The 7 Secret Keys to Startup Success

This trailblazing book is packed with the critical business and legal information you need to succeed and is lots of fun as well. -Byron Dorgan, New York Times bestselling author An instant classic! This is the one book every startup and growing business should have! David Muchow's an award-winning legal and business expert-and his legal examples read like a John Grisham novel! -Elizabeth Jia, Arc Moon.co Most startups run out of time and money in a year or two, and the inventions fail to cross the 'Startup Grand Canyon'-the huge chasm between an idea and a financially viable business and end up in the 'Valley of Death,' the place where companies die by running out of money before they cash flow positive. Eight out of ten new business fail, but surprisingly too little attention has been paid to why that is. Think of the tremendous economic loss to our country. We could have had thousands more Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but those potential businesses have been lost. So ... The 7 Secret Keys to Startup Success ... identifies the causes of these failures and proposed a federal moonshot-an action plan to allow entrepreneurs to go from an idea to commercialization in months, not years. -Eric Pines, The Business Side of Law in Authority Magazine David Muchow's new book provides practical business and legal information to take startups and growing companies step-by-step through what they need-to-do and never-to-do to be successful. It covers the necessary information like marketing, raising money, and management, plus material not available elsewhere, and legal tips and model forms. And it's fun to read. It's like Rich Dad, Poor Dad for growing companies. To illustrate the principles in the book, after each chapter there's an exciting adventure story involving Professor Scooter Magee of Georgetown University who fixes broken startups. Think: Professor Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Silicon Valley! -Ruchika Nijhara, PhD, MBA, CLP, Vice President, Office of Technology Commercialization, webinar interview with David Muchow [L]earn how to avoid startup suicide. This [book] reads like a novel, not like a business book, which is really kind of cool. t's like you're sitting there in the middle of the room watching these characters go at it. This book is going to be good! You're helping business people! -Doug Wagner, The Doug Wagner Show, iHeart Radio, WMT News Radio The 7 Secret Keys to Startup Success is the one book every entrepreneur and growing company should have. David Muchow, an award-winning, thirty-year serial entrepreneur and lawyer, who teaches Law, Business, and Entrepreneurship at Georgetown University, gives you practical business advice and legal tips covering every aspect of entrepreneurship. It includes all the basics of building and growing a business-management, fundraising, marketing, intellectual property, and risk management-plus much more. -The Kim Pagano Show, AM 1650 KVTA David Muchow, GR '66-'68, has spent decades as an attorney, entrepreneur, investor, and consultant. Now, he has channeled that experience into a hands-on guide: The 7 Secret Keys to Startup Success. It covers a host of practical dos and don'ts-from creating a business plan and courting investors to managing risk and safeguarding intellectual property. -Beth Saulnier, Cornellians Magazine, Cornell University David Muchow's The 7 Secret Keys to Startup Success is a useful guide to newly formed startups and even established companies. It highlights the areas that are often overlooked in the haste to get a business going for the first time and carts tend to be placed before the horse in a rush to get product to market. The book is well-structured; the language is clear and comprehensive. The first three chapters are a step-by-step description of essential legal, organizational decisions faced when incorporating a new business. Presented with a good dose of common sense, the knowledge can save startup promoters many headaches by having all the paperwork in order from the beginning. Topics include: how to select a core team, set up a board of directors, a compensation system, secure protection of IP. The book provides aspiring entrepreneurs the elements to walk safely in the startup minefield and liberate time to concentrate on growing the startup. Worth a look! -Steve Denning, Forbes contributor, author and independent management consultant professional Entrepreneurial expert David Muchow just released a book on startup success-with a twist. As a business lawyer and former entrepreneur, DC's David Muchow encounters a lot of the same questions every day. Questions like: 'Should I incorporate in Delaware?' 'How do I fire an employee without the worry of a lawsuit?' 'How can I protect my intellectual property?' But as often as he has to answer these and other questions, Muchow hasn't seen many business advice books that provided entrepreneurs with the answers. 'There are a couple of thousand business books that come out every year, so it looks on the surface as if you'd have to be pretty crazy to write one,' Muchow told Technical.ly. 'But in my practice as a corporate lawyer, handling a lot of entrepreneurs and startup matters, I found it was a huge disconnect between the kinds of questions I get every day from entrepreneurs, and the types of books and resources that are out there.' So, the managing partner of the corporate law firm MuchowLaw decided to do something about it by publishing his own unique book in September. The 7 Secret Keys to Startup Success is a 327-page practical guide to both the business and legal aspects of building a startup. It's currently available at several bookstores and as an e-book. The 7 Secret Keys to Startup Success draws from Muchow's career, which he said has included working in startups and entrepreneurship for thirty years. This is Muchow's fifth published book ... For this one, he decided to do something different to engage readers. This book features a fictional character named Scooter Magee (taken from a former nickname of Muchow's son), a professional at Georgetown University (where Muchow also teaches) who travels around in a 1962 Austin-Healey convertible (the same car Muchow had as a kid) fixing troubled startups. In between mix-ups with the CIA and other entities, each chapter deals with substantive legal and business matters. All in all, it's a bit Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Silicon Valley, Muchow said. Through Scooter's adventures, readers will learn about such basics of building and growing as management, fundraising, marketing, and intellectual property. 'It just makes it a lot more fun to read,' Muchow said of the narrative format. 'This is probably the only business book that has a color picture of The Tombs, a famous restaurant at Georgetown, in it, as well as charts on intellectual property issues.' With his new book, Muchow hopes that both brand-new companies and growing ones will find something to learn. Through the lessons, he wants companies to understand the key things they need to focus on and avoid common mistakes that lead to many startups' demise. He said that he kept the content as practical as he could, with plenty of client stories as examples. 'And along the way, I hope that they enjoy the ride,' Muchow said. -Michaela Althouse, Technical.ly