Andrew Ackerman, MBA ’95, published a fictional take on an entrepreneurship guide.
- By
- October 31, 2025
- Entrepreneurship
A ‘Novel’ Approach to Teaching Startup Success
As a student at Booth, Andrew Ackerman, MBA ’95, was impressed by The Goal, a business management guide in the form of a novel published in 1984 by the business guru Eliyahu M. Goldratt.
“It stuck in my mind as a great way to teach the fundamentals of business,” says Ackerman, who today is an early-stage investor, strategic advisor, adjunct professor at Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business in New York, and contributor to various financial and entrepreneurial publications.
Written as a series of telephone calls and meetings between Alex, the fictional manager of a failing manufacturing plant, and Jonah, his mentor and former college physics professor, The Goal teaches both business and life lessons. The book was one of the first “business fables,” a literary genre that has gone on to achieve wide success.
Now Ackerman has written his own business fable, The Entrepreneur’s Odyssey, published by Routledge Press (2025).
The book tells the story of Marcus, a young entrepreneur seeking to market his new product, a phone-call recording app aimed at on-the-go professionals, and Jason Murath, a crusty-but-caring angel investor.
Like The Goal, the book unfolds as a series of emails, meetings, and one-on-one conversations during which Marcus learns the ins and outs of the startup world. These include everything from crafting the right elevator pitch and assembling a team to soliciting customer feedback and prospecting for investors. (Spoiler alert: The book ends with Marcus securing $500,000 in a Seed round.)
Ackerman based both characters on actual people. Marcus is a friend and entrepreneur he has backed and whom he prefers not to identify, though he has informed him that he’s the inspiration behind the character. Jason is based on the late angel investor John Ason, who Ackerman says was brilliant but also a “grumpy, cuddly grandpa.”
Too, the phone-based, speech-to-text product Marcus seeks to launch is based on an actual conversation-transcription app currently in development. Ackerman has been involved with the project for almost a decade. Ironically, he says, he wrote the first draft of the book using speech-to-text dictation in three- to five-minute chunks while sitting in the subway or waiting for meetings to start.
Ackerman says his goal with the novel was “to capture what it really feels like to be in the startup world. I have built two startups, invested in more than 70, and coached or mentored hundreds. Let’s just say I know a thing or two about what it takes to build a successful business.”
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