Books by Chris Guillebeau
The $100 Startup is the Chris Guillebeau book in our library. It is the least intimidating book in the bundle. Its argument is that a small business needs a specific person with a specific problem far more than it needs capital, a plan, or a name.
That reframe is what makes the book useful as a starting point. A business is a promise someone pays for, and at the beginning everything else, the branding, the entity, the plan document, is optional. Most people build the optional parts first because they are easier than finding a customer.
How to read it. Read it before the other four if the idea of starting anything still feels remote. It lowers the entry point deliberately, which is the point of it.
It sits in the Entrepreneurship bundle as the lowest entry point on the shelf, deliberately so. It is the book here that assumes the least of you.
The book
The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
Chris GuillebeauStarting treated as something that requires a customer rather than funding. The book is built from cases of small ventures that began with very little, and the pattern it draws out is that the constraint was rarely money. It is the most encouraging book on the shelf and the least rigorous.
What it argues- A business needs a specific person with a specific problem, not capital.
- A business is a promise someone pays for; everything else is optional at the start.
- Sell before you build, because a paying customer is the only real validation.
- Start with something you already know, since the first version rarely needs new skills.
- Keep it small deliberately rather than treating small as a stage to get past.
- The constraint is usually your own willingness to ask for money, not the market.
Suited to a reader who wants to start something small and has been put off by the vocabulary of startups. Read it alongside The Lean Startup, which is the rigorous version of the same instinct.
Where to start
Read it before the other four books in this bundle, and take one instruction from it seriously: find one person with the problem before you build anything. The rest of the book is encouragement, and the encouragement is honest. If you already have a customer, go straight to The Lean Startup instead, because this one is aimed at the stage before that.
Where this fits
This is the entry point to the shelf. The Lean Startup turns the same instinct into a method, Shoe Dog shows what it feels like over years, and Sinek and Kawasaki cover the positioning and pitching that come once you have a customer. Read it first for the lowered entry point and last for the specifics.
The rest of this shelf
The Entrepreneurship shelf holds 5 books in total. These are the others, each condensed into a guide you can finish in about 15 minutes:
- Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight
- Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
- The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki
- The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
Start small, with these five
The $100 Startup is in the Entrepreneurship bundle with Shoe Dog, Start with Why, The Art of the Start and The Lean Startup.
Five complete guides, about 15 minutes each.
Explore EntrepreneurshipA business is a promise someone pays for.