
The Four Steps to the Epiphany - DanielBMarkham
http://www.hn-books.com/Books/The-Four-Steps-To-The-Epiphany.htm
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monk_the_dog
I love his definition of a startup: "startups are a temporary organization
designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.". Solid,
concrete advice in this book - advice you can disagree with, not just apple
pie advice.

Compare "Four Steps" to "do more faster", another highly recommended startup
book.

First, both books have off-putting titles. I'm much more likely to buy a book
called "The Customer Development Model" than anything that sounds like it's
marketed to the naive or flaky: "epiphany?", "do more faster?". Can we please
stay pragmatic and grounded?

Apart from that, the books are worlds apart. "Four Steps" _is_ pragmatic and
grounded. The "do more faster" book starts with an essay by Tim Ferriss, the
author of "The 4-hour workweek."

As long as we're talking about Steve Blank, here's a couple of other books
that I've read and liked because of things I've read on his blog/book:

* Business Model Generation, by Osterwalder & Pigneur

* Crystal Fire, by Riordan & Hoddeson

* A Radar History of World War II, by Brown

The last two book because of his "secret history of silicon valley" posts.

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lfittl
Highly recommended: <http://www.custdev.com/>

(E-)book that summarizes the 4 Steps into a usable reference guide, with case
studies mixed in.

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bbest86
Just read this in the last month and devoured it. I'm currently doing a lot of
thinking about how to apply the ideas that drive entrepreneurship to the
international development sector and the ah-ha moments from this book were
incredible. Interesting to see the parallels - both sectors are trying to
solve poorly defined and understood problems with new solutions, especially in
the case of a new market.

I think this leads to a lot relevant lessons to be learned between the sectors
- mostly international development learning from entrepreneurship. Just
started a series of blog posts on this here:
[http://theborrowedbicycle.ca/2010/11/tech-startups-and-
human...](http://theborrowedbicycle.ca/2010/11/tech-startups-and-human-
development-different-worlds/)

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revorad
This book has been very expensive in the UK. So I wrote to someone at Steve's
ranch and ordered a bunch at bulk rate, which I'll sell cheaply soon. If
you're interested, please sign up at <http://laughingcomputer.com>.

</plug>

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atldev
I'd love to get this book in Kindle format. Anyone know if an ebook version is
coming?

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d_c
And you still can't order it in Germany :(

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DanielBMarkham
If you want to buy this book and can't, email me from my contact info. We'll
figure out a way to get it and ship it to you.

That's really whacked. It's also whacked that a kindle format isn't out. Lots
of folks who would like to read this book -- and would benefit from it --
can't seem to get connected. We need to fix that.

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kenkeiter
Read it last year at Zed Shaw's recommendation. Very terse writing, but a
great deal of valuable information.

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b_emery
lots of good stuff on the author's blog as well:

<http://steveblank.com/>

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gallerytungsten
I wish this book had been available around 1996! Even so, I'm glad to have
read it more recently.

