Tittle : The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
Written by : Guy Kawasaki
Year : 2015
Reviewer : Putu Deny Pratama Saputra
CDD (2014410001)
Think about starting a business without any plan, is it hard? Yes. But No for some impulsive people. However, successful businessman is not always impulsive. Good businessman plan, study, and prepare what should be prepared to start a business. Preparation is very important and getting enough trustable resources is more important. We often search for the best resources when it comes into planning. A book called The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything written by Guy Kawasaki is one of the easiest book that will leads us into better understanding of Starting a Business. For any amateur in business world, it is good to start reading the book from now. The book is very easy digested with interesting point of view. However, does reading a book can make us a successful businessman? No, indeed, but it will clear many questions of how to start a business that will strive the market. Therefore, it is important to start preparing from the early time, reading this review is another important preparation.
The Art of Start is a book about starting up a business for dummies. Why for dummies? Because if dummies are able to learn something from this book, then everyone who aren’t dummies could learn faster! The Art of Start consists of thirteen chapters. Those thirteen chapters are differentiated into four big themes: Conception, Activation, Proliferation, and Obligation. Guy Kawasaki differ each chapter in order to let the readers understand better.
The Conception explains about how to get started before establishing the business. It explains how to get better start by finding purpose of the business, establishing what first thing first, and picking a business model for the business. This chapter is important for anyone who wants to start planning. It explains many important ideas and very easy to be understand. The term used in the book is not that hard and it also giving the readers new knowledge. The Conception most important part is the consideration about picking the right business model. Picking business model is not as easy as it looks, but it might take time to get the ideal business model for our business. Having the right business model will lead into easier pathway in the future. Do we want to have printer and toner business model when we want to sell foods? No!
The second is Activation. The Activation part is another important issues when it comes to establishing a new business. Guy Kawasaki delivers the proper ideas of how a new business strives in the market. It is indeed a very rough journey for new business in the big market. Activation helps the readers to start a business by picking a business name, positioning the business, and creating good demo. This will help the newcomer to get used in the market, whether big or small market. The most important part of this section is creating a good demo. A demo can be represented as presenting the prototype to the audience. Whenever I read this part, it reminds me of the Apple whenever they announce new product. Apple’s way of presenting stuff is always interesting and so catchy. Not to mention their demo is full of surprise and very enjoyable to follow.
The third part is Proliferation. This phase helps the new businessman to select good employees for the business. This is really important because failing to choose the suitable person will lead the business to nowhere. Guy Kawasaki giving the readers two options, getting someone who lacks of major weakness, but lack of major strength, or finding someone who has major strength, but has major weakness. The choice if yours. But each decision will lead into different path. This phase also helps the readers to construct a good interview. From the interview, we can get to know the candidate better. He also explains about common lies during interview, which we should understand the meaning behind every words and try to avoid hiring people who share the same lies. What will happen if we hire not trustable person? No one really knows.
The last phase is called Obligations. This is my favorite part, not because it is short, but because this is super important in life. Obligation chapter explains of how a good businessman can be measured. It is important for a businessman to have manners and well behave. Sometimes, when someone driven to success, they are consumed by greed and less respectful for other, but this chapter reminds us for our roots. We are human and being success cannot determine who we are. It states about giving happiness to somebody else. As a human, it is natural to help each other. a good entrepreneur gives the world something. A help without the expectation of return. There is no payoff, but a simple happiness we get from helping another.
The Art of the Start is really interesting book. It compiles everything we need to start a business. The language used in the book is very simple and easy to be understand. Everyone who are not speaking English as their first language should be able to understand. There are many things that we learned from this book. The Art of the Start is indeed very helpful for beginner businessman. It explains how to start a business until how to maintain the business in the big market. The Art of the Start is a refined version of the previous book with the same title. The useful part of this expansion is the idea to use and associate the business with the newest technology. To use social media, crowd funding, and also cloud computing. Generating ideas through experiences is what this book about. Guy Kawasaki compiles his experiences and share his founding with other people. We often related some cases mentioned in this book to our experience and then we will have a feeling of sharing the same experience.
The book has no rule of reading. We can practically read it from any chapter we want. There is no continuity of information from one chapter to another chapter. We can just jump to one of them and start reading any part. Although in some paragraphs, it will refer into the previous chapter, but still, aside from that, nothing is relevant. The book gives us freedom to read from any part. It is another strength of this book because if it is bounded to one chapter and the readers feel uncomfortable of reading the specific chapter, then the readers are skipping to the next chapter, the message will not be delivered. Somehow, it is very useful for a reader whose already knows what is the chapter about, but they are worried about skipping the chapter because of the missing information issue.
Although the book covers many things, but there is some weakness from this book. The book is an expansion from the first book and that means the book is a plus one version. Some previous ideas and messages from previous book are still attached to the second book. I have read the few chapters from the first book as reference and some of the ideas are the same with the second book. Moreover, the Art of the Start contains way too much information. It is really good to have everything in detail, but with the overflowing information, the reader feels like being feed when they are still chowing the previous food. The information has no pause and we are forced to keep reading it until the end. I personally, feel tired after reading one chapter and had to take an hour break to proceed all the information. The pace of the book is quite fast and for anyone who are not familiar with reading, they might have difficulties on following the information.
The Art of the Start might be a hard to follow book, but at the end, this book is impressively easy to be understand and very practical. Guy Kawasaki is able to compose this detailed book with simple explanation and interesting example as well as interesting point of view. For anyone who wants to start a business, The Art of the Start might be good bible for start up business. Although it will be uncomfortable to read this book for the first time, but after several chapter, we will begin to get used about how fast the pace is. The book is intended for new businessman whose have hard time striving the market, but anyone who already in business can also read the book, because this book also explain many things about going steady in market. It is really convenient book and must read for anybody who wants to start a business!
Bibliography
Kawasaki, G. (2015). The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything (Second ed.). New York, New York, USA.
Putu Deny Pratama Saputra 