Keep your copy of The Four Steps to the Epiphany!

Phat Nguyen
Aug 26, 2017 · 2 min read

When I started learning about startups, one of the first books I bought are The Startup Owner Manual (TSOM) and The Four Steps to the Epiphany (T4S). And then after that I realized from other blog posts and the author himself (in Preface) that TSOM is actually an updated version of T4S, with content added for mobile/web startups. So I thought that I just wasted money buying T4S!

Therefore one day, when another guy was talking with me about startup, I intended to give him the T4S copy since I won’t read it anyway. Then luck struck me!!! Today I read an article from Steve Blank:

The main point is that once you reach the point where you finished finding a repeatable and scalable business model, you need to transform to Build phase, which requires a different management method than Search phase. And the author was wondering what kind of resources (books, articles..) that can provide a roadmap for him in this phase. And one of Steve’s suggestions is chapter 6 of the T4S!!!

So I immediately took out the book and skim it table of content. Woaa, it has 2 dedicated chapters for Customer Creation and Company Building, which was missing in TSOM!!!

Just to recap: T4S is not simply an old version of TSOM, it actually contains chapters that provide guidelines for the Build phase, which is (maybe) not the point of focus in TSOM. So keep it, for it will help you if you ever survive to experience the Build phase!

PS: Please feel free to correct me if I made any incorrect points, because I haven’t finished both books yet, so the point was made base on my observation.

PS1: When I decided to buy both books, I really struggled to find any resources that recommend whether to buy both books or only buy TSOM. Hope this will be useful to you guys.

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