Start Up Secure

Add cybersecurity to your value proposition and protect your company from cyberattacks Cybersecurity is now a requirement for every company in the world regardless of size or industry. Start-Up Secure: Baking Cybersecurity into Your Company from Founding to Exit covers everything a founder, entrepreneur and venture capitalist should know when building a secure company in today’s world. It takes you step-by-step through the cybersecurity moves you need to make at every stage, from landing your first round of funding through to a successful exit. The book describes how to include security and privacy from the start and build a cyber resilient company. You'll learn the basic cybersecurity concepts every founder needs to know, and you'll see how baking in security drives the value proposition for your startup’s target market. This book will also show you how to scale cybersecurity within your organization, even if you aren’t an expert! Cybersecurity as a whole can be overwhelming for startup founders. Start-Up Secure breaks down the essentials so you can determine what is right for your start-up and your customers. You’ll learn techniques, tools, and strategies that will ensure data security for yourself, your customers, your funders, and your employees. Pick and choose the suggestions that make the most sense for your situation—based on the solid information in this book. Get primed on the basic cybersecurity concepts every founder needs to know Learn how to use cybersecurity know-how to add to your value proposition Ensure that your company stays secure through all its phases, and scale cybersecurity wisely as your business grows Make a clean and successful exit with the peace of mind that comes with knowing your company's data is fully secure Start-Up Secure is the go-to source on cybersecurity for start-up entrepreneurs, leaders, and individual contributors who need to select the right frameworks and standards at every phase of the entrepreneurial journey.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses of all kinds, ranging from established companies to early-stage startups, to grow revenues, drive innovation, and transform themselves into truly modern organizations, poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the twenty-first century. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups – building a minimal viable product, customer-focused and scientific testing based on a build-measure-learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot. In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to an entirely new group of organizations: established enterprises like iconic multinationals GE and Toyota, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio. Drawing on his experiences over the past five years working with these organizations, as well as nonprofits, NGOs, and governments, Ries lays out a system of entrepreneurial management that leads organizations of all sizes and from every industry to sustainable growth and long-term impact. Filled with in-the-field stories, insights, and tools, The Startup Way is an essential road map for any organization navigating the uncertain waters of the century ahead.

Tapping into more than 33 years of small business expertise, the staff at Entrepreneur Media takes today’s entrepreneurs beyond opening their doors and through the first three years of ownership. This revised edition features amended chapters on choosing a business, adding partners, getting funded, and managing the business structure and employees, and also includes help understanding the latest tax and healthcare reform information and legalities.

An essential guide to understanding the dynamics of a startup's board of directors Let's face it, as founders and entrepreneurs, you have a lot on your plate—getting to your minimum viable product, developing customer interaction, hiring team members, and managing the accounts/books. Sooner or later, you have a board of directors, three to five (or even seven) Type A personalities who seek your attention and at times will tell you what to do. While you might be hesitant to form a board, establishing an objective outside group is essential for startups, especially to keep you on track, call you out when you flail, and in some cases, save you from yourself. In Startup Boards, Brad Feld—a Boulder, Colorado-based entrepreneur turned-venture capitalist—shares his experience in this area by talking about the importance of having the right board members on your team and how to manage them well. Along the way, he shares valuable insights on various aspects of the board, including how they can support you, help you understand your startup's milestones and get to them faster, and hold you accountable. Details the process of choosing board members, including interviewing many people, checking references, and remembering that there should be no fear in rejecting a wrong fit Explores the importance of running great meetings, mixing social time with business time, and much more Recommends being a board member yourself at some other organization so you see the other side of the equation Engaging and informative, Startup Boards is a practical guide to one of the most important pieces of the startup puzzle.

Tapping into more than 33 years of small business expertise, the staff of Entrepreneur Media takes today’s entrepreneurs beyond financing their idea and opening their doors to keeping the cash flow flowing and the capital coming in through the first three years of ownership. • Defines funding options ranging from small business loans and angel investors to crowdfunding and venture capital. • Real-world examples of funding and financing plans that work. • In-the-trenches financing wisdom that help businesses stay profitable.