The Startup Book
How to Write a Book That Designs a New Market Category & Positions You as The Leader
2024
Books
Three books, one argument
Whoever names the thing gets to own it. I've been circling that idea since 2017.
The through-line
All three of my books are about the same thing: a company that cannot say what it is gets sorted in with everyone who does the same work. Nearshore Marketing found that problem in Latin American outsourcing in 2017. The Startup Book turned the fix into a method, which is to write the book that names your category. The Viral Genius Playbook compresses the whole thing into what a founder can actually do in a weekly half hour.
What are the three books?
Nearshore Marketing
How Nearshore Providers Can Leverage Digital Marketing to Enter the U.S. Market
2017
Which one should you read first?
The Viral Genius Playbook is the shortest at 81 pages, and it is the whole method in order. Read it first if you want to know what the Viral Genius Institute actually argues.
The Startup Book is 219 pages and goes deep on one move: writing the book that names your category, then using it to open doors. Read it if you intend to write one.
Nearshore Marketing is for a specific reader, the Latin American technology firm selling into the United States. Read it if that's you, or if you want to see where the Sea of Sameness idea came from.
Who wrote the forewords?
Christopher Lochhead, co-author of Play Bigger and The 22 Laws of Category Design, and Joe Pulizzi, who created the content marketing category and founded the Content Marketing Institute. Both wrote for the 2024 edition of The Startup Book.
The same book carries interviews with Lochhead, Pulizzi, Bryan Eisenberg and Ann Handley.
Do you write books for other people?
Yes. Three category books carry a client's name rather than mine, including a manuscript taken from nothing to a print-ready Amazon listing with a release date. The book is usually the third step in a Viral Genius Institute engagement, after the Excavation and the category.
Where do you start?
The free Profile. Twelve questions, about fifteen minutes, spoken out loud. You'll get back a plan that names your genius and drafts your category in your own words.
Start talking — free, 12 questions, ~15 minKnow a founder sitting on a gold mine he isn't exploiting?
Send him this page. Every client the Viral Genius Institute has ever had arrived because somebody standing next to the founder saw it before the founder did.
Written by Fernando Labastida, founder of the Viral Genius Institute and creator of the Viral
Genius Framework.