The Risk-Free Entrepreneur: The Idea Person's Guide to Building a Business with Other People's Money

I liked this book and got some very good ideas from it. The premise is that you can use other people's money to start and run a business. Most startup entrepreneurs soon realize that banks are not the best place to get seed money and have to turn to family and friends for financing. This isn't really new, but most small business books don't focus on this process. I would of liked to of seen more on structuring deals with investors.

The Risk-Free Entrepreneur a great read for me for one major reason - I have several great ideas for products and companies but I don't have resources (mainly money) or the time to pull off the launch. So the ideas remain tucked away in my desk drawer, and I have never acted upon them. But Debelak's book gives hope. By using Other People's Money (he refers to this philosophy as OPM), he immediately shifted my train of thought from how can I launch my own company to what one contact can I connect with at a company that gets me on my way? Better yet, Debelak lays out good, easy action steps for the procrastinating entrepreneurs. He talks about targeting sales people inside a company with an idea or if you don't know where to turn, he points out resources such as the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE). Upon reading, my initial fear was that despite the idea of Debelak's OPM philosophy, it still would make for a tough time getting through corporate chains of command, but he offers a great solution of suggesting a "market test" to a potential partner, a pilot of sorts that lowers the risk stakes. The Risk-Free Entrepreneur also offers a good template for setting the expectation of potential partners, as you can then control whether a test market was a success or not. Debelak gives many examples of real people who have capitalized on the OPM philosophy and also takes you from the idea stage to how to come up with the final numbers for your contract. For those like me, who might be still worried that sharing a product or idea with another company to use "other people's money" would only set yourself up to have an idea stolen eventually, Debelak gives details on how to avoid this. such as "path to market" presentations on just how many complex details you are taking care of and the value you provide a company to help give them an edge in the marketplace. The book is a quick read, and a good one. It shifted my mind to take my ideas in a direction that I had no idea even really existed.