“The book is absolutely fascinating and I would recommend it to anyone interested in start-ups, product development, venture capital, or even project management. Here are some of my take aways from the book:
1) Founders can be visionary and a pain in the ass - Dean Kamen, the man behind Ginger, is clearly a visionary who can change the world. The book also shows the ugly side of what happens when a technical visionary can't let go of a product and becomes the prototypical founder getting in the way of success.
2) Engineers may hate marketing, but marketing really matters - Millions of dollars had been thrown at developing Ginger before anyone asked the question of "who is the customer for this product?". Kamen just assumed that just about everyone in the world would want one. It wasn't until a board of directors got together and started asking hard questions did Kamen allow a small number of people to test Ginger. The investors in the company often talked about getting to a Billion in sales quicker than any other company ever, but they also never talked about how much the product would cost. I read almost 200 pages before the book even mentioned the price of Ginger, and then they only did so in vague terms.
3) Watch your relationship with investors - The minute Dean Kamen brought on professional money they started looking to make changes in the management team. Given the job that was done by the team in place I can understand the desire to bring on new people, but the new team that was brought in didn't do any better.”
