The management today review of this is actually quite interesting http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/rss/article/985294

37signals brush it off as criticism that should just be ignored because their website includes the word "management", but a lot of what they say is pretty near the mark IMHO.

For example:

  The authors' advice is so sweeping and deliberately
  confrontational that it misses all the subtleties that
  actually make businesses succeed. We are told: 'Meetings
  are toxic.' In reality, good meetings are good and bad
  meetings are not good, but don't try and make a name for
  your software company by issuing such over-heated
  generalisations.

Read it over a long lunch- it feels like an overedited SvN greatest hits.

That's both a good thing and a bad thing- it's like reading their best posts in a few hours. Awesome! But, as a book, it's pretty terrible- there aren't really any anecdotes, any stories, any discussions of turning points or moments of realization.

What would have been more interesting is each of these essays (Outside Money is Plan Z!) written around an actual story from their company history. A time they considered outside money, a month where they fucked up cashflow, the moment they had a Series A in corporate savings, a story of how they managed their finances versus competitors who took investment, their first full-time hire and the company's numbers at that time, anything to really dig into why they have come to these conclusions.

I agree with most of those conclusions, in fact, as a book the format sucks. Felix Dennis' How to Get Rich is a great example of succint, important points intertwined with stories that build up the background of each of those point. That makes them more memorable, and makes for a MUCH more enjoyable read. That's a book. This is a greatest hits of a blog. It's good for what it is, but it could have been a whole lot better.

I have read nearly half of it on my kindle. It's quite short, to the point, and what you probably would expect from them.

They talk about how they run a business, and how you can start one by giving practical principles. For example in one chapter they say don't take external funding if possible, and that you have to treat it like a business, not a startup.

So far I think it's a great book. Many principles are not new (they talked about most of them in the past), but I still think it's worth it, regardless you having a company or not.

Now I'll go ahead and read some more pages.

I had one waiting for me bright and early this morning thanks for Amazon. It's going to be hard deciding between Final Fantasy 13 (long time fan... I can't help myself!) and reading this cover-to-cover tonight.

I hope that this book doesn't turn out to be a "repackaging" of the same old 37Signals content I can get anywhere else. Thanks to Amazon, I got my copy at 9am this morning, but I haven't had a chance to pick through it yet. We'll see.

The back cover could've been part of a guerilla marketing campaign for Fight Club.

I had absolutely no interest in reading Rework until now, and now I don't think I can refuse it. 37Signals' marketing is quite impressive.

In the spirit of "doing less", Squeezed Books aims to take the actual useful material from books like this, and summarize it on our web site.

I'll buy you the business book of your choosing if you're the first person to post a good summary of this book to Squeezed Books. (I reserve the right to choose what's 'good', and also the right to veto any absurdly expensive business books you find).

http://www.squeezedbooks.com