title: Startup: An Insider's Guide to Launching and Running a Business
author: Kevin Ready
description: Kevin Ready loves building things and helping people to build things. Over the last 20 years, he has built, run, consulted for, and advised numerous start-ups and businesses. For him, there is nothing more interesting than understanding business models and the problems that entrepreneurs come up against in their markets. As he says often, It is my work and my play. I never get tired of it. Born into an engineering family, Ready started his first company right out of college. While the venture was a success, he saw the limitations to scaling the business. As the Internet era took shape, he joined the "tech wave" through the late 1990s, starting several online businesses. Years before Facebook, he was a founder of a social networking site with nearly one million users. Later, he and a partner spun off and sold a digital mapping business, then moved on to become an online software and media retail business that merged with a larger rival in 2008. That same year, he became a partner at an online real estate business that was in crisis mode. By applying the lessons presented in this book, he helped turn the business around. Just 13 months later, it was acquired by the newspaper industry. That business where he still works as technical director now brings in millions of dollars of profit per year and touches five million consumers every month.
zlib_text: Praise for The Entrepreneur Mind
  
  “If you want to start a business or improve the business you have, this is a
  fantastic resource. Kevin has managed to condense many of the crucial lessons
  that too many entrepreneurs learn the hard way. Read this book, and you’ll be
  far ahead in the business game.”  
  —Andrew Dietz, founder and president, Creative Growth Group
  
  “Kevin stitches together actual life scenarios and outcomes that every
  entrepreneur needs to understand. This book doesn’t live in the clouds like
  some others do. Real life for real business builders... read it!”  
  —Devon
  
  
  Wijesinghe, serial entrepreneur; chairman, Insightpool; director, Atlanta
  Technology Angels
  
  “Kevin has just given us the next best how-to handbook on starting, building,
  and sustaining your own business. It is written with such clarity and with
  commonsense lessons that truly hit the mark, turning complex concepts into
  simple applications.”  
  —Kent
  
  
  Matlock, CEO, Matlock Advertising and Public Relations
  
  “Kev