Edit911 Review of Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start 2.0

Starting a business? Thinking of starting a business? Started a business but need some or a lot of guidance and advice? Are you an entrepreneur or have a burning desire to become one? Then Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested and Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything is the definitive manual for you.

Waste not another minute in getting and gobbling up this completely rethought and revised edition of Guy’s 2004 bestseller of the same name. You can turn the pages of this guidebook into your roadmap for starting or building your business, and realizing your entrepreneurial dreams, just as Guy has and continues to do.

Precious few entrepreneurs have Guy’s experience: a pioneer at Apple & Google; a prime mover behind 12 successful startups; an author of 12 brilliant books; a towering presence on the internet–with numerous websites for his services (such as Alltop, a curating gem for news, stories, and topics of all sorts), companies (such as Canva, “the easiest to use design program in the world”), and books (such as APE, the very best book about how to become a published author and entrepreneur); and a force in social media with 1.45M followers on Twitter (@guykawasaki), 289K likes on Facebook, and 6.8M followers on Google+.

The Art of the Start covers everything we need to know about the subject–from the nitty-gritty of picking our partners, to the Harvard Business School rigor of attracting venture capitalists; from the basics of finding our company’s niche, to the advanced strategies of pitching to investors. Throughout the book, Guy gives us the GIST (Great Ideas for Starting Things) of every topic with sharp, bullet point takeaways, such as the following:

• “It’s much easier to do things right from the start than to fix them later” (p.14).
• “…the genesis of great companies is answering simple questions that change the world…” (p.15).
• “…find a viable sweet spot in the market” (p. 16).
• “If you make meaning, you’ll probably make money” (p.18).
• “People want more than information….They want faith–faith in you, your product, your success, and in the story you tell” (p.42).
• “Put the best interests of others at heart” (p.142).
• “Feature your customers” (p. 146). 

Ultimately, The Art of the Start is a meta-guide to making a product or service and marketing it to the masses. It’s a self-aware, self-starting, endless regress of ideas that mirror themselves the more we replicate them in our own entrepreneurial adventures. 

The main message is that we can, indeed, see ourselves in others, conceive a product or service we would like to have, and then safely assume that others would too. We can empower ourselves by being ourselves, realizing our dreams as we envision filling a gap or lack in the lives of others. That is, as we actualize our visions by doing unto others, the good karma will come back around to us in the shape of success. By doing everything not for money, but despite money, not for ourselves, but for others, we can build businesses, audiences, and circles of customers who are believers in what we do.

 As Guy sums it up: “The bottom line is that you should do everything you can to foster an ecosystem around your product. It is a powerful tool to increase the satisfaction of your believers and to attract new believers with greater ease–in short, making your product endure” (p. 210).

The Art of the Start 2.0 transcends other “business” books in the same way great companies transcend their competitors: it is enchanting, magical, fascinating, human, and humane. Both practical and whimsical, logical and serendipitous, if we follow its path, we, too, could become like Guy: “…someone who is ethical, graceful, and admirable.” What a concept for the 21st century business world!