As a voracious reader , I love a good table of contents (TOC) as the roadmap to a book. While fiction is often structured as Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, … Chapter N, some of the best fiction writers are creative with their TOC. Any non-fiction author who doesn’t provide a detailed table of contents TOC is missing an opportunity to help the reader understand the book’s flow before they begin reading it.

Below is the Give First: The Power of Mentorship TOC. While pre-orders are available now (the official release is June 24, 2025), the book is physically available at only one bookstore in the world: Composition Shop in Longmont .

I’ll be there tomorrow (Tuesday, May 28, 2025) from 10 am to 5 pm except for a break for lunch from 1 pm to 2:30 pm, when I’ll be with a friend who is in town. Join me and buy a copy of the physical book now, rather than waiting for the release date in a month.

Additionally, if you’d like to see where I’ll be out and about in public (until I go back into hibernation), take a look at the new Events page on this website. Registration links for any events that require them are in the event details.

And now, the TOC for Give First: The Power of Mentorship .

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My new book with Ian Hathaway, The Startup Community Way , comes out on 7/28. We’ve begun the pre-order campaign. Since every author loves pre-orders, so if you want to do something that will make me smile today, pre-order your copy here.

To give you a sense of the book, following is the Table of Contents, in detail.

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction
– The Next Generation
– Our Approach
– A Deeper Motivation
– The Boulder Thesis
– Startup Communities are Complex Adaptive Systems
– Where We Were in 2012
– Where We are Now in 2020
– Using Complexity Theory to Explain Startup Communities
– Evolving the Boulder Thesis to the Startup Community Way

PART I: INTRODUCTION TO STARTUP COMMUNITIES

CHAPTER TWO: Why Startup Communities Exist
– What Entrepreneurs Do
– The External Environment Networks over Hierarchies
– Networks of Trust
– Density and Agglomeration Quality of Place

CHAPTER THREE: The Actors
– Leaders, Feeders, and Instigators
– Actors

CHAPTER FOUR: The Factors
– The Seven Capitals
– Factors

CHAPTER FIVE: Startup Communities versus Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
– Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
– Alignment of Actors
– Different, but Mutually Reinforcing, Purpose
– Systems within Systems
– Entrepreneurial Success
– Community/Ecosystem Fit

PART II: STARTUP COMMUNITIES AS COMPLEX SYSTEMS

CHAPTER SIX: Putting the System Back into Ecosystem
– Introduction to Systems
– The Whole System
– Simple, Complicated, and Complex Activities
– Moving from Activities to Systems

CHAPTER SEVEN: Unpredictable Creativity
– Emergence
– Synergies and Nonlinearity
– Self-Organization
– Dynamism
– The Study of Interactions

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Myth of Quantity
– More of Everything
– Outliers, Not Averages
– Entrepreneurial Recycling
– Leaders as Supernodes

CHAPTER NINE: The Illusion of Control
– Not Controllable
– Not Fully Knowable
– Feedbacks and Contagion
– Getting Unstuck
– Letting Go

CHAPTER TEN: The Absence of a Blueprint
– Initial Conditions and Basins of Attraction
– The Narrative Fallacy
– Building on Strengths and Learning from Failures
– Cultivating Topophilia

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Measurement Trap
– The Fundamental Measurement Problem
– Actor and Factor Models: A Categorical Approach
– Standardized Metrics Models: A Comparative Approach
– Network Models: A Relational Approach
– Dynamic Models: An Evolutionary Approach
– Cultural-Social Models: A Behavioral Approach
– Logic Models: A Causal Approach
– Agent-Based Models: A Simulation Approach
– Applying the Different Models

PART III: FROM THE BOULDER THESIS TO THE STARTUP COMMUNITY WAY

CHAPTER TWELVE: Simplifying Complexity
– The Boulder Thesis
– The Rainforest
– Applying Systems Thinking
– Looking Deeply
– Leverage Points

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Leadership is Key
– Be a Mentor
– Entrepreneurs as Role Models
– Key Leadership Characteristics

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Think in Generations
– Progress is Uneven and Often Feels Slow
– The Endless Long-Term Game

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Diversity is a Feature, Not a Bug
– Cultivate Diversity
– Embracing Diversity
– Think Broadly about Entrepreneurship

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Be Active, Not Passive
– Self-Similarity and Replication
– Don’t Wait or Ask Permission
– Play a Positive-Sum Game
– Continuously and Actively Engage

PART IV: CONCLUSION

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Conclusion
– Reflections
– Summary of the Book
– Final Thoughts

Remember – it’s pre-order time! And, the Startup Community community is now over 2,000 people and very vibrant so jump in.