[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneursh...
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Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?
Leaving aside the fact that nothing can beat actual experience.
What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?
Author : Gooblebrai
Score : 224 points
Date : 2023-03-15 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
| akshayshah wrote:
| Disciplined Entrepreneurship, by Bill Aulet. A very condensed
| video version is available at
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtWexnfPhKk.
| fidrelity wrote:
| * Crossing the Chasm
|
| * The Mom Test
|
| * The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
|
| * The Cold Start Problem
| hackitup7 wrote:
| I've put my reading list here:
| https://staysaasy.com/startups/2020/09/24/startup-book-readi...
| sotu wrote:
| Atlas shrugged, Minto Pyramid Principle, Nail it then Scale it
| jll29 wrote:
| 1. "Lean Startup" (pretty standard)
|
| 2. "Spin Selling" (sales)
|
| 3. "The Four-Hour Work Week" (not because of the way of life
| promised in the misleading title, but because of the links to
| useful Websites, and for motivational reading)
|
| 4. "The One Billion Dollar App" (silly title but fantastic book
| from an actual taxi app product manager - I almost didn't buy it
| because of the title, thank God I opened it anyway and started
| reading about viral marketing which like the tracking of pandemic
| is based on the r coefficient).
|
| 5. "Business Model Generation" (the mechanics of making money)
|
| 6. "The Startup Owner's Manual"
|
| 7. "Why Startups Fail" (anti-patterns - better read about them
| before you get trapped by them)
|
| 8. "The Company Secretary Handbook" (UK only)
|
| 9. "Die Unternehmergesellschaft (UG): Grundung, Geschaftsfuhrung,
| Recht und Steuern fur kleinere Unternehmen und Start-Ups"
| (Germany only)
|
| 10. "Founders At Work" (motivational)
|
| 11. "Financial Times Essential Guides Writing a Business Plan:
| How to win backing to start up or grow your business" (to get
| clarity, write a plan - for yourself, to align all co-founders
| and the team, to get VC funding, to convince yourself that the
| business is financially viable)
| alex_lav wrote:
| Spin Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff, or The
| Spin Selling Fieldbook: Practical Tools, Methods, Exercises and
| Resources?
| jeron wrote:
| I think it's the former
| samhsmith wrote:
| I don't understand how people here are recommending Zero to One
| and Lean Startup at the same time. They contradict each other.
| And in fact the Lean Startup is full of the kind of foolish post
| dotcom-crash thinking that Zero to One warns against.
| pedalpete wrote:
| The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold
| two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain
| the ability to function. - Scott Fitzgerald
|
| I disagree that the two ideas are completely opposed. They both
| describe tools in building something. Though if I think about
| how Zero to One is approached, I feel it's more of a manifesto
| on overcoming challenges, and doing challenging things. Lean
| Startup focuses on how to run small experiments.
|
| Nobody says building something challenging isn't just the
| process of running lots of experiments to find what works.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Most posts offer the obvious suggestions (The Mom Test, High
| Growth Handbook, The Personal MBA, The Power Law, Hard Thing
| about Hard Thing, Will It Fly, etc), so I'll focus on some non-
| obvious suggestions.
|
| For tactical advice, I find talks/podcasts and mastermind groups
| more useful than books. My favorite podcast (by far) is Rob
| Walling's Startups for the Rest of Us, which is oriented towards
| building a capital-efficient bootstrapped business. The archive
| is full of _extremely_ valuable tactical advice.
|
| The books I've found most helpful on my entrepreneurship journey
| are about mental health, emotional intelligence, and
| relationships of all kinds. Sharing a few that have had a
| profound impact, since they helped me metabolize and understand
| what drove me to become a founder in the first place.
|
| 1. The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook by Tim Desmond
|
| 2. Path of Compassion by Thich Nhat Hanh
|
| 3. The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, Philippa Perry
|
| 4. Burnout, Emily Nagoski
|
| 5. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay C.
| Gibson
|
| 6. Self-Compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff
|
| 7. How to Keep House While Drowning, KC Davis
|
| 8. Deploy Empathy, Michele Hansen
|
| 9. The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel A. Van der Kolk
|
| 10. Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown
|
| 11. What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience,
| and Healing by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey
| nukenuke wrote:
| As a technical founder this book on negotiation was highly
| valuable: "Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your
| Life Depended on It". Negotiation is a skill you need as a
| startup founder that is not necessarily needed for technical
| work.
