Book Summary of Stay Hungry Stay Foolish
'Stay Hungry Stay Foolish' is a collection of the inspiring stories of 25 IIM Ahmedabad graduates who dared to venture on the path of entrepreneurship. The book provides people with a lot of practical knowledge. A must read!
Summary of the Book
'Stay Hungry Stay Foolish' were the last words spoken by Steve Jobs during his commencement speech at Stanford in the year 2005. Rashmi Bansal uses this title to send across an apt message that at times in our lives, there come moments when we need to do something unexpected and crazy in a bid to realize our dreams.
Stay Hungry Stay Foolish is the collection of 25 stories of IIM Ahmedabad graduates who chose to opt out of the corporate race and take the entrepreneurial path. This book starts off with the interesting story of Sanjeev Bhikchandani, who belonged to the batch of 1989 who founded Naukri.com. The book also has stories of R. Subramanian, who owns the Subhiksha group, Sunil Handa who is the founder of Ekalavya Educational Foundation and many more. The book has a lot of educative and practical wisdom, which is an inspiring read for aspiring entrepreneurs and also those who want to achieve something in life.
About Rashmi Bansal
Rashmi Bansal is an entrepreneur, writer and a youth expert. She started off as a blogger and is now the proud author of three bestselling books. This book sold more than 300,000 copies and was also translated into 8 languages. She is also an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus.
Her blog, Youth Curry, has articles on entrepreneurship, youth and careers. Rashmi is also the Consulting Editor for a TV show on UTVI called 'Cracking Careers'.
Other Popular Rashmi Bansal Books
Some of the other books that the author is famous for include:- Connect the Dots
- I Have a Dream
Her Writing Style
The book has a very conversational tone and hence appeals to many people. As Rashmi Bansal is an entrepreneur herself, she delves deep down into the personas of the entrepreneurs. The book was greatly appreciated by the masses for the inspirational content.
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Details of Book: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish
| Book: | Stay Hungry Stay Foolish |
| Author: | Rashmi Bansal |
| Price: | Rs 357 |
| ISBN-13: | 9788190453011,978-8190453011 |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Publishing Date: | April 2010 |
| Publisher: | Eklavya Foundation |
| Edition: | 01 |
| Number of Pages: | 325 |
| Language: | English |
| Dimensions: | 8.39 x 5.51 x 0.75 inches |
| Weight: | 324 grams |
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5 comments:
Inspiring stories nicely written....
I was curious about this book when I came across this somewhat unconvetional title "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish". So I decided to pick up a copy and flip through its pages. After going through the first few pages, I knew that this is the book I am going to keep with me for life. It's not because of any sentimental value but beacuse it is so insipiring to read about the young men who took risk in career and got ahead of others.
The book talks about 25 IIM-A graduates who, at different point of their life, decided to take a plunge into the challenging world of entreprenuership. They risked their career and turned down high paying job offers to start something of their own. The ups and downs faced by them in their endevours to do something different makes one think how big dreams are achieved.
The book is well written in short, simple and crisp English. It doesn't require one to be a Management guru to understand the context. There are a few jargons here and there. But overall, the book is quite interesting and inspiring to read. Highly recommended, especially to all those who are starting out on their career path.
Nice read .. Highly Recommended
The book is divided into 3 sections
* The Believers: IIM-A graduates who took the plunge straight out of IIM-A
* The Opportunists: Who saw an opportunity and capitalized on it
* The Alternate Vision: Social Entrepreneurs who cared about things beyond money
The book is written in a conversational format with the author thinking aloud before having a conversation with an entrepreneur followed by the conversation and a page of advice from the entrepreneur.
The sheer breadth of advice from entrepreneurs proves one big point, there is no consistent formula for success. There are examples and counter-examples of every strategy in the same book.
* There is no other way but to learn from one's own mistakes
* It pays to ride a wave in an upturn but then belief in one's ideas is as important to see through the trying times
* Bootstrap is good but sometimes there is no other way to scale up without a high leverage investments backed by a VC/PE fund
* Jumping straight into the rough is good but so is gaining some experience and building a nice nest egg before taking the plunge
* Its good to have equal partnerships with your co-founders but sometimes there needs to be a first amongst equals for smooth functioning
* You can plan really well and execute it with mathematical precision but sometimes the best of plans can be bested on first contact with the market
* Maintaining independence of your venture ('my baby') for long through the rough road is good but knowing when to let go even when the going is good is needed many times
* Government can be a very conservative regulator and prone to knee-jerk policy actions based on emerging events which can kill entrepreneurial ventures but sometimes they are the only ones who are willing to try out something new providing the much needed lifeline to ventures thinking ahead of their times.
