I seem to have mentioned books I’ve been reading a lot in last few posts, but this is the first time I am writing a post solely dedicated to a book. The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank is a book I heard recommended a few times before Eric Ries recommendation during his talk persuaded me, but I bought it mainly because it bothered me that most projects I was involved with relied heavily on intuition and it just seemed that there has to be a better way to expose and test assumptions made during project lifetime.

To a typography nut like me this book looks, well, horrible. I suspect Cafepress’ print-on-demand system has also something to do with it, but this is not its only fault. There are plenty of typos and glitches such as whole chapter 4 carrying a footer of chapter 3. Occasionally you can find grammar errors even someone like me can be sure of. In short, the book also looks like it wasn’t made by experienced publisher.

Having said all that, if you are thinking of starting a business venture or really any project where you and people precisely like you are not the only target market, you should BUY AND READ THIS BOOK. It costs 40$ on Amazon, but I wouldn’t hesitate recommending it even if it cost ten times as much. For those who might doubt veracity of recommendation on account of my Amazon Affiliate link, here is also a non-affiliated link that gains me nothing. Or you can save some more by following link on Steve’s blog (which is a good read too).

Unlike most business books I read or browsed, it isn’t a 2-300 hundred page long discourse about a couple of ideas that could be adequately explained and argued in tenth of its length. It’s a textbook about Customer Development, a different way of organizing and building a company from startup to established company. This is done methodically, each step building on previous where every assumption is tested while it is still relatively cheap to do so. First 200 pages might occasionally contain a short story that proves a point, but are otherwise filled with very concrete advice on what needs to be done and how you can or should go about it. If that wasn’t enough, you also get a Custom Development Checklist (taking a quarter of the book) which you can use to check that nothing was left out.

I suspect not many startups follow every step as prescribed, but even if you don’t or disagree with most of it, I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t profit from reading it. So just go and buy it. You won’t be able to make notes in borrowed copy.