|
| "Innovators Dilemma" - helps put in perspective acceptable state
| of early products and good strategies for deploying new
| innovative products
| rgbrenner wrote:
| I thought that Voss's work as an FBI negotiator negated a lot
| of his advice. With the FBI, the building is surrounded, and
| the criminal is forced to negotiate with him. There are no
| alternatives, and there's a threat of violent action being
| taken against the criminal if the negotiations are refused or
| dont go the way Voss wants.
|
| In business, the person on the other side has alternatives and
| they can walk away at any time. They don't even have to talk to
| you. You can be rejected because of the most minor thing or
| nothing at all. People say "no" all the time, and you can't
| send your coworkers into the building to murder them for it.
|
| Voss just ignores the violent threat the criminal faces, and
| pretends the criminal is talking to him freely. But everyone in
| his negotiations knows every word he says is backed up with the
| threat of violence.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I dropped it about 2/3 through because too much of it was
| reading as plainly-bullshit. "I got a great deal on my truck
| by just saying 'how can I do that?' over and over! Here's how
| it went!" LOL, no you didn't, and no it didn't, and now I'm
| wondering whether literally any of your other stories were
| even a little true.
|
| I got a _very little_ bit out of it, but the useful bit could
| have been a blog post. The rest was egotistical crap that
| seemed to mainly be content-marketing for his business.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| It's been a while and I cant remember if that was a
| hypothetical applying his approach to a non-criminal
| negotiation, or if he was saying it was a real incident...
| but I remember reading it, and thinking: the only way that
| works is if the FBI is waiting to arrest you if you refuse.
| If he was saying those examples were real, I agree it
| sounds like bullshit. It's at best, a tactic that might be
| rarely useful.
| vessenes wrote:
| I'll throw in some thoughts about Never split the difference --
| there's a lot of useful perspective in that book, and I
| appreciated it. However, speaking 'technical founderese', the
| book is solely about a kind of negotiation that almost never
| occurs in business life: a single iteration game theoretic
| game.
|
| In real life, especially when you're younger than 60 and in
| business, every negotiation is part of an iterated game -- you
| are, much more than negotiating any single deal / job offer /
| contract term, figuring out who you want to work with, making
| friends and allies and partners along the way.
|
| In those terms, most of that book is toxic, or at least
| sociopathic. That's fine if your only job is to get terrorists
| to put away their guns. But, it's definitely less fine if you
| are cutting a deal with someone who you will definitely
| intersect with multiple times in your life. And that's most
| people, it turns out. :)
|
| Anyway, I think the book is super interesting, but I think
| technical types or those with a bit of ASD may find the
| relational approach hurts them more than winning any particular
| negotiation.
| fionic2 wrote:
| how do you compare this to "Getting to Yes Negotiating
| Agreement Without Giving In"
| wslh wrote:
| I start with five:
|
| 1. "Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points
| That Challenge Every Company" by Andrew Grove. It is a real CEO
| experiencing critical moments in a top company.
|
| 2. "How Life Imitates Chess" by Garry Kasparov (don't pay
| attention to the title...). Kasparov talks about different
| players with different styles and in different moments.
|
| 3. "New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics" edited by
| Thomas Tymoczko. Embed epistemological questions that at a higher
| level could be applied to business. In a way (2) is
| epistemological regarding chess and it ends when Deep Blue beats
| Kasparov and Kasparov start thinking in a new kind of chess
| called advanced chess (even if it was not successful).
|
| 4. Fred Wilson's blog, including MBA Mondays. Answers many
| questions from the perspective of a VC who can watch multiple
| companies execution at the same time and tell many humble
| stories.
|
| 5. "Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft" by Paul
| Allen. It shows you the deep story before Microsoft, seems like a
| unique technological and advanced experience at that time by Bill
| Gates and Paul Allen. Spoiler: the lucky IBM/DOS event is not why
| Microsoft is successful, the book gives you some deep roots
| before the company foundation.
