Okay this book is a bit of a difficult one to review.
First of all its not a dozen lessons. So misleading title.
Also its not really that useable for most people around the world, but rather a book that focused completely on entrepreneurs in silicon valley and the perspective on venture capitalists.
Which just doesn't work for everyone or anywhere.

To that comes that the "lessons" are made up from investment philosophies and profiles and inveterivews of different people. Which isn't really a real lesson, now is it? I can look up peoples profiles on the internet if i am interested in how they are build their wealth.

All in all i expected more from the book. I wanted actual helpful tips and ideas. I wanted actual lessons. I wanted to learn. I wanted to get to know information that are useful on a broader scale.

Its not a bad book. Its just overly useful for anyone outside of the USA. at least in my option.

A DOZEN LESSONS FOR ENTREPRENEURS written by Tren Griffin and published by Columbia Business School provides a more modern day take on Silicon Valley and venture capitalists, focusing on key attributes of successful start-ups and business ventures. Griffin has interviewed 35 entrepreneurs (such as Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel) and then reviewed their responses for patterns, with factors like markets, mission, and recruiting appearing most often. Griffin summarizes by saying, "perhaps the playbook of industry disruption requires being naïve enough at the start to question basic assumptions and then staying alive long enough to employ skills that are unique and advantageous in the industry you seek to change." Griffin has made an effort to include 6 women (of 35 total) amongst those being profiled, well above the industry proportion at senior levels. In addition, he writes in an engaging manner such as when discussing Rich Barton (Expedia, Glassdoor and Zillow) and stressing that acquiring skills may require a path that is nonlinear; "the 'jungle gym' replaces the 'ladder' as the metaphor for a career." I have already recommended this book to our business department (there is a nice glossary of terms, too) and I know that the Entrepreneur class is anxious to see the copy we have ordered.

This could be ‘literary gold’ if you are interested or involved in business creation and investment. It is a series of interviews and profiles of some of the best-known and most successful venture capitalists and coaches of business founders, giving you a privileged insight into their world and potential to chisel out some guiding principles to successful business creation and operation.

Each chapter is relatively short and to the point. You get to understand some of the factors that have helped propel the individual and/or their client to success. Maybe some of the magic can rub off on you and your endeavours too with application and a sprinkling of good fortune? The book is not a ‘how-to’ guide in itself – you still must do a lot of application and leg-work, but it could be viewed as a concentrated equivalent to work shadowing and getting a quality ‘brain dump’ – something in reality you are probably not going to get direct from the source. It is useful to look at what has been done in the past, but copying that is no guarantee of the future, so this book should be viewed as a series of valid data-points to help guide and inspire, rather than to necessarily instruct. You must learn, make your own mistakes and hope that they are not fatal to your aspirations! The diligent reader may note that there can be both unity of opinion and a few solo voices. Both can be valid and you must determine the course ahead. Remember, what works for one does not necessarily work for another, but it might, or it may with a minor modification.

It was an enjoyable, credible and valid read. It lacked the hyperbole and falseness that many contemporary business ‘insight’ books have, which was appreciated, meaning you focus on the core sentiments and knowledge being provided. At the end of the book is a detailed glossary of terms that can, for some, be worth the book’s relatively modest price in itself.

A Dozen Lessons for Entrepreneurs, written by Tren Griffin and published by Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231184823. YYYY

From the outset let me make it clear that there isn't an actual set of twelve lessons. Furthermore, almost the entire focus of the book is upon entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and from the perspective of venture capitalists.

A Dozen Lessons is the distillation of the investment philosophies gleaned from the profiles and interviews of numerous venture capitalists.

Unfortunately, this approach has two inherent weaknesses - lack of originality and reiteration.

Essentially, there isn't really any new material covered in A Dozen Lessons. Most of the content has been extensively dealt with in previous books, publications and articles.

Moreover, the repetition of the same concepts in the various chapters of the book does become tiresome. For instance, the concept of convexity is mentioned on no less than fifty occasions throughout the book. The missionaries and mercenaries distinction, the focus on delighting customers instead of being paranoid about competitors, positive feedback loops and strong network effects are also repeated over and over. Unfortunately, the practical implementation of the latter two concepts are not properly explained in an understandable way.

I did enjoy reading about the conundrum of extraordinary performances only coming from correct nonconsensus forecasts, but nonconsensus forecasts are hard to make, hard to make correctly and hard to act on. Airbnb is mentioned as a classical example of founders bucking the conventional wisdom that ordinary people will never allow strangers to stay in their homes. Even Facebook started out for cash poor college students to stare at each other's profiles.

I will conclude amusingly with an investor's warning to the founder of a company to no longer rely on raising additional funding: "We need to act like we're Mark Watney in The Martian. We can't assume we will get a shipment of new potatoes to save us".