The Beermat Entrepreneur: Turn Your good idea into a great business (3rd Edition), reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of the Beermat Entrepreneur: Turn Your good idea into a great business (3rd Edition) by Mike Southon and Chris West. Available here.

The Beermat Entrepreneur helps you convert your jotted notes about your business idea into a big and successful business. With wit and humour, this quick-to-read and simple-to-use book could turn your beermat inspiration into reality.

 You’ve got a bright idea. An idea that you think maybe, just maybe, could become a brilliant business. But what next? The Beermat Entrepreneur is the answer. It takes you through all the crucial stages between those first notes on a beer mat and a business that is sound, lasting and profitable. It tells you what the other books don’t – the lessons that most people have to learn by bitter experience; the tricks that all entrepreneurs wish somebody had told them before they set out.

Revised and updated completely, this classic book for entrepreneurs contains the distilled wisdom of serially successful entrepreneur Mike Southon and is packed with advice and insight for any aspiring business person, either within an existing company or thinking of starting up on their own.

Any book that goes to a 3rd edition, 16 years after it’s first print is usually going to be a good book. Firstly because the book still has value almost two decades later, and secondly because the authors have also had the benefit of reflecting on their own words, experience and insights over the time that has passed since 2002.

It’s a good read, it’s wry, funny and self aware in terms of the challenges you face when trying to grow and build your businesses. The discussion around the need for magnets, makers and monitors was well observed, interesting, and even entertaining, regarding magnets for example -> “well someone has to take centre stage, it might as well be me …”. 

They also discuss the challenge of transitioning from a small company, where you are all fellow comrades, working together, to the growing pains of becoming more than 25, and then 150 team members and beyond. Even more tricky too, the removal of your founder too, if necessary. Tough topics, but the reality is that very few survive the transition from startup to major global entity, as the experiences of Twitter, Apple and others illustrate.

Their antipathy towards bringing in lawyers to resolve issues, nor to use VCs to fund your company’s growth is clearly coming from personal experience and something that we would agree with too, were reasonable statements all well explained.

If you’re planning to go down the startup route, and all the ups and downs that it will bring, then this new edition of the book remains a helpful and useful guide to have at your side as you do battle with all the elements that you will encounter.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking