A founder's wild memoir of startup success, told from hot tub inception to $50 million exit with the humor of a comic and the perspective of an educator. In The Startup Story: An Entrepreneur's Journey from Idea to Exit, renowned serial entrepreneur Martin Warner takes a fledgling company all the way from zero to hero, selling it for $50 million after a mere 17 months. It's a memoir of whirlwind entrepreneurial success, a nonfiction narrative that puts the reader in the CEO's seat, giving readers the feel of what it's really like to steer a company around the toughest of tracks and come out with a massive payday. A mix of Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, and The Apprentice , The Startup Story reads like a novel but is strictly a true story packed with entrepreneurial insights. It is a rollercoaster ride through the heaven and hell of the tech business world, populated by geeks, pirates, conmen, tycoons, geniuses, and fools. Forced to do everything at warp speed, Warner chucks all the accumulated wisdom of his own Entrepreneur Seminar out of the window on his way to a holy grail exit. And (contrary to the opinionsof rivals and skeptics) it was all perfectly legal. Barely.

Along the way, readers piece together an entrepreneurial how-to (and how-not-to) manual, with each chapter traversing the highs and the lows of founding a growing company. It shows the reader how to build a tech company out of pure desire and dogged willpower, combined with some timely expertise. The short, hilarious, and hair-raising history of Warner and his company, botObjects, provides a parable of the quintessential business experience packed with entrepreneurial insights and lessons to be learned.