* Small is beautiful but without scale the actual vision cannot be realised
* In all cases IIM-A alumni network helped a lot
Rashmi Banshal, with this book, made an effort to instigate the entrepreneurial drive that had been long concealed under the cobwebs of naive social influences in an individual.
Since one's childhood, the society, namely parents, relatives, teachers, friends etc;, influences on one's thought process thus forbidding him/her taking any risk but aim for a secure job to lead a hassle free life. Though this is the case in every corner of the world, India especially, few of them see the world out of the box and destines to make a change in their life.
This book is about 25 such people, graduated from IIM-A, who have been living according to their passion instead of following the mundane herd. Calling the book "Inspiring" is fair but the question is, are we really inspired and started immediately doing something according to our passions? The answer probably is "NO". Reading without implementing is futile and I wonder how many truly realize that.
I have given 4 stars instead of 5 because, the book is a real worth for people who are aspiring for/graduated from IIMs' but would not be much for the rest. The reason being that most of these 25 enterprenuers, in the book, say that they were courageous enough to take risks in their life because they had the brand "IIM" and if anything goes wrong, they can easily secure a lucrative job offer. This is not the case for the common folk who are financially feeble to think about such B-Schools. These minor cons apart, the book has very good insights.
I must have read this Book atleast 25 times and each time I have discovered something unique about everyone those are featured in this Book.
The Book is written in a very simple language that's easy to understand for everyone.
I have recommended this Book to more than 200 people as of now and will keep recommending to many more.
This Book has the capacity to make anyone take a U turn and grow in life from all kind of full stops.
Especially the stories of Eklavya foundation , Naukari.com is very inspiring.
Rashmi Bansal has done a wonderful Job....No words for the apperciation in the way she writes. One feels like watching a documentary on the people who are featured in this bOOK.
Very affordable price, Nice Print , Easy to read , Attractive title and cover page.
The Best Book for gift to your near and dear ones.......Especially STUDENTS.
Stay Hungry but don't be foolish
The review will be distributed in 4 parts:
1.Contents of the book
2.Research
3.The writing of the author(End result)
4.Alternatives
1.Contents of the book
Going through the contents, you will notice many familiar companies with their not so famous chairpersons. It does not speak about their lives but only a bit about how they started their business, their struggle and their creative minds. And of course all these entrepreneurs are alumnus of IIM A.
The book is divided in 3 parts, The Believers; The Opportunists; The alternate vision. The believers consist of people who knew entrepreneurship was their path. The opportunists consist of people who had not planned to take this path but when opportunity was realized, they followed it. And those who are using entrepreneurship to create social impact are the Alternate vision.
So much for the content, lets move on.
2.Research
IIM A has a great in house Innovation and Entrepreneurship wing, which supports the few innovative souls who do not want to get degree from the world no.11 management institute just to be an iBanker in US,UK,Singapore and get a heavy salary. IIM A has a legacy of 50 years, so the author had a very large database of Alumnus and their success stories to comb; she did a good job here. But in this book she has only narrated the successful ventures of IIM A graduates. If only she would have included few failures and te=he reasons for that, it could have been the average entrepreneurship book. that half star i have given is for research.
3.Writing of the author;End result
The writing is poor. The author is very much successful in killing the outstanding stories of these companies. Author is not very much focused with the narration of the stories. If you already know about these companies, you will say "is that it? There has to be more in this story, something important is missing" That's right, she has given more importance to the part of the story which was not very important, leaving important stuff with only a paragraph or two. That's not good when you are writing kind of a guide book. I would say not all IIM A graduates can write a book, If you know what i mean!
I liked the way author divided book into three parts, The believers; The opportunists; The alternate vision. So another half star for this part.
If you are looking for an inspiration to start a venture with very less details then you should buy this book. Though I would not recommend to buy this book. It is not very helpful as the author boasts it to be.
4.Let's checkout the alternatives
Rework by Jason fried. If you are looking for an inspiration and a practical approach to start and run your venture, this is the book for you. It is much costlier than Stay Hungry Stay foolish, but it's worth the money and a great book.
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