Startup: An Insider's Guide to Launching and Running a Business is for people who are excellent at something—product or web development, writing code, marketing or selling anything—but who are now toiling for others. Yet they have long had a dream: to take that special skill set and use it, on their own terms, in a startup business. This pattern is romanticized by the media in the form of the “tech entrepreneur”—the guy brainstorming with buddies in a garage who ends up selling his startup for millions. But what is the reality behind stories like that one? For that matter, what mental processes, frames of reference, hard knocks, and lessons learned make up the “back story” behind any startup success? This book not only reveals the actual experience of entrepreneurship, but it provides readers with a set of universal entrepreneurial skills and tools they can use to build a business.