Book Review – The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

The Art of the Start is a practical, easy to read, easy to digest book about how to launch a new business. The book is written by Guy Kawasaki, now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who got his early career experience working for Steve Jobs at Apple Computer Inc. At Apple, Kawasaki evangelized the new Macintosh Computer and turned ordinary customers into fanatics. As founder and CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, he has formulated and tested his ideas and philosophies on real-world start-ups.

The Art of the Start is a well structured book with many valuable, easy to implement tips that will assist and inspire an entrepreneur. Each chapters starts with a GIST (Great Ideas for Starting Things). The GIST sums up the essence of the chapter in a few points or a single paragraph. This is wonderful when referring back to the book a few months after reading it or for getting an idea of where each chapter is going before you read it.

The key entrepreneurial issues addressed in the book are:
· Positioning – Entrepreneurs must answer the critical questions of: why you want to start a business, why customers should patronize my business and why good people should want to work for my business.
· Pitching – Successful entrepreneurs sell their ideas to others by getting a fast start, explaining their relevance and staying out of the detail.
· Business Planning – Although very few people ever read an entire business plan, writing the business plan is still important as it forces a team to work together and formalize their intention. There are some components of the business plan that investors, recruits, and potential board members are really interested in and Kawasaki explains what should be included in these sections.
· Bootstrapping – One of an entrepreneurs real battles is surviving the critical, capital deprived early days of any start-ups existence. According to Kawasaki they need to pick the right business model, make cash king and immediately get to market.
· Recruiting – Recruiting employees for a hot start up is described as one of the most enjoyable tasks of an entrepreneur. In the process of recruiting, entrepreneurs should focus on three factors: (1) Can the candidate do what you need? (2) Does the candidate believe in the meaning that you are going to make? (3) Does the candidate have the strengths you need? (as oppose to the weaknesses you are trying to avoid).
· Raising Capital – VC’s want to know: Are you building something meaningful, long lasting and valuable to society? Kawasaki experience in the VC industry empowers him to make some insightful and useful comments about what funders really look for in a business idea.
· Partnering – According to Kawasaki a good partnership as should accelerate cash flow, increase revenue and reduce costs. Partnerships must exist for valid business reasons.
· Branding – Branding a start up is tough. Entrepreneurs need to focus on creating something that is contagious and infects people with enthusiasm. Branding is about community building.

Some of these topics are more relevant than others for the South African entrepreneur. South Africa’s underdeveloped venture capital industry means that the raising capital and pitching are not that relevant in our context but the discussion on bootstrapping and positioning in highly pertinent in the South African environment. South African entrepreneurs need to be positioning themselves to meet the needs of a defined market and in most instances they need to operate with minimal resources in a competitive environment so efficient bootstrapping is essential.

South Africa needs a flurry of entrepreneurial activity and books such as this will empower people with the knowledge, insight and motivation to launch and grow new businesses and there by create jobs and grow the economy.

Check out Guy Kawasaki's website (http://www.guykawasaki.com/) and blog (http://blog.guykawasaki.com/)