| surprisetalk wrote:
| Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
| caloique wrote:
| 1) The richest man in Babylon 2) The four agreement 3) Secrets of
| the Millionaire Mind
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| Entrepreneurship Negotiation by Dinnar and Susskind covers some
| of the most fundamental topics anyone wanting to become an
| entrepreneur must know.
|
| I also find Richard Thaler work (Nudge, Misbehaving) very helpful
| particularly if you are in the B2C domain.
|
| The Black Swan by Taleb is another book I find myself going back
| to often; it's been of great help for decision making under lots
| of uncertainty.
| pdntspa wrote:
| You can get all the meaning you need from The Black Swan by
| just reading the first few chapters. Taleb has a nasty habit of
| saying the same thing over and over again and stretching it out
| to an entire book.
| blowski wrote:
| - The Mom Test
|
| - 4 Steps to the Epiphany
|
| - The Personal MBA (Josh Kaufman)
|
| - Lean Analytics
|
| - Good Strategy Bad Strategy
| jvaqueiro wrote:
| Looking back my too three are:
|
| Hooked by Nir Eyal Viral Loop by Adam L. Penenberg Shoe Dog by
| Phil Knight
| notsure357 wrote:
| Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through
| 100 Days of Rejection by Jia Jiang
|
| Highly enjoyable read! This book really captures the
| entrepreneurial experience of interviewing for insights while
| focusing on the fear of rejection, which is a major problem that
| isn't typically found in most other books on entrepreneurship.
| yumraj wrote:
| Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist
| theflyingkiwi42 wrote:
| e-myth, get a grip
| rigmarole wrote:
| "Badass: Making Users Awesome" by Kathy Sierra. I don't see it
| often in lists like these. But it's an awesome and approachable
| book for framing your products, services, user journey, and
| marketing from the viewpoint of how they'll make your users
| successful and feeling amazing.
| e61133e3 wrote:
| Build by Tony Fadell
| avemuri wrote:
| High output management
| shrubble wrote:
| High Stakes, No Prisoners by Charles Ferguson:
|
| "Charles Ferguson started Vermeer Technologies and turned his
| very cool, very big idea into FrontPage, the first software
| product for creating and managing a website. A mere twenty months
| after starting the company, he sold it to Microsoft for $133
| million, making a fortune for himself and his associates.
| FrontPage now has millions of users and is bundled with Microsoft
| Office. But getting there wasn't always fun."
| eastbound wrote:
| It's always funny to hear positive things about an infamously
| awful piece of software. Like someone would write about IE5, or
| Larry Ellison writing Oracle, they did irremediable harm to the
| world, but the people who grew when those people were young,
| may still have the positive initial image of them.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| The E-Myth is the only business book which ever left a lasting
| impression on me. It's about "working on your business rather
| than in it" and systematising everything.
| clarkevans wrote:
| Switch, How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan
| Heath.
| jackconsidine wrote:
| For me, I'd be nowhere without these.
|
| In sort of curriculum order:
|
| - Built to Sell - really easy gateway
|
| - The E-Myth Revisited (withstand the writing style, glib
| observations)
|
| - The Business Model Generation book- massive leap in
| understanding after this
|
| - Traction (Gabriel Weinberg). Marketing entrypoint zeroed into
| today
|
| - Managing the Professional Service Firm (Maiser) (incidentally
| related to what I do but so useful)
|
| - Thinking in Systems (Meadows)
|
| - An Elegant Puzzle (Engineering management book by Will Larson.
| Actionable and bite-sized)
|
| - Measure What Matters (Doerr)
|
| - Crossing the Chasm
|
| - Blue Ocean Strategy
|
| - Never Split the difference (eh)
|
| - Design of everyday things (not as niche as I thought,
| perspective altering)
|
| Some sales books (I held my nose while reading, but useful
| insights)
|
| - The Science of Selling
|
| - S.P.I.N. Selling
|
| - The Challenger Sale
| breck wrote:
| I love autobiographies. Made in Japan (Sony), Made in America
| (Walmart), My Father Marconi (not quite an autobiography, but by
| his daughter).
|
| My Father Marconi especially. The story of when he sent the first
| radio transmission across the air in his attic as a boy is wild.
