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TLDR: I made a video review if you prefer a video to text https://youtu.be/xC64l_-JXl0After a brief 15-minute read of the introduction, I was welcomed by this quote: “‘I am a young, white, educated male… I got really, really lucky. And life isn’t fair.’ Those are the words of Evan Spiegel, the billionaire co-founder of photo-messaging app Snapchat”. This is how Chapter 1 of the book begins, a very interesting opening that attempts to challenge your beliefs about meritocracy, that through hard work and ability, anyone and every one is able to be successful. While it’s not necessarily wrong to believe in meritocracy, this book aims to open up your mind to the possibility of there being more to it, it illustrates the lives of successful founders before they “made it”, and hopes to inform readers that it’s not just hard work, but also a mix of other variables that they leveraged, that allowed them to be giants in what they do.Enter the MILES framework: Money, Intelligence & Insight, Location & Luck, Education & Expertise and Status. The authors introduce each of these concepts in a very easy-to-understand manner, written in plain English, no jargon, then elaborates on them by providing real-life examples of people who’ve been there, done that, walked the walk. While it may be tempting to disregard this book as hogwash since the first item in the MILES framework is Money, and everyone knows it’s so much easier to make money with money, the authors worked hard on developing this framework because they’d like to remove the excuse that is money. Even though start-up capital is important, it’s not all we need to succeed in founding a successful business, they argued, however, the authors do recognise that it is a huge unfair advantage to have money in the first place, which I find impossible to disagree, as the authors were not born wealthy, and neither was I. The rest of the framework are quite self-explanatory at first glance, but the authors do probe deep into each and present their cases with well-researched and relevant examples. They dwelled enough on each, were succinct enough in their writing to not overstay their welcome by being repetitive.What I like about this book, besides the MILES framework and the authors presenting highly relevant examples after highly relevant examples of how people became successful entrepreneurs, is the quick start guide for aspiring startups. It provides a high-level walkthrough of the various steps required for aspiring entrepreneurs to succeed, often drawing upon the authors’ own experiences. These are broken into 6 chapters: The why, The type of startup, The idea, The people, The business and Fundraising. As a freelancer, I found these chapters highly valuable, particularly learning there are two different types of startups (Chapter: The type of startup) and that many popular services such as Spotify and Dropbox weren’t the first to execute their ideas in their respective niches, but just happened to take off because of their unfair advantages (Chapter: The idea). There are also many great relevant great quotes used by the authors at appropriate times in the book, which I’ve highlighted and still makes me ponder and think when I revisit the book and read these highlighted sections.There isn’t much to say about what I dislike about the book, because I like it very much overall! If I had to be pedantic and nitpick, it would have to be the number of times a unicorn in business terms means a startup that’s worth over $1 billion. Furthermore, while English isn’t my first language, I can be a grammar Nazi toward my friends and family at times, but this book is extremely readable, to the point where I only found two grammatical errors that stuck out to me. For a book that has over 600 pages on my 7-inch Kobo, they are not that big of a deal though.Overall, I think this is an extremely well-written book. The authors presented their cases very well, using heaps of examples and anecdotes to illustrate their points. Although these two are seasoned veterans in business, this is also Hasan’s first book, so kudos to them both for doing a great job and thank you for their higher selves for spending the time and the willingness to share their work, knowledge and experiences with the world by granting us this gem of a book! I have learnt a lot and enjoyed my time (11.7 hours) with it in these 5 days, and with any luck and some unfair advantages, you’ll be able to read and digest it quicker than me and apply it to your lives! Good luck!