A great book covering the most difficult time in starting a business: the beginning. The content is geared toward, and will be most useful for, people starting software companies; but the advice is useful for starting any business, or indeed any kind of venture at all.

Topics covered include positioning (identifying your target market and making your product relevant to them), raising capital (VC, angel investors, and otherwise), hiring your first employees, and what he calls "rainmaking" (scoring early sales that set the precedent for the company's future).

The two best sections are pitching and branding.

Pitching is normally considered in a limited way, i.e. you only really need to pitch to investors. But having a good pitch is critical to securing everything: partners, employees, partners, media attention, and customers. A good pitch unifies everyones view of "what we're really doing here" and focuses the founders on their goals.

The pitch should be short (deliverable in 20 minutes with 10 slides). If you can't express your idea in that length of time, it probably isn't very good. The slides should be:

1. Title - company name & logo

2. Problem - the pain that you're alleviating

3. Solution - how the pain is alleviated and the meaning that you make

4. Business Model - how will you make money?

5. Underlying Magic - technology or secret sauce behind the product

6. Marketing and Sales - how to reach the customer

7. Competition - who are your competitors, and how are you different?

8. Mangement team - describe current principals, board of advisors, and investors

9. Financial Projections - five-year forecast of dollars and key metrics like number of customers and conversion rate

10. Current Status, Accomplishments to Date - i.e., a demo of the prototype

The other really interesting section is branding. Branding is much more than just a snazzy logo and colorscheme, though it does include that. It's a package that conveys all the fun, excitement, and enthusiasm that should lie behind the company's product. It's how early adopters are turned into evangelists for the product. You want yourself, your employees, your customers, and anyone else that comes into contact with your company drinking your kool-aid by the bucketful.

Kawasaki's writing is hip, fast, and fun, which makes this a real page-turner - unusual in a business book. Some of it feels a bit Silicon Valleyish circa 2004, and may get dated quickly, but most of the lessons are long-lasting ones. Perhaps the most important of these is that you should not start a business to make money. Instead, start a business to make the world a better place, to make meaning. If you do that, the money will come.