| weisbaum wrote:
| Blue Ocean Strategy by Renee Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim has not
| been mentioned here and is an amazing read, and very well
| regarded by a lot of high profile folks.
| jonbischke wrote:
| The Hard Thing About Hard Things. We bought a copy for every
| employee at my last company to help convey the messages that
| startups are not designed to be tons of fun but rather a tough
| (yet rewarding) grind. This was especially important for people
| who were coming from bigger companies to understand.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| It's a good book, but the part where he says to collude with
| your friends on hiring (no poaching, no cold calling, informing
| the other when someone applies, etc)... that's what
| Google/Adobe/Apple/etc were sued for a while back. Don't do
| that.
| dmkirwan wrote:
| I assume you're not interested in hearing the obvious ones (zero
| to one, lean startup, etc., etc.) so I'll recommend two.
|
| At the early stages when you're defining your strategy? "Good
| strategy/bad strategy" by Richard P. Rumelt. "Strategy" is thrown
| around a whole lot in business, often by somebody who is talking
| about a goal, as opposed to how to reach it. This book can get a
| little repetitive but the overarching teachings are valuable and
| will serve you well throughout your entrepreneurship journey.
|
| After the startup phase (growth/acquisition)? I recommend "The
| messy middle" by Scott Belsky.
| hkhanna wrote:
| I read The Messy Middle and thought like the chapter _titles_
| were phenomenal, but felt everything in the actual chapters was
| fluff. Maybe I 'll give it another try!
| collin128 wrote:
| The messy middle was fantastic. Only reason I didn't list it in
| my comment below was that I read it recently and I'm 11 years
| in.
|
| Highly recommend the book.
| collin128 wrote:
| Steve Blank's blog (not a book, I know) + The Startup Owners
| Manual also by Steve Blank.
|
| Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen.
|
| The two helped me understand what it meant to 'get out of the
| building'.
|
| 7 Powers + Good Strategy Bad Strategy helped me think long term
| about the business model and evolution of the company.
| pawurb wrote:
| Hourly Billing Is Nuts by Jonathan Stark
|
| From all the "business" books I've read this one is just packed
| with actionable advice instead of motivational gibberrish. I've
| built my productivized consulting offer based on these tips, and
| it helped me quit full-time job over 3 years ago. So far no plans
| to go back.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| What's the alternative model?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Value-based pricing.
| wpietri wrote:
| Lots of good suggestions here. One I don't see is Wotdke's
| "Radical Focus". It's about OKRs, but don't be put off by prior
| big-corp experiences with it. The book focuses on using them in
| an entrepreneurial context and it's great. Even if you decide to
| come up with your own system, this will help clarify what you
| want out of a way to set goals and make sure you're on track for
| them.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've read a tall stack of business books, and in all honesty, I
| think only one of them was of any real value to me. It also has
| the benefits of being short and an easy read.
|
| "The Incredible Secret Money Machine II" by Don Lancaster
| throwaway4good wrote:
| How to get rich by Felix Dennis - at least it is entertaining.
| erybodyknows wrote:
| 'The Millionaire Fastlane' by MJ DeMarco. Laughable title aside,
| the content is life changing.
| all2 wrote:
| I joined their forums about 10 years ago and asked a question
| about a business idea. Basically I was asking about starting a
| gold/silver business directory thing based on some business
| described in the book. I was trying to understand some basics
| of what was being said. My post was not well received and MJ
| himself came in to tell me what an idiot I was.
|
| I don't think I asked any more questions, and I left the PDF in
| the ash heap of my reading pile.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Really depends on your current skill set. Can you sell? If not,
| I'd start there. Almost everything else derives from selling.
| jessep wrote:
| "The Art of Action" It has changed how I approach everything, not
| just how I run my business. Is applying approaches used in
| militaries to organize action around the leader's intent, taking
| action in the right general direction, and delegating the "what"
| (the intent) but not the "how" of the way it is actually
| achieved.
| dadrian wrote:
| Systems of Engineering Management (Larson) - Best practical
| advice for dealing with software engineering teams
|
| Leading at the Speed of Growth (Catlin & Matthews) - Despite the
| title making me want to vomit, it has a bunch of practical advice
| about problems you'll encounter at various "stages" of a company,
| and how to identify what stage you're in.
