The Startup Owner's Manual cover art

The Startup Owner's Manual

The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Startup Owner's Manual

By: Steve Blank, Bob Dorf
Narrated by: Matthew Boston
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £14.87

Buy Now for £14.87

About this listen

More than 100,000 entrepreneurs rely on this book for detailed, step-by-step instructions on building successful, scalable, profitable startups. The National Science Foundation pays hundreds of startup teams each year to follow the process outlined in the book, and it's taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and more than 100 other leading universities worldwide. Why?

The Startup Owner's Manual guides you, step-by-step, as you put the Customer Development process to work. This method was created by renowned Silicon Valley startup expert Steve Blank, cocreator with Eric Ries of the "Lean Startup" movement and tested and refined by him for more than a decade. This guide will help you:

  • Avoid the nine deadly sins that destroy startups' chances for success
  • Use the Customer Development method to bring your business idea to life
  • Incorporate the Business Model Canvas as the organizing principle for startup hypotheses
  • Identify your customers and determine how to "get, keep, and grow" customers' profitably
  • Compute how you'll drive your startup to repeatable, scalable profits.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Steve Blank (P)2020 Gildan Media Business Development & Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship Leadership Management & Leadership New Business Enterprises Business Management Customer Service Technology Marketing
All stars
Most relevant
No nonsense, lazer customer focused, challenging. Ruthless and realistic. More than an introduction, it’s a comprehensive story of a successful business.

Best in class

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The narration is somewhat rushed and monotonous so it’s hard to focus. Would have appreciated if the pauses between the sentences were longer so one had some time to digest.

It’s a must-read for the founding team

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I bought the printed version of this book back in 2012 at a critical time when I was neck deep in building my own startup, a painful but transformative experience that represented a turning point in my career. 12 years later I still refer to its prescriptive and detailed advice on how to navigate the seemingly insurmountable challenges startups, and sometimes even established companies, face in their crawl towards sustainability. I now have 3 versions of the book, audio, Kindle and printed. Actually make that 2 copies because I was happy to pass on my 12yo printed copy today to a fellow startup founder who’s navigating the same challenges I’ve been through several times during my career.

I can’t recommend this audiobook highly enough. Essential reading for those interested in building products and services sustainably in a highly competitive technology landscape.

Essential reading for startup entrepreneurs

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Easy to understand content if you have some experience with product design, business and marketing. But a very long book... you will get tired a lot. It's good to use as a reference, but you might need to go once over the content in order to know what to look for. Useful if you have the physical copy of the book. Lots of steps, schemas, questions and lists, in order to easily apply the processes. Focused on Customer Discovery and Validation. Still, not very fun as a book :)

Very long, but practical and with lists

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.