Crossing the Chasm

Crossing the chasm, repeatable revenue the challenger sale, start with why

Chasm is more about the meta process of sales and product. It's not really about sales per se. It's worth a read just to understand it, but it won't help you with sales. It might help when your sales dry up, but 'traction' would also help because maybe the issue is your channel has dried up and you need another one.

This book really nails it. If you're selling for any startup or fast-growing company this book will have insights.

Crossing the Chasm: Geoffrey A. Moore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm Basically, there's a lot more to sales than just "generate leads." You need to pick a "right-sized" market, tailor the product to the market (but not too much, so you can go after other markets,) and then as you grow, move to bigger markets. The markets you go after when your company is small are very different than when your company is established. Furthermore, small differences in your product are critical: A tiny feature or option might be critical in a tiny niche that you need to get started; but a completely different feature or option is needed when you're able to target a larger audience.

I came here to make sure Crossing the Chasm was on the list.

Advice to Founders and CEOs - Dear Founder (Maynard Webb) - The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - Straight Talk for Startups (Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman) - The Founders’ Dilemmas (Noam Wasserman) - The Entrepreneur’s Daily Nietzsche (Brad Feld and Dave Jilk) - Build (Tony Fadell) - Zero to IPO (Frederic Kerrest) - The Great CEO Within (Matt Mochary) Finance - Wharton's Introduction to Financial Accounting course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting](https://w... (https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting]%28https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting%29) - How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers (Mihir Desai) - Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Karen Berman and Joe Knight) Open-Book Company (Employee Ownership, Financial Literacy, Goal-setting) - The Great Game of Business (Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham) Legal - Acceleration (Ryan Roberts) - The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Law and Strategy (Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchy) Company Strategy and Direction (post-product/market fit) - Crossing the Chasm (Geoff Moore) - Zone to Win (Geoff Moore)…

As someone who is more interested in building the product than marketing it, I found the following recent reads helpful in achieving a balance: 1. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore - making your product work for the masses 2. The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen - achieving escape velocity, getting viral referral traffic 3. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss - it might seem a bit gimmicky but negotiation always comes off gimmicky Motivational stories: 4. The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson 5. The Founders by Jimmy Soni 6. The Upstarts by Brad Stone 7. Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton 8. That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph 9. Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc Can't skip: 10. Zero To One by Peter Thiel

* Crossing the Chasm * The Mom Test * The Almanack of Naval Ravikant * The Cold Start Problem

I second E-Myth and Founders at Work. And let me add Crossing the Chasm, which totally shaped my understanding of who buys what when.

For founders: #1 is Oren Klaff Pitch Anything. Then: Crossing the Chasm, Zero to One, Blitzscaling, Never Split the Difference, Oversubscribed: A Founders Guide to Seed Fundraising, Exactly What To Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact, Miracle Morning, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

Franz de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics". It's nominally about the social relationships of a chimp colony in a Dutch zoo. But it made me see the extent to which humans are just another great ape, and a lot of human dynamics are really primate dynamics, especially around social power. Johnstone's "Impro". It's about improvisational theater, and mainly meant for people learning improv. But the section on status transactions helped me see a lot about how we express those primate dominance dynamics. There's also great material on the nature of creativity. "Getting to Yes" is a great book about business negotiation, but is lessons about shifting discussions from zero-sum to positive-sum are things I use a lot. Braitenberg's "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" is a way of thinking about psychology (and our inference of mind) by examining imaginary robots. "The Toyota Way" and other books on Lean Manufacturing are about running extremely effective manufacturing operations. But they have deeply changed how I think about systems of making software and running businesses. Other great books in this category include "Toyota Kata" and "Principles of Product Development Flow".…

Here is my list of 2016: - The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory - The 48 Laws Of Power - Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything - Crossing the Chasm - The Richest Man in Babylon - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - Europe: A History - The Penguin History of Europe - The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Every of the books was awesome. The only thing is that I haven't finished Europe: A History from Norman and read The Penguin History of Europe instead because the Norman book was just too long for me. But It has way more details. I switch between business-related books and non-business related (it can be everything from philosophy to language history to hardcore science) but I don't read fiction (The Richest Man in Babylon is fictional, but still the focus is on self-development). Hope you could see some titles that might interest you.

>> 1. What books are you currently reading? Well, I'm one of those people who has a bookmark in about 15 different books that I'm "currently reading" but some are higher priorities than others, and some will never be finished (probably) and others I'll have to start over since I've forgotten what was happening when I sat it aside, etc. But offhand, I can think of: Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore - re-reading this one The Prime Solution - Jeff Thull - 3rd Jeff Thull book on selling that I've read lately, and I'll probably reread the entire series when I finish this one The New Solution Selling - re-reading this - can you tell I'm starting to try and move into sales? Selling to VITO - more sales stuff. How to Create A Mind - Ray Kurzweil Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter - set this aside over a year ago; about halfway through, will probably finish it, but FSM only knows when A New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram (see above about GEB) Madame Bovary - Meh. May finish one day, may not. Would have to start it over at this point. REAMDE - Neal Stephenson - set this aside a while back, but intend to finish it eventually. Will probably restart from the beginning.…

These are the ones I remember, but not necessarily for being the best. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson. I thought it was interesting; an honest attempt at cataloguing the life of a fascinating and complex person. How To Win Friends And Influence People - Dale Carnegie. I'd skimmed through it in high school, and decided it was full of obvious/cheesy platitudes, but was somehow convinced to take another look this year and I'm very glad I did. It is mostly full of very basic "don't be an ass" advice, but I needed it. Never Eat Alone - Keith Ferrazzi. I'm not sure what to think of this one. It's pretty low on actionable advice, but it did help me (together with HTWFAIF, above) reframe the way I approach interpersonal relationships. The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje. I haven't finished this one yet, but it's part of a recent concerted effort to read more fiction. I've always loved Ondaatje's work, and this latest novel is no different. Freakonomics - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner. I just started reading this last night, and I'm already 100 pages in. It's an addicting read, and is already causing me to re-evaluate the incentive systems that are everywhere.…