|
| The First 90 Days (Watkins) - Useful if you ever take on a
| leadership role where the current state of the organization could
| be described as a "shitshow".
|
| Good Strategy / Bad Strategy (Rumelt) - Learn the difference
| between goals and strategy and plans.
| chromaton wrote:
| _Think and Grow Rich_ - Napoleon Hill
|
| _Making Money Is Killing Your Business_ - Chuck Blakeman
| jfernandez wrote:
| Sprint (product development and testing)
|
| It left me with a more fundamental, "first principles" outlook on
| the 5 key stages of doing _anything_:
|
| 1. Understand
|
| 2. Explore
|
| 3. Decide
|
| 4. Prototype/Build
|
| 5. Test
|
| So for example, when things often go wrong it's because a stage
| was skipped, done out of sequence, or extremely neglected.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Founder of a bootstrapped 17 year-old SaaS company here.
|
| I've read countless books on this topic.
|
| The book that helped me the most was "Good to Great" by Jim
| Collins.
|
| It has memorable nuggets of advice, summarised neatly into
| insightful chapters.
|
| Once you learn these nuggets you never forget them, and you end
| up leveraging them regularly in your day-to-day entrepreneurial
| decisions.
|
| It's a bit like Covey's 7 Habits book, but geared for
| entrepreneurs wanting to grow a successful business.
|
| Good luck on your journey. It's tough, but worth it.
| harryvederci wrote:
| Do you have an example nugget that stuck with you?
| jeron wrote:
| check out the Farnam Street Knowledge Podcast episode with
| Jim Collins[0]. Just from the webpage there's really good
| ideas as excerpts from the podcast
|
| [0]: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/jim-collins/
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| The Divine Comedy and The Prince. Not joking.
| scop wrote:
| I was going to suggest Moby Dick...also not joking!
| rgalate wrote:
| Not quite specific to entrepreneurship, but a while ago someone
| shared their project of a site that lists the most recommended
| books on hackernews [1]. The most recommended books are there for
| easy reference.
|
| [1] HackerNews Readings: https://hacker-recommended-
| books.vercel.app/category/0/all-t...
| duckmysick wrote:
| Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.
|
| It's unconventional, because it's not strictly about businesses
| or startups or selling.
|
| But if you think about, running a business is doing predictable
| things over and over again. Problem is, it's so complicated and
| there's so many things you need to take care of. Breaking them
| down into smallest possible steps and making habits out of them
| kept me moving. Write one sentence. Dial one number. Open one
| email. Process one invoice. It quickly snowballed.
|
| Later, when I started scaling and delegating, I had a blueprint
| ready for someone else. Because they would struggle too.
|
| And that's just a business side. The book also helped me with
| personal habits.
| [deleted]
| lanstein wrote:
| Advice to Founders and CEOs
|
| - Dear Founder (Maynard Webb) - The Hard Things About Hard Things
| (Ben Horowitz) - Straight Talk for Startups (Randy Komisar and
| Jantoon Reigersman) - The Founders' Dilemmas (Noam Wasserman) -
| The Entrepreneur's Daily Nietzsche (Brad Feld and Dave Jilk) -
| Build (Tony Fadell) - Zero to IPO (Frederic Kerrest) - The Great
| CEO Within (Matt Mochary)
|
| Finance
|
| - Wharton's Introduction to Financial Accounting course:
| [https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting](https://w...
| - How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the
| Numbers (Mihir Desai) - Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs:
| What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Karen Berman and
| Joe Knight)
|
| Open-Book Company (Employee Ownership, Financial Literacy, Goal-
| setting)
|
| - The Great Game of Business (Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham)
|
| Legal
|
| - Acceleration (Ryan Roberts) - The Entrepreneur's Guide to Law
| and Strategy (Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchy)
|
| Company Strategy and Direction (post-product/market fit)
|
| - Crossing the Chasm (Geoff Moore) - Zone to Win (Geoff Moore) -
| Only the Paranoid Survive (Andy Grove) - Blitzscaling (Reid
| Hoffman and Chris Yeh) - The Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton
| Christensen) - Good to Great (Jim Collins) - Playing to Win (A.G.
