Extending the Runway

By: Dave Berkus

Narrated by: Dave Berkus

Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Extending the Runway is a must-listen book for every entrepreneur, C-level executive, angel, or venture capitalist who now or has ever managed a fragile, growing young business.

Authored by Dave Berkus, a seasoned entrepreneur and investor acknowledged as “Director of the Year” for early-stage businesses by the Forum for Corporate Directors, this book provides thoughtful material to help management and investors gain alignment at the board level upon issues of limited resource allocation toward and beyond breakeven. The book provides tips and describes traps for growing companies, and explores insights into managing for preservation of capital and business growth.

Berkus delves into issues revolving around optimal use of resources such as time, money, relationships, context knowledge, and process understanding. He tells real stories of young businesses whose management fell into traps which could have been avoided, and how some extended their runways to make more efficient use of invested funds.

Extending the Runway uses examples and stories from aviation to draw an analogy between trained, disciplined management in the cockpit compared to that in an often chaotic corporate world. The book explores elimination of bottlenecks that impede growth, and common pitfalls the author has experienced firsthand as an entrepreneur and in coaching CEOs of over 65 portfolio companies in a career that has spanned over 50 years.

This is a powerful work for C-level corporate planning. As Berkus reads his book for us, he stops periodically to emphasize an important point with a "worth repeating" remark, making this a quick listen with the equivalent of highlighted text. At the conclusion of the book is an appendix with over 50 provocative questions for discussion and alignment between CEOs, their boards, and investors. Berkus reads these questions, first telling the audiobook listener that these may be skipped or selectively noted by the listener for added value.

©2006, 2014 David W Berkus (P)2022 David W Berkus