Startup Myths and Models: What You Won’t Learn in Business School
Rizwan Virk
Columbia Business School Publishing (June 2010)

Here’s a GPS for “Startup Land”

At the moment, no one is learning anything in business schools. However, when classes resume, there is a great deal of value to be learned — in a reputable business school — about what Rizwan Virk characterizes as “Startup Land.” Ignore the subtitle of this book.

His Startup Land is “a mythical version of Silicon Valley that is supported by numerous blogs, residents, and success stories, all packaged for the world at large.” In fact, start-ups have been launched almost everywhere throughout the world and most fail.

“This book is about the challenges faced by entrepreneurs who are embarking on a startup journey. More specifically, this book focuses on the internal responses to those challenges, each presented as a ‘myth’ — a rule of thumb that gets tossed around in the startup world as if it’s gospel, but it is actually a mental trap.” Virk identifies and examines the most important dos and don’ts of what is, with rare exception, a uniquely perilous process.

His focus is primarily on these:

o A six-stage launch process (e.g. “Fuel for the Journey: Myths About Raising Money”)
o 25 myths (e.g. “Better Management Causes Faster Growth”)
o Nine Startup Models (e.g. “Where and How Deep to Drill? Focus versus Explore”)
o Five Startup Tools (e.g. Calculating LTV [life-time value] and CAC [customer acquisition cost]”

There are also two appendices: “The Startup Market Lifestyle and Curves” and “Meet Our Cast of Characters and Startups.”

This is a thoughtful, thought-provoking book, a primer and operations manual really, in which Virk shares hundreds of dos and don’ts he has experienced or observed during several decades of wide and deep real-world experience. He hopes those who read this book will keep his suggestions and recommendations in mind.

That said, those who are now planning to launch a start-up or have only recently done so will gratefully welcome the abundance of valuable information, insights, and counsel that Virk provides but must not attempt to adopt and adapt all or even most of it. Select carefully. It’s best to view the material in this book as a convergence of various resources. (Many other books about startups seem to assume that every entrepreneur is a hammer and every problem is a nail.) Rizwan Virk’s wide and deep experience — especially with failure — helps to explain his pragmatic approach.

Years ago, Thomas Edison so aptly expresses it it this way: “Vision without execution is hallucination.” Peter Drucker frequently quoted that observation while adding one of his own: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”