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Book review: “The Web Startup Success Guide”

If you’re an entrepreneur launching a start-up, there are plenty of places online to find advice – some good, some bad. Given this plethora of information, can a book about starting your own web startup still provide value in 2009? If that book is “The Web Startup Success Guide,” the answer is a resounding yes.

Despite all the information scattered around the Internet, Bob Walsh’s new book presents a more coherent story, from start to finish. Paper is still the better approach when you decide it’s time to go past random nuggets of wisdom and get serious about entrepreneurship.

Software developers are the book’s target audience. Walsh, assuming the reader already knows technology, focuses instead on the business and marketing aspects of creating a startup. Its strength is in being up to speed with the current online social media trends, without succumbing to fads. In comparison, most other startup books now read more like dated advice from the times past.

The book does a very good job of walking you through the steps of building a modern startup, reviewing possible motivations for starting your own company and where to get ideas, then forcing you to refine and challenge your original idea. At a minimum, the sidebar “what startups not to pursue” is a must read – because we are all guilty of making those mistakes at least once.

Walsh also covers platforms such as Google App Engine, Amazon and the iPhone in a surprising method. Rather than debating whose cloud is better, he forces the reader to decide based on which customers he or she is targeting, along with the business model and revenue they expect. As an example, Walsh favors B2B2C, meaning that selling to businesses that sell to consumers is the easiest path to a profitable company, rather than selling to consumers directly. Such choices can impact your target platform.

The book also gives a comprehensive look at the current best online tools to build your startup, including GetSatisfaction, UserVoice and 99designs. It’s handy today, but risks obsolescence quicker than other sections. It also sometimes reads more like a collection of descriptions instead of reviews and advice, making it hard to make a decision. For instance, is CrazyEgg better than Google Analytics? It’s never made clear.

Where Walsh really excels is his look at social media. In my experience, many new software or web startups don’t have a clue how to spread the word about their products. The Success Guide does a great job of showing readers why and how to become their own community manager and guides them through the latest tools – including Facebook and Twitter – without succumbing to Twitter-mania.

More traditional forms of publicity are covered just as deftly, with a focus on the right approach for a small company with a handful of developers. Call it “Guerilla Marketing 2009: The Lost Manual.”

There are some minor formatting issues that are frustratingly distracting. Some sidebars span multiple pages. And some interviews are curiously presented as sidebars, while others flow like regular text. The inconsistency draws your attention from the meat of the discussions.

Those minor editing weaknesses do not change the fact that “The Web Startup Success Guide” is an excellent book for all web entrepreneurs, with advice that is not only timely, but also actionable. If you don’t spring into action after reading this book, you should keep your cushy corporate job because entrepreneurship is not in you.

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Zii EGG SDK roadmap revealed, some important features not coming until end of year

Remember back when Sony introduced Rolly to stunned silence followed by a protracted effort to determine exactly what the hell it was, an effort that arguably continues to this very day? Yep, that’s kind of where we’re at right now with the Zii EGG, and nothing in the SDK documentation we’ve received today — the same documentation paying developers are just now getting — is helping us flesh that out. We can tell you that it’s well-equipped — there are proximity sensors and accelerometers on board, it’s got native support for Flash Lite, voice recognition, and 3D acceleration and it’ll eventually have support for Creative’s X-Fi audio tech — but really, that’s like saying “the Rolly is well-equipped.” What does it mean?

Here’s what we do know: out of the gate, it seems the EGG will only be running Creative’s homegrown Plaszma OS, though Android support is forthcoming. The Plaszma SDK is being rolled out in three phases spanning the rest of 2009, and some pretty important stuff — Bluetooth support, for example — won’t even be available to developers until the third phase, which is a pretty strong indication that Zii-powered products intended for consumer consumption probably won’t be around in time for the holidays. For the moment, there isn’t any indication on when devs will have access to Android support libraries, which we think might be where Zii’s true value lies, because let’s be honest — the world realistically doesn’t need another target platform for mobile.

Interestingly, Creative is using Zii to actively target China-based devs that it says “may not have brands but have an insatiable appetite for ready-to-go technologies, and can adapt these technologies very quickly to new market opportunities” (in other words, KIRFers) through its “Shanzai program,” a mix of prototype boards and support packages that it says will help small businesses bring products to market faster. If that means we can get the next great N97 clone running Android in record time, we’re all for it. Check out the full Plaszma SDK roadmap in the gallery below.

[Thanks, Joe]

Filed under: Handhelds

Zii EGG SDK roadmap revealed, some important features not coming until end of year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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