Entrepreneur Journeys Book Review: Finding Niches Within Niches

Peter Christensen of GeekStack reviews EJ2 on his blog: “I was very excited to hear about [Sramana’s] new book Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction. It’s a book full of interviews with entrepreneurs who have successfully bootstrapped their companies from a kitchen table to millions of dollars of revenue or an acquisition. I like this kind of book because it goes into more detail than a typical blog post or article, and the interview style is more human than the usual business book third-person style. So I went into the book with high hopes, and those high hopes were met…a good read for anyone interested in entrepreneurship.”

On Amazon, top reviewer Tom Carpenter shares: “I just finished reading Entrepreneur Journeys Volume 2. Like the first volume, this book uses an interview-style presentation, which may be a put off to some people, but I rather like it. You feel more like you’re truly getting the information from the source. A number of interesting insights came to mind while reading:

– Marketing segmenting is more than just race, gender and age
– Passion is essential to entrepreneurial success (not exactly new, but yet another reminder)
– Niches abound within niches

This last one really struck me in a couple of the interviews. The author never states it outright, but a number of the successful companies found their success by locating niches within niches. I’m going back to my marketing team now to ask, ‘What is the most valuable 10-20 percent group within our customer base? How do we provide unique value to them? How do we communicate this value?’

Thanks once again, Sramana, for an excellent read.”

And from Sangeeth Varghese:

“Sramana Mitra has produced a delightful read in this – especially because books revolving around interviews can be a challenge to handle, that too when you handle a topic like start-ups, where opinions could be diverse and varied. When I started reading the book, I decided that I would be reading the 13 interviews covered in the book in 13 days (since I normally read multiple books at the same time). But once I started, I could not put it down, and ended up finishing in one go.

Specifics I liked in the book include [its] non-repetitiveness. Typically, interview-oriented books tend to repeat the questions, and I found that Sramana has taken care to ask the absolute relevant questions only to her interviewees. I also appreciated the fact that she has selected a diverse set of interviewees, and not people belonging to a single genre. And that has made sure the diversity of opinions, which the reader can sift through and imbibe according to the situation that they are going through.”
As a special thank you for your continued support, we’re working with Smashwords on a new promotion this week in which we will give away e-book copies of “Entrepreneur Journeys, Volume One” free to 15 of Sramana’s readers.

Simply retweet this story by using the retweet button at the bottom of this post by midnight Pacific time on Wednesday, July 15, 2009.

We’ll choose the 15 winners at random and contact you with the details on obtaining your “Entrepreneur Journeys” e-book from Smashwords. The e-books on Smashwords can be read online using their online readers, or they can be downloaded to any e-reading device, including the iPhone, iPod Touch, Amazon Kindle, and Sony Reader.

But wait, there’s more. Of those who retweet AND post a review on Amazon of “Entrepreneur Journeys, Volume One” by August 1, we’ll pick five participants at random to receive a free e-book copy of “Entrepreneur Journeys, Volume Two: Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction”, also from Smashwords. Be sure to mention your Twitter handle in your review so that we know who you are.

Of course, if you prefer, you can purchase both books right now in their various formats from Smashwords and Amazon.

Enjoy, and good luck!

This segment is a part in the series : Entrepreneur Journeys Book Review