Book report: The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. Management Essay

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Book report: The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau
The $100 startup is authored by Chris Guillebeau who penned it down after extensive travelling in nearly all countries around the world and interviewing small and micro business owners. He interviewed 50 entrepreneurs who had built businesses with earnings at of at least US$50k from a modest investment, in many cases less than $100. The book is seemingly meant for the people who want to start small businesses to supplement their earnings. The overarching idea is constructed around the theme that anyone has potential to start and built his/her own business if only he/she follows his/her own passion (relevant skill) then make it useful. He illustrates this theme throughout the book with numerous examples of other entrepreneurs who leveraged on this simple formula and built successful businesses. He discusses the common challenges for budding entrepreneurs and offers advice and solutions to their problems to enable them to succeed in today’s economy.
In the first three chapters, Guillebeau tries to help the reader to decide what to do or where to start. He clearly points out that it is important to do a renaissance and self-evaluation of what you will be doing probably for the rest of your life. It will be harder and more likely to fail if the entrepreneur starts a business in a field, he/she is not passionate about or hates. Every day will be tough and the business has very high chances of failing. Thus, he advises entrepreneurs not to flow with the trends but find something they are passionate about and convert it to business. It is important to note that not all hobbies or skills can be converted to businesses and therefore they have to find something which creates value to the people. The decision on where to pour your resources and efforts it must be something people care about otherwise no one will want to have it. Find a way to commercialize that passion or skill and carry on with it. Secondly, do not imagine that people want to learn how the product or service is made, they just want to get the product. Thus, do not invest efforts in trying to pitch the benefits of your products on how it is made or created as no one will care.
In the next four chapters, the author discusses why an entrepreneur has to start fast and how the economy has changed. He challenges entrepreneurs that businesses have become location independent in the age of the internet. He also raises the point that it is important to understand that there are new demographics that drive businesses today. The world has moved from factors of gender, age, race to a new system of passions, beliefs, values, and interests. It is therefore important to understand your customers as an entrepreneur and decide on your approach. And there is a big difference between what people say they want and what they actually want and it is important to distinguish the difference. Secondly, in this section, he advises entrepreneurs to start early and fail early or modify their business model as they go along. He points out the planning phase is often wh...