The Need for Speed

Shortcut Your Startup: Speed Success with Unconventional Advice from the Trenches – Courtney Reum and Carter Reum – (Gallery/Jeter)

Former Goldman Sachs investment banking brothers Courtney and Carter Reum have evolved to become entrepreneurs, investor, and brand development gurus that has seen them score big with development, scaling and sell off of their premium spirits brand VEEV.

They have been involved in the investment or brand acceleration of a veritable who’s who of household brand names like; Lyft, Warby Parker, Shake Shack, Ring, Blue Bottle, Slack, Space-X and a seemingly never ending list of others.

The Reum brothers have distilled the knowledge they have acquired over the course of working with these high level projects into the book, Shortcut Your Startup: Speed Up Success with Unconventional Advice from the Trenches. They boil that distillation down to what they’ve dubbed their 10 Key Startup Switchups.

While much of the advice they arm entrepreneurs with is certainly success tested and offers insight that should be put into play by startups and existing entrepreneurial efforts, the ten switchups have the tendency to read like stand alone blog entries or articles that have been collected under one cover, rather than a cohesive, comprehensive strategy.

As with any business strategy book, I always like to look for even kernels of knowledge or useful ideas that I can put to use when developing (new) strategies. With business and particularly startups accelerating at such a rapid pace, it only makes sense to tap into the base of experience that the Reums offer to get you and your business up to speed.