The Startup Checklist

November 15, 2016
An entrepreneur outlines how to build a venture that can successfully go public or be acquired in this business guide. Rose, a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and founder and CEO of funding platform Gust, draws on "the aggregate experience of providing the tools used by more than half a million startups around the world." He offers a 14-page introductory "crash checklist" of "25 Key Action Steps (Plus One) for Every Entrepreneur." These are then fleshed out in subsequent chapters to "avoid the biggest bone-headed errors made by many bright-eyed and enthusiastic first-time company founders." His first nine steps examine the due diligence required before launch, with Step 0 involving education in the art of entrepreneurship, with a "Startup Reading List" appendix included in this book. Steps 9 to 18 cover the various mechanics of launching and building the business, providing an array of planning tools. These tools include reprinting the Osterwalder "Business Model Canvas," which charts value propositions, potential customers, and more, and showcasing a strategy to allocate stock equity among a founding team. Rose's final pointers focus on fundraising and keeping "your eye on the exit," including when and whether to sell or go public. Rose also delivers appendices presenting samples of an investor due diligence request, founder accord (to "control any future disagreements among the Founders"), convertible note and preferred stock term sheets, and information on starting a U.S. corporation from a foreign country. Rose (Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money and Having Fun Investing in Startups, 2014) effectively expands on his brand franchise in this new book. While acknowledging there are already "93,210 books listed" in the start-a-business category, "many of which are quite good," Rose ably sticks to his target of a "very specific type of business starter: the entrepreneur who is deliberately setting out to create a scalable, high-growth business." By providing a helpful overview checklist, then deftly expanding on these topics within this volume, Rose indeed has created a reference that can be a "companion along the way." Handy, distilled insights about startups from a CEO and investment expert.

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