Once upon a time, starting a business meant months of researching, refining business goals and writing business plans, talking to investors and banks, negotiating for loans, and raising money. But today, agile web development practices mean that you can almost launch on an idea and figure it out as you go. At least that’s what authors Jason Glaspey and Scott Kveton and their colleague Michael Richardson did when starting bacn.com, an online bacon retailer.

In this mouth-watering tale, they describe their process of starting a business on a shoestring, including the things they did right and the things they did wrong. Bacn.com didn’t make them millionaires — not even close! But the lessons they learned have led to comfortable success on their follow-up ventures. And whether it’s choosing a domain name or selecting the right content management systems, buying and storing inventory or figuring out fulfillment, using social media for marketing or finding a location to host an “epic” party, their stories will help you jumpstart your own web business.