Kawasaki writes that his book is applicable to a much broader audience; he even suggests it will be useful for people who are starting nonprofits or churches. But the book's frame of reference is really the high-tech world.
Kawasaki says that there are ''seven milestones that every start-up must focus on. If you miss any of them, your organization might die." The list includes items such as ''finish a prototype" and ''raise capital" that, while applicable to many start-ups making a high-tech product, may not apply to other kinds of start-ups -- such as small services firms that don't plan to raise outside capital.
Kawasaki does include some good advice for potential ''intrapreneurs" -- people who want to create entrepreneurial-like activity within established companies. It is, however, for high-tech start-up entrepreneurs that this book will most come in handy.
Kawasaki covers a range of key topics, from pitching your business to investors to growing a business through self-financed ''bootstrapping" to building your brand. His advice is generally solid and at times specific. In his chapter on making presentations to investors, Kawasaki even reminds entrepreneurs to use good-sized fonts in presentation slides. His reasoning? ''Think about it: Any venture capitalist who survived the dot-com carnage is probably over 40 and has deteriorating vision. A good rule of thumb for font size is to divide the oldest investor's age by two, and use that font size," Kawasaki writes.
Kawasaki himself could be described as a venture capitalist dot-com survivor. Well-known for his work as a marketing evangelist in the early days of the Macintosh computer, Kawasaki in 1997 cofounded Garage.com, now Garage Technology Ventures.
Kawasaki does admit in his book that he learned a hard lesson during the Internet boom years. In a section urging entrepreneurs to ''understaff and outsource," he writes of his own mistake in overstaffing at Garage. ''At its peak, the headcount of Garage was 52 people. After a series of layoffs, I reduced the head count to under 10 people."
