Do not let the swinging title fool you: this book of do’s and don’ts for startup high-tech enterprises is serious, excellent, and complete. Because so many new high-tech enterprises are in information technology, a review in Computing Reviews is appropriate, but the book is equally applicable to any startup company, regardless of industry.

It provides a thorough and complete definition and pinpointing of the myriad land mines awaiting the high-tech startup company, and tells us how to cope with each. Most of them are financial. The high-tech founders are seldom finance-savvy, while their financing sources focus on the bottom line. When a company fails, the reasons are always financial, usually undercapitalization. Cashflow is even more important than a profit. Mere accountants are usually not enough to provide the needed financial capability. Adamson also explains how to analyze the profit-and-loss statement and the balance sheet.

The caveats go far beyond the financial, however, addressing problems unique to exporting, patents and licenses, and sales and marketing (and the differences between them). Interestingly, the author warns against considering the federal government as a customer for the startup. Getting the order takes too long, so does getting paid, and the administrative overhead of contract management is higher when Uncle Sam is the customer. The author’s advice to startups is to deal with the prime government contractor instead because they cannot afford to be one.

Nothing is missing. Adamson even devotes a chapter to ways of cashing out at the end of the corporate day: being acquired by another corporation, going public, and so on.

The book is exhaustive but not exhausting. It is well written, and within each chapter, clear and descriptive section headers make the topics stand out. Reading the book is made still easier by interspersed paragraphs about actual experiences in the author’s corporation that illustrate the matter being discussed.

If the book can be faulted, it is for its scarcity of tables and graphs and the total absence of illustrations. More than 200 pages of almost uninterrupted type is too much for some readers in this graphics age. Nonetheless, Adamson’s book should be required reading for all introductory business management courses, and of course for anyone who contemplates starting a new enterprise.