| Lafley and Roger Martin) - Tape Sucks (Frank Slootman) - Strategy
| vol. 1&2 (Harvard Business Review)
|
| Pricing
|
| - Monetizing Innovation (Georg Tacke and Madhavan Ramanujan) -
| Confessions of the Pricing Man (Hermann Simon)
|
| Startup Phase
|
| - The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) - The Four Steps to the Epiphany
| (Steve Blank) - Zero to One (Peter Thiel)
|
| Management/Leadership
|
| - The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker) - Managing Humans
| (Michael Lopp) - The Art of Leadership (Michael Lopp) - High
| Output Management (Andy Grove) - Managing Oneself (Peter Drucker)
| - Essentials: Management (First Round Capital) - The Making of a
| Manager (Julie Zhuo) - The Powell Principles (Oren Harari) -
| Radical Candor (Kim Scott) - Leading Matters (John L. Hennessy)
| (fantastic book list in the coda) - Turn the Ship Around (L.
| David Marquet) (this is THE book on delegation) - Principles (Ray
| Dalio)
|
| COO/Succession Planning
|
| - Riding Shotgun (Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles)
|
| People Performance/HR/Culture
|
| - Powerful (Patty McCord) - No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings and
| Erin Meyer) - Netflix culture deck - The Five Dysfunctions of a
| Team (Patrick Lencioni) - Work Rules! (Laszlo Bock) - It Doesn't
| Have to Be Crazy at Work (DHH and Jason Fried) - The Culture Map
| (Erin Meyer) - The Talent War (Mike Sarraille and George Randle)
| - Great People Decisions (Claudio Fernandez-Araoz) - The Holloway
| Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring (Ozzie Osman) - Punished
| by Rewards (Alfie Kohn)
|
| Purpose, Passion, and Self
|
| - Start with Why (Simon Sinek) - What You Do is Who You Are (Ben
| Horowitz) - Drive (Daniel Pink) - Mindset (Carol Dweck) - Grit
| (Angela Duckworth) - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric
| Jorgenson)
|
| Fundraising/VC
|
| - Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Scott Kupor) - Venture Deals (Brad
| Feld and Jason Mendelson) - Raising Venture Capital (Andy Sparks)
| - The Business of Venture Capital (Mahendra Ramsinghani) - Done
| Deals (Udayan Gupta) - The Power Law (Sebastian Mallaby) - VC
| (Tom Nicholas)
|
| Board
|
| - Boardroom Excellence (Paul Brountas) - Startups Boards (Brad
| Feld and Mahendra Ramsinghani)
|
| M&A
|
| - Winning (Jack Welch) - M&A chapter - Connecting the Dots (John
| Chambers) - M&A chapter
|
| Marketing
|
| - Data-Driven Marketing (Mark Jeffery) - Positioning (Al Ries and
| Jack Trout) - Scientific Advertising (Claude Hopkins) - Traction
| (Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares) - Behind the Cloud (Marc
| Benioff and Carlye Adler) - Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy)
| - Marketing High Technology (William Davidow)
|
| Psychology
|
| - Influence (Robert Cialdini)
|
| Negotiation
|
| First, read Influence (under Psychology), then, in order
|
| - Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke) - Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher
| and William Ury) - Never Split the Difference (Chris Voss) - The
| Bald Truth (David Falk)
|
| Self
|
| - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey)
|
| Design and UX
|
| - Creative Confidence (Tom Kelley and David Kelley)
|
| AI (Machine Learning, Deep Learning/Neural Networks)
|
| - Andrew Ng's AI for Everyone course:
| [https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone](https://www....
|
| Growth (Data Science, etc.)
|
| - Hacking Growth (Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown)
|
| Graph Theory
|
| Product
|
| - Inspired (Marty Cagan) - Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)
|
| Customer Loyalty/Customer Success
|
| - Delivering Happiness (Tony Hsieh) - Setting the Table (Danny
| Meyer)
|
| Finding a Startup Job
|
| - Entering StartupLand (Jeffrey Bussgang)
|
| CIO as ICP
|
| - The CIO Paradox (Martha Heller) - Be the Business (Martha
| Heller)
|
| Stories
|
| - Made in America (Sam Walton) - Shoe Dog (Phil Knight) - The
| Everything Store (Brad Stone) - Built from Scratch (Bernie Marcus
| and Arthur Blank) - Hard Drive (James Wallace) - Steve Jobs
| (Walter Isaacson) - Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) - Creativity, Inc.
