The Venture: A Business Novel about Starting Your Own Company

by Jeff Cox

Book Overview

In this fictional account, the bestselling coauthor of Zapp and The Goal follows the trials and tribulations of downsized senior manager Michael Di Gabriel, as he embarks on the adventure of his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446516414
• ISBN13: 9780446516419
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Novel of the Nineties

Not a how-to on being an entrepreneur, but a novel about life and business in the 1990's. If you lived through corporate downsizing, you'll identify with the characters in this book. This is a story about financial and emotional survival. Try Cox's other books (Selling the Wheel, Zapp, The Goal, Heroz, etc.) if you want to learn and still have a good time reading. The VEnture is about starting a business, but on a very personal level.

An honest piece of fiction, not just a "business novel"

I think it is important to keep in mind that Jeff Cox has written a novel--a business novel, certainly, but a novel nonetheless. I doubt that the author intended The Venture to be a how-to primer, although it comes close to it in some ways. So while it is a work of fiction, The Venture is, in my view, a very realistic account of how one group of people with their backs to the wall and their lives on the line respond to being downsized. I was particularly impressed with Cox's awareness of corporate politics and his ability to convey how gut wrenching and painful it is when loyalties are questioned, trusts and friendships are betrayed, locks are changed, colleagues are pitted against each other, and lies are told to protect the incompetent and justify firings. That happens every day in Corporate America, folks, and The Venture, in my mind, presents the most honest and realistic treatment of this sad situation. Cox has not taken a Pollyannish (is that a word?) approach to the development of the book's plot. Not every scheme the group tries works. There are fights and disagreements and power struggles galore. Not everything goes by the book. This is not Management 101 by a long shot. Nor is it one of those cloyingly unbelievable "I found true happiness working in my sunny and tastefully decorated family room at home" stories that appear with annoying regularity in suburban newspapers these days. I think the publisher, by calling The Venture a "business novel" rather than just simply a novel, did the book a slight disservice. Labeling it as such, I feel, doesn't do the the book justice. It might just scare away those who have little interest in business but are looking for a well written, thoroughly enjoyable, and honest work of fiction. The Venture sure fits that bill.

This could happen to you! (or at least I'd like to think so)

I did originally get suckered in by the publisher's positioning of the book as a quasi-"how-to", but I did not regret my purchase decision for a millisecond. This was about as realistic a portrayal of starting a small business as is possible, given the parameters of a novel -- right down to starting the venture with a credit card advance. I found the vast majority of events within the book to be conceivable, including a realistic portrayal of the full spectrum of human responses that inevitably occur under the stress of a start-up. I say this having just finished reading the book "Start Up", which chronicles the rise and fall of a Silicon Valley company called Go! At various points of "The Venture", you could have inserted random chapters of "Start Up" and lost little in the translation. I just wish I could find Mr. Cox' previous books, "Zapp" and "The Goal".

Yikes! Don't start reading unless you have plenty of time!!

Not a hard-to-put-down book: An impossible to put down book. As a new entrepreneur, I identify with the main character, the story the action. A lesson in perserverence and determination. The author has written another stunning success (The Goal) that is not only thrilling and fun, it offers a practical blueprint for the start-up. Read the book BEFORE you open your shop. Not only will you have a handy reference manual you will remeber it for the super ride that comes as a bonus. Great job

Believable, exciting, hard to put down.

The head of a video production department is told to fire his staff, in the name of downsizing, he refuses, and ends up getting canned. The Venture is what comes next. This book is a great mix of personal and interpersonal conflict, pain, love, desire, challenge, and reality. If you've ever started or tried to start your own business or were faced with a great personal challenge, you will be able to identify with the characters in this book, the challenges they must overcome, the fears experienced, the tough decisoins that had to be made, the damaging lack of support from family members, and the resulting consequences of all the above. Set aside a night or two, because this book is hard to put down