Friday, May 29, 2009

Book Review: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

Author: Rashmi Bansal
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 325
My Rating: 4.5/5


"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish", as most of us know is a famous quote by Steve Jobs in his speech for the graduating class at Stanford. The words are aptly acquired as a title for this book, authored by Rashmi Bansal who is an IIMA (Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad) alumni and also the co-founder of the popular youth magazine - JAM (www.jammag.com)

I liked the fact that the book is kept really simple, including the cover pages, print and the writing. It is a collection of 25 stories of successful entrepreneurs, all IIM-A alumni. Some of these ventures are well known to us such as - naukri.com(infoedge), educomp, makemytrip etc which we might have used quite a lot but unware of the people behind it..This book can give a kick start for people who are keen on being entrepreneurs. It's a good source of inspiration because the stories are not just hunky-dory but details the path of struggle, multiple failures and losses that people have been through before successfully establishing themselves. One common message in all these stories is "Persistence is the key to success", so never give up!

Each one of these 25 stories are extremely inspiring. But I tried reading the book in one sitting and I found it to be a bit boring. The writing style gets to be quite monotonous. I would have preferred if the author had used varities in writing each of these stories rather than keep it in a standard format. Nevertheless, I wont complain coz its non-fiction and the content is worth more :) I also felt that expanding the stories to entrepreneurs beyond IIMA would have been good. We all know that there are many such success stories from top B-schools but I would have loved to know about people from a non-MBA background who have made it big in life. That would have catered to a wider audience I guess.

Overall I loved this book. I could see myself thinking about starting a venture and coming up with some business ideas, after reading this book.. That was the impact :) So I highly recommend this book. Even if you are not keen on entrepreneurship, it is still a good read.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi..The book as such doesnt fall in my category of reading I have passed on the good review u have given to my sister who is too much in this genre. I like it that you keep the review really simple and too the point..

Divya said...

nice blog you got here. Hoping to read more of your reviews.

Chutki said...

Hi Pratima,

I suggest that you pick up Rashmi's second book that has just been released. Connect The Dots is about successful entrepreneurs without the typical MBA degree.

~Seema