| (Ed Catmull) - The Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger) - Valley of
| Genius (Adam Fisher) - The Idea Factory (Jon Gertner) - Dealers
| of Lightning (Michael Hertzik) - Idea Man (Paul Allen) - Pour
| Your Heart Into It (Howard Schultz)
| frabia wrote:
| A book that I really want to recommend to anybody in the process
| of validating product and business ideas: "The right it" by
| Alberto Savoia
| bikeformind wrote:
| Here are some suggestions on the more creative and less tactical
| spectrum.
|
| How To Get Rich: Felix Dennis
|
| Don't be fooled by the title. A lifetime of insights and
| experience from a pioneering publishing magnate condensed into a
| light enjoyable read.
|
| Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull
|
| goes into great detail about the early days of Pixar. So many
| actionable lessons about entrepreneurship and operating a
| creative organization.
|
| The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
|
| Not just for artists this book is a bible for anyone who has
| difficulty getting out of their own way. provides useful
| frameworks to understand the concept of resistance and recognize
| negative self defeating thought patterns that many entrepreneurs
| struggle with.
| ljf wrote:
| While I briefly ran a 'start up' with a friend (we weren't what
| most people here would consider a start up), we used the book
| 'Business Model Generation' almost weekly as we adjusted our
| business and pitched for new work.
|
| I still go back to that when kicking off a new project.
| ary wrote:
| "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick - How to talk to customers &
| learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to
| you.
|
| https://a.co/d/8KzUk8b
|
| It ended up saving us a lot of time.
| jereze wrote:
| I absolutely recommend it.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| I can't recommend this book enough. Even if you have a lot of
| experience with early stage customer development, you'll learn
| things from The Mom Test
| mdorazio wrote:
| I also think this is a must-read for would-be entrepreneurs.
| Probably nine times out of ten when someone tells me about
| their startup idea looking for advice I point them to this book
| first because they haven't done the basic validation yet and
| want to jump right into building something that no one actually
| wants.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Small Giants
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Marcus Aurelius, CTFO
| pombo wrote:
| Traction by Weinberg. Understanding the distribution of your
| product, how to think about it and how much resources to devote
| to it was a missing piece for me as a technical founder. I easily
| fall into the fallacy of "build it and they will come" even when
| I don't think I do.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| "Built to Sell" - quick read, but transformative for me because
| something about it clicked with me and got me to pivot from
| selling "work" to selling "products"
| swah wrote:
| Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, bar none
| jacktribe wrote:
| As someone who is more interested in building the product than
| marketing it, I found the following recent reads helpful in
| achieving a balance:
|
| 1. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore - making your product
| work for the masses
|
| 2. The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen - achieving escape
| velocity, getting viral referral traffic
|
| 3. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss - it might seem a bit
| gimmicky but negotiation always comes off gimmicky
|
| Motivational stories:
|
| 4. The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
|
| 5. The Founders by Jimmy Soni
|
| 6. The Upstarts by Brad Stone
|
| 7. Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton
|
| 8. That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph
|
| 9. Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc
|
| Can't skip:
|
| 10. Zero To One by Peter Thiel
| manv1 wrote:
| Oh, one smaller but useful book:
|
| Design is a job, by Mike Monteiro
|
| Even though it's targeted towards designers, it's actually about
| businesses that happen to be small design shops. The same
| principles apply: value your work, don't do work for free,
| dealing with clients, contacts, etc.
| manv1 wrote:
| Traction, by Weinberg.
|
| It goes over the various sales channels. How you get customers
| should really be the #1 priority for your startup.
|
| Building stuff is easy. Getting customers is hard. And "if you
| build it they will come" doesn't really work most of the time
| IRL.
| e9 wrote:
| Shipping Greatness by Chris Vander Mey
| awinter-py wrote:
| Bunch of mentions of cold start problem here already.
|
| I at first assumed this book was just its title, and was some
| combination of 'launch to a lot of people in a narrow space' plus
| 'personal value precedes network value'.
