in order to plan, research, fund, market and design a successful business model on the Internet. They take the logical and too often neglected step of applying the same success criteria to dot.com business start-ups as to traditional ventures. Important sections on the entrepreneurial mindset, the process of shaping ideas into marketable concepts and employing and managing people are included. Detailed chapters on business planning and attracting venture capital are placed at centre stage. Once the fundamentals have been taken care of, the authors dive into the technicalities of Internet business; technology, design, marketing and launch, before concluding with business growth and flotation. Their expertise shines through in the writing, cases studies, extensive links and contact addresses and running quotes from business gurus and key books. The Internet Start-Up Bible is a smart and savvy resource for the fledgling e-business. --Iain Campbell

Synopsis
This pragmatic and authoritative manual shows how to start an online business. The authors examine the legal implications and explain how to identify and evaluate the hype and separate it from the reality of Internet commerce.

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10 Reviews 5 star:  (6) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:  (2) 1 star:  (1)           Average Customer Review (10 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   6 of 6 people found the following review helpful: Read it and give up the day job, 18 May 2000 By A Customer I can only agree with other reviewers who mentioned that this book is both accessible and highly informative. It'll be sharing the bookshelves with a lot of other books about various aspects of business start-ups and the Internet as a social, commercial and technological phenomenon, but I bet it's the only one that gets dog-eared from frequent reading. And it is a book that you actually will want to read; the style is literate and fresh and I can't think of many other books on either business or technology that are actually a pleasure to read, as The Internet Start-up Bible certainly is. . The quality of advice given is excellent and there are a lot of really important insights into the thought-processes of venture capitalists and the nature of marketing. I heard on the radio this morning that boo.com has gone bust. Have a look at the various comments made about boo.com in this book and see whether you think the authors know what they're talking about and are any good at second-guessing the future ... then chuck in the day job and follow their advice. I'm thinking of doing it.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)   11 of 12 people found the following review helpful: Fad book for the dot com boom era, 12 Mar 2002 By A Customer Geared very much towards the dot.com boom, this book deals only superficially with the key aspects of building an Internet start up company. Instead read the excellent " Complete Idiot's guide to e-commerce " and/or "Little e Big Commerce ".  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)   5 of 5 people found the following review helpful: Sensible and readable, but above all practical, 11 May 2000 By A Customer This book strikes the right balance between airy New-Economy titles with no practical advice and dry business-school tomes which mire you in unnecessary detail. It's considerably better (to my taste, anyway) than the existing e-commerce "HOWTO"s, because it gives you the practical advice you need to go from literally nothing to knowing enough to start seriously thinking about leaving your job. Obviously, no one book can do everything, but having some little experience of the venture capital business, I'd say that someone who'd read this book from cover to cover would probably be able to talk a decent game with first-stage capital providers (always assuming that their actual business idea was any good, of course). The legal advice is sound, the technical sections are pitched at the right level (ie; aspiring CEO), and the book is packed with hints and tips about the easy mistakes to make. I'd advise anyone who's worrying that they might be missing the boat to buy this book, read it, and then try to come up with a good idea. It also has the benefit of being well-written and easy to read without being patronising, which anyone who has read a lot of business books will be thankful for.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you?