Bruce Judson’s Go It Alone! – you can go it alone.
Bruce Judson’s Go It Alone (http://www.brucejudson.com/) is a good book for budding entrepreneurs. It is a bibliography of management books and true to his academic stature, Bruce has assembled a synopsis of their wisdom in an easy to read format.
I purchased the book upon a recommendation from GigaOM – “F|R Crib Sheet: 7 More Sites to Cut Your Startup Costs” (http://gigaom.com/2008/08/09/fr-crib-sheet-7-more-sites-to-cut-your-startup-costs/). The article mentions the book under the sub-title “Free Apps for Everything!”, implying that the book talks about free apps and low-cost services for entrepreneurs.
Conceptually, the book is right on. More low-cost and free resources are available to entrepreneurs than anytime in the past. The advent of web-based services has made it easy for moon-lighting and full-time entrepreneurs to “Go It Alone.” Some points in the book are very apt –
- Focus on the important: Speed is important for entrepreneurs so focus on important core activities by outsourcing the rest.
- Free and low-cost outsourced services: Plenty of free and low-cost outsourced services are available in the market that provides most of the required functionality. Not perfect, but sufficient enough.
- The 60% rule: test market your product features when they are 60% ready. As Bruce puts it “Great is the enemy of good”.
While “Go It Alone” lists a number of case studies, it does omit practical processes, worksheets and templates. Therefore, I have decided to write a series of blogs covering the steps for identifying essential outsourced services, processes & procedures to manage them and benchmark them for the benefit of entrepreneurs. If you know of or would like to recommend services, please feel free to email me and/or post your comments.
Ram. Read more!
Stumble It!
