Simple rules for entrepreneurs

Bruno Pešec -

I've recently stumbled on a good book 66 Simple Rules for Entrepreneurs: A Roadmap for Improved Performance worth sharing.

It covers most common questions entrepreneurs have in a very succinct and direct way, presented as "simple rules."

The "rules" are organised in several themes:

Simple Rules for Recognizing Opportunities

  • When Others Constrain Your Career, Look for an Entrepreneurial Opportunity
  • Invest Effort to Build Expertise from Your Experience
  • Don’t Be Fooled by Your Experience
  • Use Entrepreneurship as a Channel to Express Yourself
  • To Design Value, Look for Disruptions (in Users and Your Environment)
  • Motivate Creativity to Generate Opportunities
  • Adopt an Entrepreneurial Mindset to Learn and Generate New Things

Simple Rules for Market Selection and Entry

  • Identify a Broad Opportunity Set from Which to Choose the “Best” One
  • Think Like a Scientist to Generate Novel Business Models or Opportunities
  • With Resource Constraints, Embrace the Lean Startup Approach
  • Create, Use, and Adapt a Community of Inquiry to Evaluate and Co-construct an Opportunity
  • If Your Opportunity Does Not Work Out, Pivot

Simple Rules for Entrepreneurial Decision-Making

  • Entry Decisions Are Complex, so Time Them Right
  • If You Think You Do Not Have Implicit Biases, You Are Probably Wrong (We All Do), so Set Up Procedures to Circumvent Them
  • Reduce Your Overconfidence in Making Predictions
  • While Slack is Nice, Necessity Can Be the Mother of Innovation
  • When You Lack Information to Make Decisions, Turn to What You Have at Hand
  • If You Want to Capture Fleeting Opportunities, Then Speed up Your Decision-Making
  • Decision Analysis Will Only Get You so Far; Tap into Your Inner Child to Ask Questions

Simple Rules for Developing Plans and Strategies

  • Reflect on Your Personal Goals When Setting an Entrepreneurial Strategy
  • Think About Your Venture’s Future and Your Future in It
  • When Facing Uncertainty, Look for Ways to Capitalize on Learning (Stage Gates Won’t Cut It)
  • Simplify Your Rules as the Environment Becomes More Complex and Dynamic
  • Be Aware of and Minimize Your Venture’s Vulnerabilities
  • Anticipate and Avoid (or Prepare for) Potential Threats
  • Meetings Can Help Make Effective Transitions from One Project to the Next
  • Avoid Firefighting Mode to Improve Long-Run Performance

Simple Rules for Engaging External Stakeholders

  • Build a Circle of Trusted Advisors and Listen to Them
  • Don’t Journey Alone; Involve Others Because Entrepreneurship Needs to Be a Social Endeavor
  • When It Comes to Building Relationships, Don’t Always Go for What Is Easy and Natural
  • Engage Others in Dialogue Like a “Good” Professor Does in a Case Discussion
  • Emphasize Inquiry with Others (Instead of Advocacy) for Generating Creative and Innovative Outcomes
  • To Access Resources, Learn How to Tell a Good Story
  • Know Your Worth and Communicate It to Others for Effective Pricing
  • Ask for Help.

Simple Rules for Working with Cofounders

  • Don’t Be a Fool, Don’t Rush in
  • Make Sure to Invest Time in Setting up Your Founding Team
  • If You Want Your Founding Team to Function Well, Nurture It
  • Make Sure Your Team Can Manage Team Issues
  • Your Team May Not Stay Together, but a Breakup Doesn’t Have to Be a Disaster

Simple Rules for Managing Employees

  • Consider the People You Can Attract to Your Startup
  • You Will Shape Your Employees, but They Will also Shape You
  • Build a Culture in Which Your Employees Thrive
  • If You Want to Be Entrepreneurial, You Need to Be a Failure-Tolerant Leader

Simple Rules for Growing Your Venture

  • Growth Is a Challenging Journey; Be Well Prepared
  • Transform Your Venture Multiple Times
  • Build Your Cultural Intelligence to Enter Foreign Markets
  • To Make Your Organization Entrepreneurial, Enhance Its Capacity to Learn
  • Formalize Some of Your Personality to Build Your Venture’s Culture

Simple Rules for Riding the Emotional Roller Coaster

  • Don’t Ignore Your Negative Emotions
  • Running a Venture Can Be Exhausting, So Make Sure You Manage Your Entrepreneurial Energy Right
  • Follow Your Entrepreneurial Passion
  • Build Your Emotional Intelligence
  • Pursue Moderate Stress at Work to Enhance Life
  • Build Your Entrepreneurial Team’s Emotional Intelligence to Enhance Its Performance

Simples Rules for Developing the Social Aspects of Your Venture

  • Do Amazing Things with Your Venture to Help Those Suffering
  • Align Your Motivation with the Type of Venture You Want to Build
  • Be Sensitive to the Needs of Your Venture Members
  • Don’t Burnout in Pursuing Your Venture’s Social Mission

Simple Rules for Managing Mistakes and Failures

  • To Be Successful, You Need to Be Prepared for and Manage Failure
  • Yes, You Can Learn More from Your Failures than Your Successes, but It Can Be More Challenging than You Think
  • You Cannot Choose to Be Error Free; You Need to Choose Which Error You Will Regret Less
  • Prepare for Crises Because They Will Probably Happen (You Just Don’t Know What or When)
  • If You Caused a Mistake that Was a Core Violation of Your Entrepreneurial Venture and Negatively Impacts Others, Then You Better Make a Good Apology

Simple Rules for Exiting Your Entrepreneurial Venture

  • If You Want to End Your Entrepreneurial Journey, Consider Multiple Possibilities
  • To Keep Your Venture Alive After Exit, Manage the Succession Process Right

You can get the book for free from Springer.

Hundred pages worth reading!