The Tao of Startups

A Guidebook for Your Entrepreneurial Life (A Step-by-Step, How to Guide for Doing a Successful Startup)

By: James LaLonde

Narrated by: Brendan Davis

This book, The Tao of Startups: A Guidebook for Your Entrepreneurial Life (A Step-by-Step, How to Guide for Doing a Successful Startup) is the one book you need if you are considering doing, or in the process of doing, a start-up.

Face it. Odds-wise you have a much better chance of becoming a pro athlete than a successful start-up entrepreneur. Internationally successful serial entrepreneur James LaLonde takes you through the key things you need to get right in the early days of your start-up before you turn the next five-plus years of your life and your start-up into a stress-laden nightmare.

How to do all the things that most first-time entrepreneurs get wrong or ignore are here in this book:

• How to select the right cofounders
• How to build a winning Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• How to make a bulletproof pitch deck and then successfully use it to get VC funding

Also, a lot of essential information that has never been organized and gathered in one place is all here:

• All the ways you can get funding without giving up precious equity to VCs
• How to split the equity between cofounders to ensure it's fair and won't end up being a point of contention that destroys your start-up
• How to set the valuation for your start-up and how to get investors to accept it
• How to get through all the investor meetings and the inevitable due diligence so you can get the investment you need to grow your business
• And much more!

The author is a sought-after speaker and start-up mentor with 15 years of doing multiple start-ups in Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Beijing. In addition to his start-up and investment activities, James LaLonde serves as a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing (affiliated with Loyola University) and is a mentor for ChinaAccelerator, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and The Beijing Center. This is the one book you need if you are thinking about doing your own start-up.

©2018 James LaLonde (P)2020 James LaLonde

Great first read for anyone involved in startups

Disclaimer: I know the author, but the opinions are my own

For anyone considering starting a startup, working at a startup, or who is already in the thick of it, this should be one of your first reads.

James is a strong generalist with experience working at big tech, founding multiple startups, and advising many more.

While this book isn’t going to provide the deepest analysis on any one particular area, James distills many of the key topics from the lens of someone who has lived them many times over. It’s useful to hear not just the theory, but also how things are in the real world, and this book delivers.

I recommend this book for these topics especially: MVPs, equity & fundraising, and deciding who should be your cofounders.

Amazing Insights All Around

James Lalonde has been in the arena both playing and coaching the gladiatorial game of entrepreneurship at the highest levels across cultures and continents for decades. He's writing from deep experience as a creator, builder, marketer and . are dozens In this audio book there's a treasure trove of juicy nuggets, a horn o' plenty of tasty tidbits, a cornucopia of insights, a veritable bevy of...well, you get the idea ;-). Looking to start a startup? Then it's a no-brainer to one-click purchase this bad boy on to your Kindle or phone app asap. ;-)