Whether you've already got a business or you're itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction.Think about it: what if you could launch like Apple or the big Hollywood studios? What if your prospects eagerly counted down the days until they could buy your product? What if you could create such powerful positioning in your market that you all but eliminated your competition? And you could do all that no matter how humble your business or budget?Since 1996 Jeff Walker has been creating hugely successful online launches. After bootstrapping his first Internet business from his basement, he quickly developed an underground process for launching new products and businesses with unprecedented success.But the success-train was just getting started; once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking. Tiny, home-based businesses started doing launches that sold tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars in sales with their launches.Launch is the treasure map into that world; an almost secret world of digital entrepreneurs who create cash-on-demand paydays with their product launches and business launches.Whether you have an existing business, or you have a service-based business and want to develop your own products so you can leverage your time and your impact, or you're still in the planning phase, this is how you start fast. This formula is how you engineer massive success.Now the question is this : are you going to start slow, and fade away from there? Or are you ready for a launch that will change the future of your business and your life?

    Since 2001, newspaper and music revenues have fallen by 70%, book publishing, film and television profits have also fallen dramatically. Revenues at Google in this same period grew from $400 million to $74.5 billion. Google's YouTube today controls 60% of the streaming audio business and pays only 11% of the streaming audio revenues. More creative content is being consumed than ever before, but less revenue is flowing to creators and owners of the content.With the reallocation of money to monopoly platforms comes a shift in power. Google, Facebook, and Amazon now enjoy political power on par with Big Oil and Big Pharma, which in part explains how such a tremendous shift in revenues from artists to platforms could have been achieved and why it has gone unchallenged for so long.The stakes in this story go far beyond the livelihood of any one musician or journalist. As Taplin observes, the fact that more and more Americans receive their news, music and other forms of entertainment from a small group of companies poses a real threat to democracy. Move Fast and Break Things offers a vital, forward-thinking prescription for how artists can reclaim their audiences using knowledge of the past and a determination to work together. Using his own half-century career as a music and film producer and early pioneer of streaming video online, Taplin offers new ways to think about the design of the World Wide Web and specifically the way we live with the firms that dominate it.Table of contentsIntroduction1. The Great Disruption2. Levon's Story3. Tech's Counterculture Roots4. The Libertarian Counterinsurgency5. Digital Destruction6. Monopoly in the Digital Age7. Google's Regulatory Capture8. The Social Media Revolution9. Pirates of the Internet10. Libertarian and the 1 Percent11. What It Means to Be Human12. The Digital RenaissanceAfterword

    From investing in Bitcoin in university to his time writing for Reuters, and then mining the digital asset ― Lou meets a co-founder of Ethereum and Gerald Cotten of QuadrigaCX (before he was reported dead), and hangs out in North Korea with Virgil Griffith, the man later arrested for allegedly teaching blockchain to the totalitarian state.Coming of age in the 2008 financial crisis, Lou's generation has a natural affinity with this rebel internet money, this so-called millennial gold, created in the wake of that economic storm. At once an immersive narrative of adventure and fortune, Once a Bitcoin Miner is also a work of journalistic rigor. Lou examines this domain through the lens of the human condition, delving deep into the lives of the fast-talkers, the exiles, the ambitious, and the daring, forging their paths in a new world harsh and unpredictable.

    His company, Moz, makers of marketing software, is now a $45 million/year business, and he's one of the world's leading experts on SEO. But his business and reputation took fifteen years to grow, and his startup began not in a Harvard dorm room but as a mother-and-son family business that fell deeply into debt.Now Fishkin pulls back the curtain on tech startup mythology, exposing the ups and downs of startup life that most CEOs would rather keep secret. For instance: A minimally viable product can be destructive if you launch at the wrong moment. Growth hacking may be the buzzword du jour, but initiatives can fizzle quickly. Revenue and growth won't protect you from layoffs. And venture capital always comes with strings attached.Fishkin's hard-won lessons are applicable to any kind of business environment. Up or down the chain of command, at both early stage startups and mature companies, whether your trajectory is riding high or down in the dumps: this book can help solve your problems, and make you feel less alone for having them.

    Startups face daunting challenges entering the technology ecosystem, including stiff competition, copycats, and ineffective marketing channels. Teams launching new products must consider the advantages of “the network effect,” where a product or service’s value increases as more users engage with it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants utilize network effects, and most tech products incorporate them, whether they’re messaging apps, workplace collaboration tools, or marketplaces. Network effects provide a path for fledgling products to break through, attracting new users through viral growth and word of mouth.Yet most entrepreneurs lack the vocabulary and context to describe them—much less understand the fundamental principles that drive the effect. What exactly are network effects? How do teams create and build them into their products? How do products compete in a market where every player has them? Andrew Chen draws on his experience and  on interviews with the CEOs and founding teams of LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Dropbox, Tinder, Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest — to provide unique insights in answering these questions. Chen also provides practical frameworks and principles that can be applied across products and industries. The Cold Start Problem reveals what makes winning networks successful, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are vitally important today.

