How I Built This
The Unexpected Paths to Success From the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs
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3.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
The number one Wall Street Journal Business Book Bestseller and Top 10 New York Times Bestseller
‘A must-read for anyone who wants to start a business, grow a business, or be inspired by those who do’ – Adam Grant, author of Originals
Based on the highly acclaimed NPR podcast, How I Built This with Guy Raz, his book offers priceless insights and inspiration from the world’s top entrepreneurs on how to start, launch and build a successful venture.
Great ideas often come from a simple spark: a football player on the New Zealand national team notices all the unused wool his country produces and figures out a way to turn it into shoes (Allbirds). A former Buddhist monk decides the very best way to spread his mindfulness teachings is by launching an app (Headspace). A sandwich cart vendor finds a way to reuse leftover pita bread and turns it into a multimillion-dollar business (Stacy’s Pita Chips).
Award-winning podcast creator Guy Raz has interviewed more than 200 highly successful innovators from across the world, from the founders of Five Guys, Airbnb and Bumble to James Dyson and Reed Hastings of Netflix, to uncover amazing true stories like these. In How I Built This, he shares tips for every entrepreneur’s journey: from the early days of formulating your idea, to raising money and recruiting employees, to finding your market and, finally, to paying yourself a real salary. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trail-blazing go-getters made their own dreams a reality.
‘These stories of founders and their companies are told with the same energy and openness it takes to be an entrepreneur’ – Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup
‘Guy Raz is supremely himself in this guide for aspiring entrepreneurs: brilliantly perceptive, incessantly curious, infectiously energetic and above all, a master storyteller’ – Angela Duckworth, author of Grit
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
NPR host Raz bundles insights from over 200 entrepreneurs into a breezy if not fully convincing compendium of advice. Drawing on interviews with successful businesspeople conducted for his podcast (from which this book gets its name), Raz distills lessons for aspiring founders, including tips on how to nurture an idea and win funding, and dispels some myths. For instance, despite the widespread fascination with lone-wolf geniuses, Raz finds that partnerships are the rule, not the exception, as demonstrated by such success stories as luggage company Away, the beauty product company Carol's Daughter, or Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Unfortunately, apparent contradictions abound. Among them, Raz finds that Shopify's founder defied advice by resisting Silicon Valley's allure and instead building his e-commerce platform from offices in Ottawa; however, Stitch Fix's founder did the opposite, moving from Boston to California to be near the engineers that could help her improve the company's technology. Perhaps acknowledging the futility of understanding what precisely separates a successful business from the vast majority of failure, Raz titles the final chapter "What You Do with Your Luck." Those with an entrepreneurial bent will be entertained by the shoptalk, but those hoping for concrete advice may have to look elsewhere.
