Most people who say they want to start a business never do. The ones who do often cannot point to a plan that convinced them. They point to a moment: something that finally pushed them from wanting to doing.
The Big Push: Learnings from Three Years of Founder Interviews is a book about that moment. It is the first title in a series drawn from years of conversations with founders about what they built, what it took and what they would do differently.
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What the book covers
- The reasons people give, and the ones underneath. Freedom, money, an idea that would not go away, a job that ended, a problem nobody else would fix. The stated reason is rarely the whole story.
- The trigger. Why the push arrives when it does, and why the same push leaves one person starting a company and another updating their résumé.
- What happens next. How the reason a founder started shapes the decisions that follow: the idea they choose, how they price, when they quit and when they sell.
- What the push does not tell you. A strong reason to start is not evidence that the business will work, and the book is honest about the difference.
Why a book, and why now
The reasons people start businesses change with the times. A wave of layoffs, a new technology or a shift in how people work changes who starts and why. This edition captures the reasons as they look now. A future edition will look at how they have changed.
Start with the free guide
While the book is in preparation, The 10 Most Common Reasons to Start a Business is a free short guide to the same question, and the article The Big Push: What Finally Made Founders Start introduces the idea. Both sit within the first milestone of the route, Why Start a Business?.
About the author
Adam J. Peters, who signs as AJ, is a founder who talks to other founders. He edits Founders Courier. More about him and the site.