    "Sound advice for any entrepreneur or business manager".--Chicago Tribune.

     Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success. A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century. Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about: • Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry. • Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production. • Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems. An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.

    Why did Ray Kroc's plan for McDonald's thrive when many burger joints failed? And how, decades later, did Krispy Kreme fail to heed Kroc's hard-won lessons? How did Walt Disney's most dismal day as a young cartoonist radically change his career? When Estée Lauder was a child in Queens, New York, the average American spent $8 a year on toiletries. Why did she spot an opportunity in selling high-priced cosmetics, and why did she pound on Saks's doors? How did Thomas Watson Jr. decide to roll the dice and put all of IBM's chips on computing, when his father thought it could be a losing idea? We learn about these CEOs' greatest challenges and failures, and how they successfully rode the waves of demographic and technological change.New Ideas from Dead CEOs not only gives us fascinating insights into these CEOs' lives, but also shows how we can apply their ideas to the present-day triumphs and struggles of Sony, Dell, Costco, Carnival Cruises, Time Warner, and numerous other companies trying to figure out how to stay on top or climb back up.The featured CEOs in this book were not candidates for sainthood. Many of them knew "god" only as a prefix to "dammit." But they were devoted to their businesses, not just to their egos and their personal bank accounts and yachts. Extraordinarily fresh and deeply thoughtful, Todd G. Buchholz's New Ideas from Dead CEOs is a truly enjoyable and fun—yet serious and realistic—look at what we still have to learn and absorb from these decomposing CEOs.

    Samsung is business history at its best! It explores the divergent fortunes of these two electronics giants in the last decade and identifies the true reasons behind Sony's decline and Samsung's rise. Contrary to popular belief, Chang shows that success (or failure) does not simply arise from different strategies. Rather, it emerges from major decisions that are deeply rooted in the companies' organizational processes and their executives' political behavior. This book is a must-read for any senior executive. --Constantinos Markides, Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic Leadership and Chairman, Strategy Department, London Business School Sea-Jin Chang has produced that rarity in a business book--one that is as valuable to practicing managers as it is insightful to academic researchers. In this fascinating comparison of two modern global giants, he applies his high resolution research microscope to their changing fortunes by dissecting their contrasting strategies, and providing interesting insights into their divergent organizational processes and management practices. This is a very valuable contribution to the international business literature. It will end up in as many corporate boardrooms as faculty seminars. --Christopher A. Bartlett, Thomas D. Casserly Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School Sea-Jin Chang has written a fascinating comparison of Sony and Samsung that will be valuable to anyone interested in strategy, organizations or international business. The interwoven and very detailed case studies of two very different companies in overlapping industries illuminate problems such as adaptation to technological change (analog to digital), organizational flexibility and globalization. His attempt to analyze both strategic development and implementation is successful and very useful. Both academics and practitioners will learn a lot from this book. --Stephen J. Kobrin, William Wurster Professor of Multinational Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Refreshingly original and entertaining, this book analyzes major strategic decisions of Samsung and Sony and highlights organizational processes and top management leadership that have shaped their performances. This is a must-read for all executives who want to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Asian competitors. It also provides penetrating insights to other Asian companies with global ambitions. --Myoung Woo Lee, President and CEO, iriver

    They're burning through cash, sales have stalled, and investors are nowhere to be found. Welcome to the reality of the new tech boom. Sure, it has produced its glittering share of billion-dollar "exits." But for the vast majority of startups life is nasty, brutish, and short on glamour. NO EXIT explores the feverish world of company founders who are desperately trying to keep their dream afloat. It’s a harrowing and hilarious look at the Silicon Valley no one sees. This is an extended version of a story that appears in the May 2014 issue of WIRED magazine.

    Now, in this enlightening guide that is sure to become the bible for twenty-first century investors, Calacanis takes potential angels step-by-step through his proven method of creating massive wealth: startups.As Calacanis makes clear, you can get rich—even if you came from humble beginnings (his dad was a bartender, his mom a nurse), didn’t go to the right schools, and weren’t a top student. The trick is learning how angel investors think. Calacanis takes you inside the minds of these successful moneymen, helping you understand how they prioritize and make the decisions that have resulted in phenomenal profits. He guides you step by step through the process, revealing how leading investors evaluate new ventures, calculating the risks and rewards, and explains how the best startups leverage relationships with angel investors for the best results.Whether you’re an aspiring investor or a budding entrepreneur, Angel will inspire and educate you on all the ins of outs. Buckle up for a wild ride into the world of angel investing!

    Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and ride-sharing apps do the same for drivers and riders. Although matchmakers have been around for millennia, they’re becoming more and more popular—and profitable—due to dramatic advances in technology, and a lot of companies that have managed to crack the code of this business model have become today’s power brokers.Don’t let the flashy successes fool you, though. Starting a matchmaker is one of the toughest business challenges, and almost everyone who tries to build one, fails.In Matchmakers, David Evans and Richard Schmalensee, two economists who were among the first to analyze multisided platforms and discover their principles, and who’ve consulted for some of the most successful platform businesses in the world, explain how matchmakers work best in practice, why they do what they do, and how entrepreneurs can improve their chances for success.Whether you’re an entrepreneur, an investor, a consumer, or an executive, your future will involve more and more multisided platforms, and Matchmakers—rich with stories from platform winners and losers—is the one book you’ll need in order to navigate this appealing but confusing world.

    The great American maverick of our time releases his long-awaited memoir, revealing his lonely childhood, the devastating loss of his father, intimate details of his marriage to Jane Fonda, and his unparalled success as a businessman and philanthropist.

    It holds nothing back while detailing the highest highs and lowest lows of what it's really like to run a startup.  Cliff Lerner's online dating startup, Snap Interactive, was running out of money when he bet the company's fortunes on a then-unknown platform called Facebook. The app suddenly began to acquire 100,000 new users daily for free, and soon after the stock price skyrocketed 2,000 percent, setting off an extraordinary chain of events filled with sudden success and painful lessons.You will learn how to:    * IGNITE EXPLOSIVE GROWTH by creating a remarkable product    * Identify the ONLY 3 METRICS THAT MATTER    * Explore valuable VIRAL GROWTH strategies to grow rapidly    * Execute the GENIUS MEDIA HACKS that helped us acquire 100 million users    * Create a thriving culture of PASSIONATE EMPLOYEES and CONSTANT INNOVATIONPRAISE:"A must read for founders and CEOs who want to achieve rapid growth while also building a great product and company." -Payal Kadakia, Founder & Executive Chairman of ClassPass"Explosive Growth is without question one of the most useful and entertaining business books I have ever read. Cliff gives you a roadmap to massively grow your startup with specific tactical lessons made memorable through engaging stories. This book is a must-read." -David Perry, Digital Sales & Business Development Expert at Google, Adobe, Amazon, Startup Advisor"Want to know how to grow your startup to 100 million users? Then this is the book for you. Explosive Growth gives step-by-step instructions, case studies and proven tactics on how to explode your growth." -Entrepreneur Magazine by Syed Balkhi"Lessons for startups and CEOs on growth hacking, marketing, and innovation from one of the smartest founders I know." -Andrew Weinreich, Inventor of Social Networking

    The real transformation--and the real opportunity--is just beginning.Subscription companies are growing nine times faster than the S&P 500. Why? Because unlike product companies, subscription companies know their customers. A happy subscriber base is the ultimate economic moat. Today's consumers prefer the advantages of access over the hassles of maintenance, from transportation (Uber, Surf Air), to clothing (Stitch Fix, Eleven James), to razor blades and makeup (Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox). Companies are similarly demanding easier, long-term solutions, trading their server rooms for cloud storage solutions like Box. Simply put, the world is shifting from products to services.But how do you turn customers into subscribers? As the CEO of the world's largest subscription management platform, Tien Tzuo has helped hundreds of companies transition from relying on individual sales to building customer-centric, recurring-revenue businesses. His core message in Subscribed is simple: Ready or not, excited or terrified, you need to adapt to the Subscription Economy -- or risk being left behind.Tzuo shows how to use subscriptions to build lucrative, ongoing one-on-one relationships with your customers. This may require reinventing substantial parts of your company, from your accounting practices to your entire IT architecture, but the payoff can be enormous. Just look at the case studies:  *   Adobe transitions from selling enterprise software licenses to offering cloud-based solutions for a flat monthly fee, and quadruples its valuation.  *   Fender evolves from selling guitars one at a time to creating lifelong musicians by teaching beginners to play, and keeping them inspired for life.  *   Caterpillar uses subscriptions to help solve problems -- it's not about how many tractors you can rent, but how much dirt you need to move. In Subscribed, you'll learn how these companies made the shift, and how you can transform your own product into a valuable service with a practical, step-by-step framework. Find out how how you can prepare and prosper now, rather than trying to catch up later.