I finished reading Bob Walsh’s “The Web Startup Success Guide”(“WSSG”) last evening.

My impressions are mixed, but overall I’d give it an 8/10 rating, but I’ll get back to that.
The book is written in the same vein as his earlier book “Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality”, and to me the WSSG feels more like an update to the previous book with slightly different material, than a completely new book.

The book is very different from the academic stuff you’d read if you bought any of the “Harvard Business School” business books that fill the shelves in most book stores, this is both a good thing and bad thing: first of all, you won’t find any profound breakthrough observations in this book based on years of PHD research of market patterns, but what you will find is a very useful reference book of common sense ideas and concepts useful for developers aspiring to become entrepreneurs from someone who has been there, done that and bought the t-shirt.

I think the books “shortcomings” and benefits stem down to the fact that Walsh knows exactly who he is writing for: his positioning of the book and its content fills a very obvious gap in the market, if you will.

My final thoughts on the book is: It’s not 100% enjoyable all the time to read as a continuous read due to how it tends to “jump” discontinuously between subjects and thought-streams, but it is almost 100% useful in the material it contains. As a book to read from cover-to-cover, I’d give it a 7/10, but as a reference book for developers budding to become entrepreneurs, I’d give it 9/10.
I read the book in a couple of evenings, but I know for a fact that I be referring back to the book on a regular basis in my own entrepreneurial endeavors.
I still think Walsh’s Micro-ISV book is the better read as it is almost a setter of standards, but if you are a software developer curious about breaking free form the rat-race (and who isn’t?) WSSG is well worth buying, reading and referring back to because of the wealth of material it contains.

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