Crash Course

Nine times out of ten, the passionate, well-educated, semi-cocky entrepreneur with dreams of taking the market by storm . . . fails. Whether it’s a quick crash and burn within the first year or a longer struggle over several years, the result is usually the same: an exhausted, confused, financially broke, and emotionally broken startup failure. We love to hear stories of lean-and-mean startups that bootstrap their way to a hard-fought victory. But what about the other 90 percent? What about the startup founders who were chewed up and spit out by potential investors, dirty-dealing partners, and fickle customers? What about the ones who dared to give their dream wings . . . only to watch it crash on the runway? Don’t we have as much or more to learn from them as we do the lucky few who actually make it? In Crash Course, entrepreneur Ricardo Jimenez crawls out from under the wreckage of his failed startup and forces himself to explore how his best-laid plans went so terribly wrong. With surgical precision, Jiménez explores every decision, meeting, step, and misstep that turned his once-promising international toy company into an expensive lesson in how not to succeed in the highly competitive global marketplace. Putting pride aside, Jiménez puts his whole story on display—the good, the bad, and the terrible—with the hope that the next generation of startup entrepreneurs can learn from his mistakes and take a pain-free shortcut to the important lessons he had to learn the hard way.