It seems like a different world when I reviewed Sramana Mitra's first book, Entrepreneur Journeys, last year. For those not familiar with the venture capitalist, business consultant and frequent Forbes contributor, she has taken a serial approach to sharing her unique and insightful views on the whole process of starting companies and succeeding. Her first book was really an overview, and it concluded with an indication that it was just the first volume in what would be a series. I should have known that her schedule for other volumes would be quite aggressive! Positioning: How to Test, Validate and Bring Your Idea to Market, her third volume, actually includes titles and a time-frame for volumes 4 and 5 in the coming months. While I skipped Volume 2, Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction, I must say that I am looking forward to Innovation: Need of the Hour this winter.
As I mentioned when I reviewed her first book, her content appeals to entrepreneurs who want to leverage her deep knowledge, but her case stories have a much broader reach. As one who likes to understand the factors that influence the success of companies in general, I found once again a lot of specific lessons in Volume 3. What makes the book work, once again, is that Mitra asks the right questions of very interesting people. While some of these companies are now public or have been acquired since her interview, there are also several interviews with dynamic entrepreneurs whose stories most of us don't know at all.
Mitra devotes the first part of the book to "Going Vertical", with interviews of the folks behind TheFind, Kosmix, Stardoll and Glam Media, each of which is focused on a very narrow domain. While I found these success stories interesting, the real appeal of the book for me was the focus on "Cloud Computing". The interviews in this section included LucidEra, Fabrik, Salary.com (SLRY), InsideView, PayCycle (acquired by Intuit (INTU)), and Emergence Capital (an early investor in Salesforce.com (CRM)). Mitra's interviews with these successful SaaS (Software as a Service) entrepreneurs helps the reader to understand the appeal of that business model. She uses this section to warn Indian outsourcing companies that they risk being supplanted by technology solutions. If you are an investor in any of these companies, this conversation alone merits a read of the book. The balance of the book touches upon collaboration (ON24 and DimDim) and content publishing (iUniverse, Shutterfly (SFLY) and Playfirst).
I enjoyed "Positioning" as much as her first Entrepreneur Journeys despite its being more narrowly focused. It's quite an easy read given that it is essentially a collection of short stories used to illustrate some key insights. For those curious about what makes companies successful, how technology can lead to solutions or perhaps the more specific goal of Mitra - how to "go to market", "Positioning" delivers.
Disclosure: I received a complementary review copy.
Sramana Mitra's book, Entrepreneur Journeys. sounds very interesting. I'm going to pick up a copy. Thanks.
Posted by: Robert S. Nahas | January 06, 2010 at 08:18 PM