Proposa Academy Book Review: Do More Faster
We sat down with Proposa Founder, Brian Onorio, to talk about his take on the popular book Do More Faster by David Cohen and Brad Feld, founders of Tech Stars.
Talk to me about a book you’d recommend to entrepreneurs and why?
Do More Faster is a great read for any entrepreneur. The concept of the book is learning how to fail fast and optimize. If you have preconceived notions of what should be the case that’s backed by nothing but pure instinct, often times you are just wrong.
So how do you pivot from that wrongness and what kind of data do you need to collect to successfully make a pivot to something that would work?
From a sales perspective, this could be something as simple as analyzing your proposals. Seeing what worked and what didn’t work and being ok with failing, as long as you get some information from that. Failing can be good if you learn from it. If you lose a deal, what are you going to do differently next time?
There are a lot of lessons in the book, from first-person anecdotes about how people have gone through the process of building a company, failing, and coming back like a phoenix rising from the ashes and doing it differently in a way that worked.
Tell me what you know about the authors?
Brad Feld and David Cohen wrote this book. They are two of the earlier pioneers of Techstars, a global incubator, and they put together a collection of stories & advice from entrepreneurs that have been a part of Techstars.. The cool thing about these guys is that they are serial entrepreneurs so they know the type of advice to include in a book like this. When running a startup, it’s a mistake to only pay attention to people’s successes. You should look at their failures too. Anybody willing to talk about failures is willing to teach you. There are a lot of mistakes you can learn from paying attention to the journeys of others.
What are some of the key takeaways that an entrepreneur will get from this read?
It really is about failing fast and learning. Lots of folks are afraid of failure but it’s tough to win in business if you don’t take risks. And taking risks means your gonna fail. The quicker you realize that and become comfortable with it, you will find success faster but also learn a heck of a lot of lessons along the way.