|
| There's actually a lot more in it, especially about the
| granularity of scaling at uber.
|
| For me the book landed after I'd already tried and failed to
| start a network by onboarding individuals. The 'atomic networks'
| stuff in there is gold. (Though for someone like me who learns
| through failure, I needed to try everything else before the
| message landed).
| franze wrote:
| Mr Nice by Howard Marks
|
| Yes, he was a criminal, with great entrepreneur spirit.
| pedalpete wrote:
| Finite and Infinite Games - James P. Chase
| joshmanders wrote:
| Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling
|
| Company of One by Paul Jarvis
| davidw wrote:
| Start Small, Stay Small is one of the least fluffy books I've
| ever read, with tons of practical advice. It's unfortunately a
| bit dated, but I heard he's working on a new one.
| aerodog wrote:
| The Quran
| [deleted]
| paulorlando wrote:
| Here are a few others I haven't seen mentioned. - The Price
| Whisperer (pricing is important and mostly ignored by startups) -
| Startup Myths and Models (title explains it) - Measure What
| Matters (using OKRs) - Growth Units (figure out your unit
| economics - LTV and CAC)
| ahulak wrote:
| The Mouse Driver Chronicles
|
| Not totally game changing, but a great story that can help keep
| you motivated!
| shw1n wrote:
| The E-Myth - creating systems and processes
|
| The Personal MBA - crash course MBA
|
| Founders At Work - understanding how different startups survived
|
| Buy Back Your Time - management and delegation
|
| The Charisma Myth - to help w/ charm for sales
|
| SPIN Selling - this + The Charisma Myth more than doubled our
| sales conversion rate
|
| These books were the most crucial for me
| wpietri wrote:
| I second E-Myth and Founders at Work. And let me add Crossing
| the Chasm, which totally shaped my understanding of who buys
| what when.
| shw1n wrote:
| Wow completely forgot about crossing the chasm, good call
| jll29 wrote:
| +1 for mentioning Neil Rackham's (1988) classic "Spin Selling".
|
| Got it recommended from a friend after his exit (and after
| buying a French mansion from his share of the proceeds) when I
| asked him what he can recommend on understanding sales, in
| particular sales of (complex) technology. It's indeed a marvel
| for people new to selling.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| zero to one by peter thiel.
| rglover wrote:
| - Awareness by Anthony DeMello
|
| - The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi
|
| - The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
|
| - Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove
|
| ---
|
| More stuff here: http://www.ryanglover.net/library/ (not flagged
| specific to entrepreneurship but all have had an influence in one
| way or another).
| mindcrime wrote:
| _The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand_
|
| I love seeing this on your list. Firstly because it's a great
| book, and secondly just because Rand is so under-appreciated in
| general. Especially here on HN where her name seems to be all
| but verboten for some strange reason.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ - Steve Blank
|
| _The Discipline of Market Leaders_ - Fred Wiersema and Michael
| Treacy
|
| _It 's Not the Big that Eat the Small...It's the Fast that Eat
| the Slow_ - Jason Jennings
|
| _Mastering The Complex Sale_ - Jeff Thull
|
| _How To Measure Anything_ - Douglas Hubbard
| petercooper wrote:
| _" Ready, Fire, Aim"_ by Michael Masterson. It's a bit cheesy,
| but it has a publishing industry slant which suited me and enough
| things resonated that filtered into decisions I made that I'm
| thankful for it. I never went it past the first half of the book
| as you're meant to be doing $10m revenue before you move on ;-)
| ranabuzdar wrote:
| Here are some of the most popular ones:
|
| The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Zero to One by Peter Thiel The 7
| Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Think and Grow
| Rich by Napoleon Hill The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber Good
| to Great by Jim Collins The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone
| Zander and Benjamin Zander The Hard Thing About Hard Things by
| Ben Horowitz The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
| Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson These books
| cover various aspects of entrepreneurship, from idea generation
| and innovation to leadership and management. Each one offers a
| unique perspective and valuable insights that can help
| entrepreneurs navigate the challenges and opportunities of
| starting and growing a business.
| gfsgfjsgsj wrote:
| Founders at Work. Just gave me a good sense of how near death and
| growth are just part of the game. But also tipped me to decide to
| move to SF Bay Area.
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