It’s an interesting book. Personally, I think the book’s weakest feature is the title; it does not define whether this book is geared toward tech savvy followers of start-ups or towards the general audience of people, who’d like to learn something about how they could drive more growth to their businesses. However, the book’s writing style is easy to understand and the examples are well chosen. For the purpose of this review I’d like to focus on two: Upworthy and Uber.
Absolutely everybody who spends a bit of time on FB knows Upworthy and what kind of content they feature. Uber has been in the news so often that even people who do not follow start-ups per se know something about the company.
Even though more than one reviewer stated that they knew all presented facts, I didn’t. This book is informative.
E.g. I did not know that originally Upworthy was really focusing on political content and how they made the switch to positive emotionally charged content that made them so successful. That even their ads feature only products which they deem “upworthy”. The book elaborates how Upworthy uses facebook to spread its content and find new fans. After detailing Upworthy’s ways of achieving their immense success the book asks the right questions, e.g. Will Upworthy last? It’s an excellent question. Though one of Upworthy’s success secrets is that they asked visitors to subscribe via pop-up window which popped up after emotionally charged videos, and I did do that, after about a year of looking at that pop-up window “Do you want more stories like this one?” I became so annoyed that I unsubscribed. The authors, Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown mention Upworthy’s many copycats… Yeah, they add to this feeling.
I also liked that the book tells readers about Uber’s beginnings and the logic behind their thinking.
“… Uber knew that launching in San Francisco meant they would be interacting regularly with the tech community who are continually looking for new tools and services that improve their quality of life. Uber took aim at those people by sponsoring tech events, providing free rides, and in general driving awareness among its audience….”
I had been wondering about Uber’s beginnings; now I can see how the company could spread their wings so quickly. Tech people’s words of mouth is faster than any other group’s.
In short this book is not an accumulation of technical data, stats and fact, but also very user-friendly for people, who are interested in concept thinking.
The book is excellently designed with pictures, graphics, as well as lots of links to websites, articles, footnotes; in fact rarely ever have a seen such an fabulously designed book. Readers who are not familiar with the one or other featured company can access every bit of information with the provided links.
While not all quoted examples will be equally interesting to everybody I recommend this book to everybody who is interested to read about growth strategies. 5 stars
Gisela Hausmann, author & blogger
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