Last week I finally finished reading The Four Steps to the Epiphany a few days ago. I had heard about it from @danmil for a while, and meant to read it for a while, but never got through the full thing.
The author, Steven Gary Blank, is a noted serial entrepreneur. His writing style is engaging, flowing, and relatively easy to read.
It’s a very good book, well worth reading. The lessons, especially around Customer Discovery and the early life of a startup, really ring true. I found it interesting to see how much made intuitive sense, and how much we did right at our little marketing company early on. Maybe it was luck, or chance, but that was good to see.
Much of the reading also sounded like Eric Ries, who I’ve been blogging about recently. The contents are eerily familiar with the Startup Lessons Learned blog. I don’t want to sound too much like a fanboy, but that blog is worth reading.
The end of the book was also very interesting. As HubSpot is growing, we’re talking more about processes, and what kind of leadership and culture are needed. The “mission-oriented” phase between a pure startup and a mature company that the author writes about makes sense. It’s good mental fodder for idle times.
Overall, the book needs another draft or revision just of editing. The formatting and presentation, especially of charts / tables / figures, look somewhat unprofessional. But I didn’t care about that all, given the high-value, information-rich content.
Snag the book from Amazon.com, it’s worth the price.
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