ONE VENTURE, TEN MBAS: A Warrior Guide to Building Startups is aptly named. This isn’t just another business-related book; it gives readers a look at one woman’s personal experience in the brutal and demanding business sector. Author Ksenia Yudina lays out the highs and lows of her first experience as a fintech business owner. She creates a timeline of events, walking readers through the different challenges and goals that venture owners face every day. Yudina also shares what she learned throughout her business's various stages: planning, building the product, marketing, finding investors, and beyond. Along the way, she offers nuggets of insight about what she learned as a business student and what things are only learned when you're on the spot and forced to make a choice in an ever-changing business environment.
ONE VENTURE, TEN MBAS also touches on what it was like to weather 2020 as a business CEO, as well as what the years since have looked like in the fintech world. From soaring highs to crushing lows, she doesn’t pull her punches in this personal and educational addition to the business genre.
The one drawback is found towards the middle. Since the book is laid out in chronological order in most of the chapters, the fact that the middle ones shift between events that took place in 2023 before suddenly jumping back to 2020 (without much indication of which year some of the events took place during), the details get fuzzy and the book loses its pace. Yudina's tone and passion for her business are evident, and this drive pushes her narrative forward at a fast clip. So when we hit these few chapters where the timing and order of events become jumbled, the book becomes much more difficult to follow. There are also many technical terms thrown around; each of them is explained well along the way, but it might be a bit too much for readers not expecting the heavy presence of technical jargon usually used by those directly involved in fintech and business circles.
ONE VENTURE, TEN MBAS isn’t simply a motivational pat on the back. It's a deeper look at what really goes on in fintech circles and the challenges they face, making it a higher-level text than business books that read more like motivational works. Yudina has done a wonderful job of delivering her story in a way that is encouraging, unafraid to get down in the dirt, and willing to show readers the grit and determination needed to succeed in such a competitive and fast-paced world.
Ksenia Yudina provides helpful insight and encouragement in ONE VENTURE, TEN MBAS: A Warrior Guide to Building Startups. Detailing what worked and what didn’t in her business journey, she breaks it down and walks readers through the process she underwent to get where she is today.
~ Stephanie Lynn for IndieReader