the startup playbook - david kidder

[...]... corollary in the for-profit world Imagine if they exposed their operating margins on the price tags of the products they sold For example, the tag on a $12.00 T-shirt would list $4.00 in variable costs like buying the T-shirt wholesale, and $8.00 in fixed costs like paying the rent Each consumer would then have the option of supporting those fixed costs When we give donors the power to allocate their dollars,... course; or the one you intend to start someday But as you read the origin of these ideas in the stories of the founders that forged and shaped them, you’ll realize they are actually very deeply rooted concepts In most cases, the entire outcome of your ambitions rests on your ability to process the art and science of these ideas —that is, to execute a vision These are not box-checking ideas; they are the ones... create the leading companies in their markets In the end, for the purposes of the book, we focused on some forty of the nearly fifty interviews we completed either in person or via remote video In each interview, we followed a scripted set of questions devised to tease out the entrepreneurs’ guiding theses Throughout the interviews, I took detailed notes and probed for the living ideas that their playbooks... back fat for women in T-shirts.’ The team will get excited and inspired, and then they’ll call the manufacturer, who will insist that it can’t be done I always say, ‘That’s never true We put a man on the moon; I know we can create control-top fishnets.’ In both cases, Sara was right The bra “without back fat” is on the market as “Bra-llelujah,” and the control-top fishnets are “Tight-End Tights.” Branching... your startup idea does not have credible parallels to those offered in The Startup Playbook, you might consider retuning your business thesis, pivoting (changing the direction of your goal), or even deciding to stop altogether, as the opportunity costs and risks may outweigh the commercial potential Determining if you are right for the startup experience can involve a complex personal evaluation The. .. tell their story.” Another said, “Watching this talk together prompted the best conversation my fifteen-year-old and I have had in five years.” After seeing the responses to a lot of launches, you get a sense of the temperature With TED, the temperature was sizzling There was something really exciting and enthusiastic there At that point, it felt like it was worth flipping our whole business focus to the. .. formal VC-driven board meeting it’s not funny if you don’t make the plan When you don’t make the plan, there’s lots of screaming and gnashing of teeth It’s almost like a Japanese Noh play Stuff unfolds like clockwork VP of sales gets fired A new VP of sales comes in They’re not stupid, so they change the strategy That doesn’t work They fire the VP of marketing The CEO, if he’s the founder, becomes the chief... pick which ones they want to support DonorsChoose.org then purchases necessary supplies, provides them to the schools, and generates a line-item budget for the donor, who also receives a thank-you note from the class he or she has assisted To date, 93,000 teachers have used DonorsChoose.org to secure more than $55 million for 115,000 public-school classrooms—nearly all of them in low-income communities—and... Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany.* I’ve read Steve’s book many, many times—in the office, at home, on the beach My copy is dogeared and marked-up for good reason: it places our deepest fears and concerns into a wider perspective by illuminating these “unique” challenges as stages in a universal journey For startup founders, his book is The Catcher in the Rye Not only is Steve one of the founding fathers... competitive offerings The actual term startup became popular during the dot-com boom as a way of describing venture-backed technology companies But for the purposes of this book, I’m expanding the definition to include any original new business initiative by a founding team that is focused on a high-growth, risk/reward profile, scalability, and market leadership These startups often attract seed-stage, or angel, . while others I was meeting for the first time. I wanted their startup playbooks in order to rebuild mine. Now, I am sharing their playbooks with you. “Building a startup will be the home-ownership. members that they will have the chance to become complete startup executives; that they will know and experience the successes and failures of the entire startup journey; and that our startup playbook. a startup will be the homeownership of the next century.” He’s exactly right. The idea of the American Dream is rooted in our national ethos, in the belief that we have the freedom and self-directed