Which is why, it was a pleasant surprise when I received a copy of her book Bootstrapping: Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction, a few weeks ago in the mail from her PR agent. Its volume 2 of her Enterpreneur Journeys series.

This review is long overdue and here it is.

Bootstrapping:WMR is a slim volume which primarily contains interviews with 13 enterpreneurs (almost all related to the internet industry) who started on their own, and how they bootstrapped their way to success, before reaching out to VC’s for venture capital.

My initial impression as I started reading this was, that this books seems pretty similar to what the guys at Road Trip Nation have been trying to do.

If you are a reader of Sramana’s blog, you will know that she is a great proponent of entrepreneurship and bootstrapping as a way to get your venture out of the door (rather than banging on VC’s doors)…Infact, in the beginning of this book, she also outlines that ‘mom-n-pop’ enterpreneurship is one of the ways to get the US economy back on track and even exhorts Barack Obama to do more than pay lip service to the SME sector.

However, WMR is pretty different from RTN even though both have stories about people who followed their ‘passion’.

While RTN talks to people across all sectors (and not necessarily entrepreneurs) who believed in their gut and carved their own road rather than doing the ‘doctor-lawyer-banker’ routine, Sramana walks a different line.

Her interviews are exclusively with enterpreneurs AND who bootstrapped their ventures. The interviews are pretty detailed and provide good insights into how various folks started their business (their initial struggles – the perseverance- and how one becomes an overnight success through 10 years of hardwork, etc etc)… I follow Om Malik and Rafat Ali’s blogs so it was very interesting to read their stories.

A very decent read overall, and I loved the last few lines in the book,

” We are nothing. We are insignificant. We are a single speck of dust in the continuum of time.
So why be afraid of failure ? “

So if you are budding enterpreneur, or even planning to become one, it will do you good to grab a copy.

What was slightly disappointing, or rather what i was expecting in the book was more of her original insights, but I guess the intention of the book was slightly different, and we anyway have her blog for that

Another small niggling point was the design of the book. All her 3 volume covers seem to have the ‘open palms’ pic, which is also the same as her blog mast head. Not sure if this was a branding strategy but the book cover design could definitely have been improved.

I know they say, one should not judge a book by its cover, but I am one of those folks to whom the cover of the book makes a difference. A couple of years ago, i had picked up ‘Shantaram‘ solely based on its cover design, and its one of the best books I have ever read

I was vaguely aware of the RTI Act and how it had been enacted to bring about transparency and efficiency within our government machinery, etc etc..

Its been almost 5 years since the act has been in force so I thought it would be a breeze for me to file an application…online !!

But no, our great government, with all its great intentions has still not developed a system where you can file an application online.You gotta do it the old fashioned way…’write down the application on a piece of paper and send it off to the Post office along with a fee of Rs 10′.

Can you imagine how many people do NOT file an application because of the ‘physical hassle’…

How difficult is it to have a system which could allow you to file an application online ?

But wait, maybe its by design and in order to discourage ‘frivolous’ applications (It will be easier to file online so more ppl will file applications which means more work for our babus)… Who knows ?

While the Act is great in spirit, it needs to be accessible much more easily (i.e for starters, the ability to file an application online)

Any takers for building such a system ? More importantly, if a private entrepreneur were to attempt building something, would the government allow it to flourish or throw a wrench in the works ??

Guess the only way to find out is to try and build something like that

Here is a good place to find what has been happening wrt to the Act since 2005. Somebody call Vishal has been religiously updating the blog

And its not all bad too.. Here is a list of some of the success stories…