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xviii 6 SECRETS TO STARTUP SUCCESS

Eight offers strategies for strengthening and lengthening
your new venture runway and for summoning the personal
resilience and perseverance that will give your big idea
plenty of time to thrive.

In the back of this book, two appendixes provide additional tools
and resources to help you launch a successful venture:

9 Appendix A features a Startup Readiness Tool based on a set
of assessment questions I use in my consulting work with
new ventures. The questions will help you evaluate your ven-
ture’s strengths and weaknesses. Are you on solid footing?
Where will focused support and attention elevate your odds
of success?

9 Appendix B includes a resource list of books, websites, blogs,
articles, tools, and thought leaders, organized by chapter so
that you can delve more deeply into areas where your ven-
ture most needs shoring up.

I want to offer one final note on the founders and the storylines
that I introduce on the first page of this book. I have included these
cases because I know them well—having done advisory work with
three of them and getting to know the fourth through an interview
process—and also because they illustrate how passion can both ele-
vate a venture’s performance and also limit or sabotage success. My
intent is to present these stories in a way that is fair, accurate, and
unvarnished, so that they represent both successes and failures rather
than a romanticized or idealized portrait of the mythical perfect ven-
ture. In fact, the further I progressed in the writing of this book, the
more clearly I understood that it serves as a sermon to myself, re-
minding me of my own blunders and my continuing vulnerability to
make them again.

In this spirit, I encourage you to harvest the lessons from this book
that are most relevant and applicable to your own goals and circum-
stances. As I think about the teachers and books that have had the
greatest positive effect on me, personally and professionally, I can
point to lessons from each that have been indispensable, and also, for

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