Just to make sure you don't misunderstand me. I don't have any affiliation with McKinsey, I just think it's a bit odd to dismiss a firm with a pretty solid repu

Just to make sure you don't misunderstand me. I don't have any affiliation with McKinsey, I just think it's a bit odd to dismiss a firm with a pretty solid reputation out of hand without much evidence. I don't think anyone asks of McKinsey that they should be entrepreneurs, or even risk takers. I don't see how risk mitigation is irrelevant to startups. You'll find little about risk mitigation in 'Starting Up' though. It's more about how you can describe your business in a standard way so you and your investors can reason about it more easily. If that's something you want I'll leave up to you. I don't think you should follow the book to the letter, I just think it's a good little book. There's no stories in it that promise golden showers, none that stuck in my mind anyway. Isn't the whole idea of risk taking to promise yourself golden showers based on an assumptions based revenue model (or none at all), like webvan did? I agree with you that it's a good idea to take advice from entrepreneurs themselves though, that's also why Bubbleconf makes an effort to get founders to speak at the conference (and not consultants :P). (btw, I work for a company that coorganizes Bubbleconf, but I'm a part of the organisation of the conf this year, just a helping hand)