Books by Guy Kawasaki
The Art of the Start is the Guy Kawasaki book in our library. It is the most concrete of the five: what to put in a pitch, how to position something nobody has heard of, and what to do about the first people you bring in.
It is the checklist book of the shelf rather than the philosophy one. Where Sinek argues about purpose and Ries argues about method, this one assumes you have decided to start and tells you what to write down, in what order, and what to leave out.
How to read it. Read it once you have decided to start something rather than before. It assumes the decision and then gets specific.
It sits in the Entrepreneurship bundle as the operational book of the set. Where the others discuss whether to start and on what grounds, this one takes both as settled and gets specific.
The book
The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
Guy KawasakiThe operational book of the bundle. Positioning and pitching are treated as things with right answers rather than as matters of confidence, which is more useful than it sounds if you have ever watched a good idea fail to be understood.
What it argues- A pitch is a story with a specific ask, not a description of the product.
- Positioning is about the niche you can actually win, not the market you would like.
- The first hires matter more than the first funding, because they set what the place becomes.
- Make something worth talking about rather than trying to engineer attention.
- Ship early and iterate, because feedback from a shipped thing beats planning.
Suited to someone who has decided to start and wants the practical sequence, and to anyone who has to pitch soon. Less useful as a first book, since it assumes the decision the earlier books are about.
Where to start
Read the pitching and positioning sections first, because they are the ones with immediate use. Then use the rest as a checklist while you build the thing rather than reading it straight through beforehand. The book is organised to be consulted rather than absorbed, and readers who try to finish it before starting anything get less from it than readers who start badly and come back.
Where this fits
This is the practical half of the shelf, and it pairs with Start with Why, which handles the question this book assumes you have already answered. Read both and you have the reason and the execution. Read it alongside The Lean Startup if you want the testing discipline as well, since this book tells you what to build and that one tells you how to find out whether you were right.
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:
- The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau
- 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 Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
The checklist, plus four more
The Art of the Start is in the Entrepreneurship bundle with The $100 Startup, Shoe Dog, Start with Why and The Lean Startup.
Five complete guides, about 15 minutes each.
Explore EntrepreneurshipPitching and positioning have right answers.