BUILD THE FORT

Heivly breaks down his personal fort-building experiences and uses them as an analogy to his journey as co-founder of MapQuest as well as The Startup Factory (a seed-stage investor & mentorship program). BUILD THE FORT outlines five basic elements that are common to both fort-building and startups:
- Socializing Your Idea without fear or inhibition
- Identifying and Marshaling the People You Trust,
- Gathering the Minimal Resources Closest To You
- Acting on the Smallest and Simplest of the Idea
- Build the Fort.
Heivly provides the reader a better understanding of the earliest micro-steps of starting your own business by overlaying his 30 years of experiences in startups, investments, big-company intrapreneurship and community development.
Chris Heivly is one of the nation's leading experts in how to turn startups into multimillion-dollar companies and has been dubbed the "Startup Whisperer". For more than 30 years, Heivly has worked at the highest levels for some of the world's most recognized brands, including MapQuest, Rand McNally, and Accenture. He has also personally directed over $75 million in investment capital on behalf of these and other companies. Heivly currently serves as one of two managing directors of The Startup Factory, one of the largest seed investment firms.