The Startup Checklist: 25 Steps to a Scalable, High-Growth Business

David S. Rose offers a comprehensive guide to the practical requirements of building a venture-scale company. Where many entrepreneurship books concentrate on one discipline, such as customer discovery or fundraising, The Startup Checklist addresses the interconnected legal, financial, strategic, operational, governance, and personnel decisions founders must make. The book is valuable to VMT because it helps mentors identify gaps outside their own areas of expertise. It also provides a useful distinction between a promising idea and an investable, scalable enterprise. Some of its advice is most applicable to companies pursuing significant outside capital, so mentors should adapt it carefully when working with bootstrapped companies or traditional small businesses.

Readers will learn how to evaluate a business opportunity, assemble a founding team, establish the company legally, protect intellectual property, develop a business model, create financial projections, structure equity, approach investors, build a board, and prepare for growth. Mentors can use the book as a diagnostic framework for determining what a founder has addressed and what remains dangerously incomplete.