The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore Business Model Generation - Alex Osterwalder The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne Also, see: http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-must-read-books-for-entre... (http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-must-read-books-for-entrepreneurs) http://www.quora.com/Business-Books/What-business-books-must... (http://www.quora.com/Business-Books/What-business-books-must-an-entrepreneur-read) http://www.quora.com/What-are-3-books-you-would-suggest-any-... (http://www.quora.com/What-are-3-books-you-would-suggest-any-entrepreneur-make-their-top-3-must-reads) and http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/

"Crossing the Chasm" - Geoffrey Moore (for company in general, can apply to web co)

Free - Chris Anderson; 4 Steps to Epiphany; Founders at Work; Crossing the Chasm; Viral Loop; Groundswell; Loosing My Virginity - Richard Brandson; Good to Great - Collins; Entrepreneurs guide to Business Law;

All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing, Crossing the Chasm, Positioning, 4 steps to the epiphany That's probably enough for a while. And if you haven't already read Getting Real then read that too.

I recommend Crossing the Chasm. It is older but still relevan especially if you still find marketing a technology start up challenging. http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-Mai... (http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-Mainstream/dp/0066620023)

+1 The examples are a bit dated but this book still nails it!

I'd recommend "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey A. Moore. It almost perfectly describes the lifecycle and challenges faced by the two software-product-based startups that I've worked for.

I would recommend these books for a good grounding in marketing and fostering innovation: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey Moore Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker Marketing High Technology by William Davidow Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank Jumpstart Your Business Brain by Doug Hall E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & R. Mauborgne Influence The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout Secrets of Consulting by Gerald Weinberg For an article that summarizes key concepts see http://skmurphy.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Crucial%20Mar... (http://skmurphy.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Crucial%20Marketing%20Concepts.pdf) There is a companion slide deck here http://www.skmurphy.com/f/SDForum061211.pdf

Crossing the Chasm is a good book, but as a sales book for a freelancer?

Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm Bosworth/Holland's Customer-Centric Selling

Crossing the Chasm is mostly useful as a reality check for startup founders, i.e. just because you're on TechCrunch doesn't mean you're successful.

Another good book where I'm not sure I know of too many people actually accomplishing something practical as a result of reading it.

Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Geoffrey-Moore/dp/00605... (http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Geoffrey-Moore/dp/0060517123/)

Many of the ones that have been summarized here are pretty good: http://www.squeezedbooks.com (currently undergoing a server upgrade, sorry for random bits of downtime). Some favorites include "20 years of high tech marketing disasters", "crossing the chasm", "innovator's dilemma".

High Tech Start Up - John L. Nesheim Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore One Minute Manager (but only if you've never had management experience)

My list, categorized: Business & Management 1. Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen 2. Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins. Built to Last is more applicable for startups. 3. Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Anyone who has to manage a team of programmers and hasn't read this will fail utterly, unless they've already failed before (or been on a failing team). There's a lot that's counterintuitive about software project management. 4. Peter Drucker's work. Kinda long and repetitive, but some good insights. Marketing 1. All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. I like this better than Purple Cow, Guerilla Marketer's Handbook, and The Big Red Fez. Most of those have fairly obvious stuff. 2. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell 3. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore Technical 1. Building Scalable Websites by Cal Henderson 2. High Performance MySQL by Jeremy Zawodny 3. Pragmatic Programmer by...well, it's mentioned elsewhere here. There are lots of other technical books I like, but most of them aren't directly relevant to the startup I'm building

Some of these have been mentioned, but these stand out for me Programming: Getting Real The Pragmatic Programmer Hackers and Painters Business: Good to Great Start Your Own Business (I knew basically nothing about small business before I started, and it's a good intro) Crossing the Chasm (good so far, haven't finished) Technology/Culture: The Long Tail The World is Flat Productivity/People: Getting Things Done Getting to Yes How to Win Friends and Influence People

some that haven't been mentioned: - the innovator's dilemma by clayton christensen - blue ocean strategy (kim and mauborgne) -- these two books give you a little bit more of a framework to evaluate where your idea adds value and give you examples of how/why some successful companies have been successful - high tech startup by nesheim -- a little dated, but lots of info - negotiation/people books: getting to yes (fisher, ury) and getting past no (ury), influence by cialdini (useful for more than just startups) - maybe some management books: peopleware (demarco and lister), the art of project management (berkun), first, break all the rules (buckingham) - founders at work (livingston) to get inspired +1 to crossing the chasm, and the godin & gladwell books, art of the start blogs: onstartups.com, fred wilson, brad feld, seth godin, etc., guy kawasaki -drew

About 14 months ago, I had little knowledge of how to execute a startup. In particular, I wasn't familiar with any online marketing tactics. The following books helped me a lot in that respective, and more: 1. Positioning, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing/Branding, Focus, Marketing Warfare 2. Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing (I didn't like "The Big Moo", "Free prize inside" or "Small is the new Big"). 3. Founters At Work 4. Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, The Tipping Point (Blink! was alright). I am looking forward to reading "The Long Tail" and "The starfish and the spider"...has anyone read them yet? 6. Why We Buy 7. Hackers and Painters 8. The E-Myth revisited 9. The Art of the Start 10. On War, The Art of War by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu (not exactly for startups, but definitely useful) 11. Crossing the Chasm