The $100 Startup – by Chris Guillebeau

The $100 Startup gives insight into a whole bunch of businesses that started with very little capital, made a better-than-average income and required no specialized skills or knowledge. It provides a roadmap to how we can do it too.

‘Fire your boss, do what you love and work better to live more’

The $100 Startup Summary

Fire your boss, do what you love and work better to live more

Prologue Manifesto

• A short guide to everything you want

Imagine that today is your final day of working for someone other than yourself. What if very soon, you prepare for work by firing your laptop in a home office, walking into a storefront you opened, phoning a client who trusts you for helpful advice, or otherwise, doing what you want instead of what someone tells you to do

Stumbling into freedom

More than a decade ago, I began a lifelong journey of self employment by any means necessary

If I needed money, I learned to think in terms of what I needed by making something and selling it, not by cutting costs elsewhere or working for sometone else

I had no timesheets to fill out, no schedule to abide by, no useless reports, no office politics and not even mandatory meetings

I learned how freedom is connected to responsibility, and how I could combine my desire for independence with something that could help the rest of the world

There is no rehab program for being addicted to freedom, once you’ve seen what its like on the other side, good luck trying to follow someone elses rules ever again

The most important career question of what is risky and what is safe has changed

• Working at a job is a far riskier choice
• Instead of borrowing money, you just start – right now – without a lot of money
• Instead of hiring emploees, you begin by yourself, based on a combination of passion and skill
• Instead of going to business school (which doesn’t actually train people to operate a small business), you save the 60K in tuition and learn as you go

It is a blueprint, not a vague series of ideas

• The blueprint does not tell you how to do less work, it tells you how to do better work