This was a great read if you are interested in starting a company and would like advice on what makes a startup business successful and how to avoid some of the pitfalls and mistakes many people make when starting out in business.
Premise

Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it.

So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures.

In addition to "Start-up Owners Manual" (Blank and Dorf), this is a must-have for anyone who is related to any start-up (even in a planning stage). A founder/executive team is going to benefit the most from this book primarily from its well-laid out checklist of what not to do. While a plethora of books explain how to build a great company, it is often overly optimistic or confuses good outcomes with good processes. Eisenmann provides a roadmap to develop a good strategy framework and risk management processes for a start-up.

By using motivating examples of some failed companies, the author teases out six key themes that seem to explain most failures. These are divided into two main phases - Launching (teaming, market fit, misleading early success) and Scaling. The latter deals with issues related to scaling for scope or speed . For each factor, the book discusses various aspects - founder psychology, investor mindsets, teaming, management processes, etc.

The bulk of the discussion is centered on a 'Diamond-and-Square" framework that tries to formulate the key stakeholders and contextualizing various business functions (tech, operations, marketing along with the value proposition and profit formula). A "Double-Diamond Design Model" provides a convergence-divergence strategy for problem definition and solution development phases. Each chapter discusses various parameters that will help a startup leader develop a clear strategic and operational plan. In the section on "scaling", the author discusses a "Six S" framework to define issues of staff, structure and values during various types of scaling.

It is difficult to provide a concise summary for this book - you are better off buying both a hard copy and an electronic copy to make your highlighting not distract for a second reading etc. Failure, of course, is always going to be part of entrepreneurship, this book doesn't claim it can avoid them - but a careful (and humble) reading of the various thought exercises, examples, frameworks provided by the author will decrease chances of a failure. A must-read.

Interesting read with some great content to support. I did skip through areas where certain passages have already been well researched and spoken upon in other books.