What a great book! The clear concepts and current examples rooted in the streets of Silicon Valley make this book instantly usable by entrepreneurs, CEOs and marketing managers. I'm sure it will go on to become a classic for practitioners/entrepreneurs and required reading in high tech courses everywhere.

This book is in the class of great marketing strategy books by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I say this because like Ries and Trout, Tony has the intense practical experience as CEO of a startup and the courage of conviction to distill his knowledge/experience into clear, easy to understand, and easy to implement methods, concepts, and frameworks. Tony forces you to focus on only a few concepts and skip the remaining because he differentiates between what works and what does not. He gives you answers that solve problems today to get success in the market.

Tony shows that the competition is maddeningly intense and the winner takes all while losers hardly survive.

The book takes you on a marketing strategy tour of many current success stories including Google, Craigslist, Symantec, Netflix, Salesforce.com, and Apple. You learn which rules played significant role in each success and how you too can apply the rules for your own company’s success.

Tony has distilled 9 fundamental rules of high tech strategy that can help you navigate the treacherous waters of high-tech marketing, made all the more difficult by Geoffrey Moore’s terms “Crossing the Chasm”, tornado, gorilla, chimps, etc.

These 9 rules bring the essence of marketing in general and high tech marketing in particular within the easy grasp of a marketing-novice CEO or entrepreneur and enable them to apply them to their own specific situation and move towards success. The experienced practitioners will also find the rules guide in deciding what to focus on and what to pay attention to within the seemingly chaotic high-tech marketing scene.

The rules are simple, easy-to-understand, and almost intuitive. Once you buy into a rule and understand the easy examples, mplementing a rule in your own specific situation should be simple (though not necessarily easy).

The 9 rules will appear as simple and common sense to many experienced practitioners (remember the saying, “The right answer when found will be simple”).

* These rules, illustrated with current examples, are very powerful and contain within them the essence of high tech marketing strategy

MBA students can use Tony’s book as supplementary text for their general marketing course to understand “what works” in high-tech marketing as against Philip Kotler’s most popular text detailing all the options and approaches available in marketing, only some of which work.

I personally know Tony and have worked with him. I attended Tony’s course “Strategic Marketing of High Technology Products and Innovations” at Stanford University and like many other entrepreneurs I respect him for his experience and wisdom in marketing strategy.

I have lived in Silicon Valley as entrepreneur during the post-2000 period and I can relate with what Tony says. If you work in high-tech industry (or any industry for that matter) or if you are interested in starting your own company, this book is certainly worth your time. Read it. Study it.

I am personally recommending this book to all my friends and clients in high-tech as well as non high-tech companies because these rules will work both in hyper-competitive fast-moving world of high-tech and in all other kinds of industries.

Raj Bapna, CEO

Mind Machine Lab ~ for Accelerated Learning,Exam Mastery and Stress Management

(www.MindMachineLab.com)