Anything You Want

The Book in 3 Sentences

• You don’t need to raise tons of money or hire hundreds of people to create a successful business.
• Every business decision should go through the question of whether or not this will improve your customer’s experience.
• Don’t let your constraints hold you back but instead look at it as an opportunity to think creatively.

Highlights & Notes

• “Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself.”
• “Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working”’
• “Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what’s best for your customers.”
• Ideas are just a multiplier of execution
• Example of when Sivers was taking singing lessons and he made him sing it in a bunch of different ways, octave lower, higher, twice as fast, twice as slow. Same for business plans:
• Make a plan that requires only $1000. Go!
• Make a plan for 10x more customers. Go!
• Make a plan without a website. Go!
• Make all your initial assumptions wrong, and have it work anyway. Go!
• You can’t pretend there’s only one way to do it. Your first idea is just one of many options. No business goes as planned.
• Care more about your customer than about yourself, and you’ll do well
• “Writing that e-mail to customers—carefully eliminating every unnecessary word, and reshaping every sentence to make sure it could not be misunderstood—would take me all day.”
• “But I also took this same casual approach when I needed an important high-tech systems administrator: “Anyone have a friend who’s good with Linux? Yeah? Is he cool? OK, tell him to start tomorrow.”
• Work on your business, not in your business.
• “No matter which goal you choose, there will be lots of people telling you you’re wrong.Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you’re being the real you and when you’re trying to impress an invisible jury.”