Why I Wrote This Book
This is the book I wanted to read when I was starting out—and I could not find it anywhere.
When I was setting up my technology company, there was no practical, step-by-step guide to reaching Series A funding.
This book is the new playbook for business founders to reach that important milestone.
It is a detailed start-up guide to taking the correct steps to attain an eight-figure valuation in under three years. It has been tried and tested and follows the exact template and processes I used to reach that point with my own technology business.
Many of the existing start-up books I devoured in my early days were by wealthy investors, ivory tower academics, or members of the “Silicon Valley Boys Club.”
I did not want that. I needed “Real World” advice on how to build a new product, find an awesome team, put a great pitch deck together, find fantastic clients, and raise millions of dollars in seed capital. I needed something I could dip into and digest quickly. A book that understood that my funds were limited, and I also had a family to support, with limited financial means to make a success of the company.
This book fills that gap.
It breaks down the mystery behind how to set up, fund, and scale a technology business.
It doesn’t tell you theoretically what you should do. It tells you exactly what I did to reach a $10 million dollar valuation.
Growing a new technology start-up follows a well-established pattern—one I didn’t know existed when I started out. This book brings structure to that pattern.
It explains what it is actually like to be a start-up CEO. How to manage the daily challenges and constant stress. It identifies when you should start speaking to seed investors, how to market your product, and then find initial clients. It explains how institutional funding works, when to target larger companies and how to set the business up to reach Series A funding.
There is a template underlying the path from Day 1 of a new business to reaching a $10 million dollar valuation. For the first time, this book documents these processes, lifts the lid on the steps to take, explains what adds the most value, what will work, and what won’t. It explains how to overcome the constant roadblocks and knockbacks you will experience along the way.
The “struggle” of the start-up CEO is like nothing else in business. The endless grind wears most entrepreneurs down. The challenge of trying to keep your personal life on track and the business solvent is too much for most people. And with good reason. The pressure goes on every day for years and it often happens while your funding is running out, payroll is approaching, suppliers are screaming to be paid, and existing clients are getting cranky.
Everyone knows setting up a business is backbreaking work and incredibly stressful. This book will help alleviate some of that stress by breaking down what you need to do, when you need to do it, and how to successfully move to the next stage of company growth.
When I was considering starting a company, I searched hard for a detailed, real life, practical guide explaining how to build a new technology business from scratch. One that was written by someone who had actually done it and was aimed at a new entrepreneur that had never worked in the technology industry before but had ambitions to scale the business globally.
It took me five years to build a company from nothing to being offered a Series A funding deal at a valuation of $10 million dollars. I honestly believe I could have done it in half that time if I had known what’s in this book.
I wasted months, even years in some cases, going down the wrong route for funding, targeting the wrong initial clients, and building the wrong products—simply because I didn’t know any better.
The entrepreneur’s journey is a fantastically rewarding one—you are trying to create new wealth out of nothing but brain power—an idea in your head.
There is a series of key steps and developments that need to take place to grow your new idea into an eight-figure valuation. This book provides the guide to reaching that milestone.
This is what works in the “Real World.”
How the Book Is Structured
This book is structured over a typical three-year period from the very first start-up steps, right through to securing a Series A funding deal. While it focuses on technology company start-ups and those that sell software to business customers, the lessons and suggestions in here are applicable to any new start-up business globally.
Part I of the book focuses on typical business activities in year one. This includes setting the business up, building an initial version of your product, and finding the first couple of team members you will need to grow the company. It also covers how to market the new business successfully, while managing cash flow to ensure the company does not go bankrupt in that challenging first year.
Part II moves onto year two. It covers how to find and implement your first real business client and how to begin the process of identifying suitable investors. It explains the typical angel and seed funding process and looks at how to find great “trusted advisors” (e.g., accountants, lawyers) to help you scale the business quickly.
Part III covers year three. This includes the personal resilience you will need to keep successfully growing the company over many years. This includes how to sell the product to large organizations and then how to maintain innovating, while scaling your company globally and securing Series A funding at a valuation in excess of $10 million.