I'm now back in Austin, TX and have just finished reading
The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki about a week ago.
Back in the end of year 2000, I co-founded a company named Tuxar. We were providing simple IT consulting services, mostly based around the Linux operating system and some other open-source projects such as Apache, qmail, PHP, MySQL, etc. We had a few good accounts and we did pretty good, for about a year. The 2001 Argentinean crisis took as down, together with some of our customers who couldn't pay us or didn't need our services any more. The whole marked crashed, except for the big players who had some reserves available to survive.
After more than four years of living abroad and comparing economies and cultures, I've realized that doing business in Argentina has always been particularly cruel. It's an extremely risky market. However, it is that same risk that creates huge opportunities. Someday, who knows, I might go for it again.
While reading the book, it was very interesting to go back in time and correlate my experiences with Guy's writing. I could really find many common places and useful advise. I did identify our small company with The Art of Bootstrapping chapter. That's an excellent chapter. I also particularly enjoyed reading The Art of being Mensh chapter.
In general, the whole book is a pleasure to read. As we say in Argentina, it just reads by itself. It's content is extremely precise and to the point. No crap, no wasted time and some good humor. In my opinion, this is exactly what we want to have in an entrepreneurial environment. Not to mention in a cruel market. If you have an entrepreneurial spirit like mine, I bet you'll enjoy reading this book.
Oh, and BTW, Guy's blog can be found
here. It's also very interesting. Thanks Guy!
