Show HN: 100 entrepreneurs share the story of their struggles and life experiences

4 points by esdailycom 12 years ago | 2 comments

I have been working on a book over the past few months. The objective of the book was to talk to 100 entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds to understand how they went through the various challenges that come with starting up a business.

I was fortunate to talk to a number of extremely successful entrepreneurs including the founders of companies like Freelancer.com, Fiverr, Udemy, Grooveshark, RackSpace, Tagged.com, etc. Outside the technology space, I got to talk to the founders of companies like YogaFit who are the world's largest Yoga training school, All American Clothing, Wild Wing Cafe, etc. There are also a few entrepreneurs I talked to who did not succeed in their ventures and they described the pains of finding a regular job after a startup failure.

Overall, it was a wonderful experience talking to farmers, bakers, social media experts, sales executives, etc. as they told the story of their struggles.

Here is a preview for the book : https://www.dropbox.com/s/0evrb66hvg4ucoy/Preview-copy.pdf Amazon link : http://www.amazon.com/How-Did-entrepreneurs-struggles-experiences/dp/149759975X/

I have included the master list of all entrepreneurs featured in the book in the last page of the preview; in case anyone's interested.

Would love your feedback on my book.

ASquare 12 years ago |

Let me ask this:

There are already many high quality, and depth resources that address all of the topics covered in this book. Yes, they may not be all in one book but that's not a big deal (imo). Many of them are even written by these very same people (the interview with you is likely not the first time they've ever spoken about how they did it).

So in you mind, what is so unique about this book that would make it a go to resource for any of these topics for any entrepreneur?

esdailycom 12 years ago | |

I agree. There possibly could be another book that addresses things the exact same way I have done. But the fact that I could not find it while trying to scratch my itch tells me this book has potential to reach people like me the other books have not addressed.

Secondly, although interviews with the founders of Freelancer and Udemy makes for a nice brand building exercise, their interviews are not the USP of the book. I think this book is useful because it tells the stories from people who are not media darlings - people who run baking shops, vegetable growers, yoga schools; people who make their own jewelry and sell on Etsy. The stories and struggles of these people are not chronicled. Even if they are, they must be available as a 99 cent ebook on Kindle that has not really reached many.

This book consolidates the experiences from the ultra-successful and those who have failed, people who face challenges from multiple aspects like money, gender, industry, etc. And reading all of this in one place is definitely a useful alternative to the umpteen books that one must read for the same purpose.