Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World

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In Lost and Founder Fishkin reveals the mostly awful, sometimes awesome truth about startup culture with the transparency and humour that his hundreds of thousands of blog readers have come to love. I love his transparency, but I tend to think he just sees stuff in a somewhat pessimistic way, most of the time.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. My favourite chapter was the one where Rand talks about focus - a really undervalued skill of a founder. He demonstrates why he wishes he took an offer to be bought out by Hubspot years ago, despite the company's growth since then. After all, if the balance sheet looks healthy enough today, why bother investing and planning for tomorrow?The refreshingly down to earth, no bullshit and, even though written by American, non repetitive advice on how to build and run a business.

He talks about the strengths and weaknesses of different investor categories (VC, speciality VC's, angel, debt, equity crowdfunding, debt crowd funding, etc. It’s still a valuable exercise since it’s these kinds of questions that give you a true sense of your strengths and weaknesses. Put simply, everyone values his colleagues – the people he ultimately spends most of his day-to-day life with! The book highlights the softer parts of running a tech startup - parts that are usually ignored as they fall behind more urgent tasks.Because if the former talked about how to deal with precarious situations in business, the latter talks about how to deal with the precarious yourself while leading a business. I've always been a big fan of Rand's transparent style and hard working attitude, which has always come across in his writing / speaking, but Lost and Founder really takes this to a new level. Written by the founder of a company that’s already made it and packed with cheat codes and hacks, this is the ultimate insider’s playbook of strategies and tactics for struggling founders and would-be innovators. Again, many will disagree with him and work in environments not suited to this, but he makes his case intelligently. Both Apple and Google state that they ensure that only users who have actually downloaded the app can submit a review.

Some flywheel-unsticking examples, Yelp paying for references, Yelp giving badges out with links back to Yelp, etc.Rand's book is a practical, transparent guide into building a startup and the responsibilities and unsuspected challenges it comes with. Lost and Founder isn't as much a "warning" story about the state of the startup industry, but is more of an honest look from a founder who was part of that industry, saw what was happening, made some mistakes, and is happy to own up to them and provide simple advice to people looking to run their own companies. I found this book profoundly helpful and revealing for my work as the founder and CEO of a small but quickly growing online education business. This book is an honest, generous, and useful look at what actually happens when you build a company, including the downs as well as the ups…I wish I had read it thirty years ago.