Committed: Startup Survival Tips and Uncommon Sense for First-Time Tech Founders Book Review

Full disclosure: I was given a free advance reader copy of this book by Sasha Stolz Publicity in exchange for an honest review.

Part of my job as a book reviewer is reading titles that I wouldn’t normally seek out. Some of these are books that appeal to a niche audience. However, I believe that even if a title is not for everyone, there’s still something that people can connect to, especially if it’s good. I’ve looked at books like Caterham Sevens: The Official Story of a Unique British Sportscar from Conception to CSR by Chris Rees in the past. Today, I’ll analyze another niche title, this one being Committed: Startup Survival Tips and Uncommon Sense for First-Time Tech Founders by Eldon Sprickerhoff. While it’s a manual that effectively appeals to a specific audience, general readers can find something in it too.

Committed: Startup Survival Tips and Uncommon Sense for First-Time Tech Founders gives advice for people looking to start a technical business written by a tech founder who has “walked the path.” Great tech simply isn’t enough, and many first-time technical founders don’t know what they don’t know. To them, most business books focused on startup strategies might seem inaccessible, outdated, and off-topic.

To that end, Eldon Sprickerhoff, cofounder of cybersecurity firm eSentire, has assembled a list of everything he didn’t know as a first-time technical startup founder before his firm rocketed to a valuation of over $1 billion, finding product-market fit, raising early- stage capital, competing against bigger and better-funded competitors, building resilience, pushing through failure—and dealing with success. In Committed, Sprickerhoff offers readers “survival strategies” that encourage technical founders to embrace their new title, the one that matters: Chief Survival Officer.

When I started reading Committed, one of my first thoughts was that it reminded me so much of Caterham Sevens: The Official Story of a Unique British Sportscar from Conception to CSR by Chris Rees. Obviously, these books tackle completely different topics, but they have two things in common: their target audiences are very specific, and they use jargon that appeals to those groups. With the former, Sprickerhoff’s readers are inspiring technology founders, while the latter appeals to car enthusiasts, especially of Caterham Sevens.

While I’m not looking to start up a technology company nor am I a car aficionado, that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy books about niche things. After all, I placed That’s Me, Groucho!: The Solo Career of Groucho Marx by Matthew Coniam on my best list back in 2020, and that too has a very specific fanbase. What I’m saying is that even though I didn’t connect to books like Committed, I found things in them to like.

Both Sprickerhoff and Rees try to appeal to a wider audience, yet the latter is the most effective. Sprickerhoff uses analogies quite a lot, and he’s quite good at knowing which ones to use. The most frequent one he utilizes is how a company is like a baby. The founder has to take good care of it in order for it to survive and thrive. They will undoubtedly love the company, yet Sprickerhoff lets his readers know that they can’t expect that everyone, including employees, will adore it in the same way (p. 38). In addition, while the author uses tons of technical and business language, he always makes sure that his audience understands what he’s talking about. For example, in his chapter about funding, he defines the different types like pre-seed, seed, and Series A. While discussing seed funding, Sprickerhoff mentions angels, which are seed funds that might include “accelerator groups, formal family offices, or high-net-worth (HNW) investors, many of whom might have previously trod the very road you’re on” (p. 136).

They are usually the group, in which founders will likely try to seek outside investment money from.

One of the most beneficial parts about the manual is the chapter on mental health. Sprickerhoff is fully aware of how taxing it can be to start up a business. Specifically, he says the following, “You should expect that despite whatever success you achieve at some point, things will fall apart. Most of what I have put together in this book I learned along the path through the various mishaps, bumps, and bruises that come along with nurturing a startup” (p. 176).

To combat this, he offers plenty of coping mechanisms that help to bring people to the surface when they feel that they are drowning. These include spending time with family, exercise, talking to people outside of the startup ecosystem, listening to motivational speakers, listening to music, and therapy. He even reveals his own “Startup Hype List” of songs that get him through the day. They include tunes like “Lose Yourself” by Eminem, “99 Problems” by Jay-Z, and “Started From the Bottom” by Drake (p. 180).

Advice like these make the manual realistic when it comes to starting up a tech business. Sprickerhoff offers a positive view of achieving this goal, while also being blunt about it. Two of the other important tips that he gives is “Everything will take longer than you expect it to, even when you take this statement into account” and “Learn how to sell. Do not abdicate the responsibility for selling” (p. 195).

This and other pieces of advice are iterated throughout the book, but Sprickerhoff also includes them in the “TL;DR” section at the end.

He too gives personal stories about his trials and tribulations when starting a tech business. This adds authenticity to what he says. In case anybody is wondering, he also offers his opinion on reality television shows like Shark Tank. 

Committed: Startup Survival Tips and Uncommon Sense for First-Time Tech Founders by Eldon Sprickerhoff is a great manual for those looking to start-up a technology-related company. It offers great, realistic advice. Even if the author uses jargon that some readers might get confused with, he always takes the time to explain it without being condescending. Also, he sold me on the analogies and the mental health chapter. Although it’s not a title for me, I can see tech/business people committing themselves to reading it. Committed: Startup Survival Tips and Uncommon Sense for First-Time Tech Founders will be out Tuesday, November 12, so go grab it wherever you get your books.

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