Startups That Work: Surprising Research on What Makes or Breaks a New Company

Joel Kurtzman and a research team from Price-waterhouseCoopers studied 350 companies and interviewed hundreds of venture capitalists, CEOs, boards of directors, and angel investors over four years. This unprecedented research has led to some very surprising findings about nine key factors, such as market size, competitive position, business model, and cash flow. For instance:

• Speed usually trumps perfection.
• Advanced technology shouldn’t be the highest priority, even in tech companies.
• Not all growth is smart growth.

Startups That Work can help small-business people create value while giving venture capitalists and investors the essential information they need to figure out which startups are worth the investment risk.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Where's the beef?, 2008-09-17
This book doesn't have much past good old common sense. Sure they looked at several companies but I didn't read any gems or how-to points that would help any startup that someone with some brains wouldn't figure out on their own. And very annoying, as someone else pointed out, he has plenty of page filler that's exact copies of stories or parts of stories in multiple spots in the book! The Elevator story must have been repeated 3 times. Good that it's selling for very low in the used section because that's what it's worth.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

decent info, a bit long winded, 2007-07-30
author conducted a study of successful startup companies and the factors that they share. good overall information. a bit boring.


2 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

Weak, 2006-07-14
Weak, weak, so very weak. Just as weak startups should never be started in the first place, some books (about startups, the irony) should never be printed in the first place. A tear for the tree who got cut in order to print this book. Such waste...


13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

A solid book but poor editing, 2006-07-02
The book's unique approach of using what they call "Star Charts" is interesting and innovative. The authors give their advice backed by solid, almost painstaking research of 350 startups they followed over many years.

One of the most aggravating aspects of this book, however, was the sheer repetition -- of stories, of advice, of summarizing other company's history. There are numerous instances of where virtually the same passage is repeated in 3 or 4 different places in the book -- a quote, a snippet of advice, 3 paragraphs of background of a particular startup (really, do we need to be constantly reminded of what company did what? I get it!), of conclusions even.

I felt this was done basically to pad the book. That the book, had it been well-written and properly edited by someone who actually ready it from front-cover to back-cover, it would've been about half its 293 page length (100+ pages of which is an Appendix). So you basically have a 193 page book that should've been about 100 pages.

Is it worth the hefty price? Probably not.


8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Disappointing..., 2006-04-11
I really had to push myself into finishing the book instead of throwing the book against the wall in frustration.

Why? Because the book offered gems like "Manage your cash. Startups in the bubble years burned through money, but companies today have to be run much more tightly."

I got the sense that the authors were just trying to fill the pages when same quotes were used 2 or 3 times across different chapters like a high school student trying to pad a book report.

Intriguing title but ultimately the authors just served up rehashed conventional wisdom.

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