As the latest joint work of SSRN, we are going to publish a book, entitled “Fundamentals of Software Startups: Essential Engineering and Business Aspects” with Springer. The book is edited by key members of SSRN:

• Assc. Prof. Anh Nguyen-Duc, University of South Eastern Norway. Profile. Google scholar
• Prof. Jürgen Münch, Reutlingen University. Profile. Google scholar
• Assc. Prof. Rafael Prikladnicki, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul. Profile. Google scholar
• Dr. Xiaofeng Wang, Free University of Bolzano. Profile. Google scholar
• Prof. Pekka Abrahamsson, University of Jyväskylä. Profile. Google scholar

The book foreword is written by Professor, Startup Board member, Angle investor and Advisor – Jan Bosch:

As start-up companies and their founders are, because of the autonomy, automatically alone and self-reliant, it is no surprise that many avoidable errors are repeated in start-up after start-up. This is because, despite the vast amount of content on-line, there is very little available in terms of validated, scientic material that founders and others can reliably use in good faith. The book that you are now holding is an answer to that need and in the next parts and chapters, you will nd a wealth of knowledge concerning success factors and advice for start-ups.
Although primarily intended for founders and employees of early-stage start-ups, the book also provides invaluable content for educators, policy makers, those involved in incubators and accelerators, mentors, innovators as well as those generally interested in the start-up space.
The editors have done an amazing job pulling such exciting, high quality material together in a book that is bound to become the cornerstones of the start-up community. Congratulations to the editors and authors and I wish you, the reader, a great experience!

OVERVIEW

Despite a few successful cases, starting up a business is a high-risk activity. Majority of startups fail within the first two years of their creation. While many entrepreneurs depend on their intuitions and experience to make decisions during their journeys, empirical research could be a valuable and reliable body of knowledge about known challenges, patterns and best practices that help to reduce risks and wasted efforts. The book firstly presents a consolidated description of important phenomena that commonly occurs among software startups. The described phenomena are inter-disciplinary and associated with the development of both business and products, such as pivoting, development of Minimum viable product, continuous experimentation, and team competence. Secondly, the book presents the methodologies adopted by many software startups. The proposed techniques, metrics, frameworks, tools and practices for software startups are presented both with scientific approaches and application context, making them accessible for readers to apply in their own companies. Last but not least, the book covers several cases capturing start-ups’ journey and the challenges and lessons learned with product development in different stages.

Table of Content