[HN Gopher] 20 Books on Starting a Profitable SaaS Business
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20 Books on Starting a Profitable SaaS Business
Author : misiax
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-06-11 20:38 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratoflow.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratoflow.com)
| prakhar897 wrote:
| I think the only knowledge u need is:
|
| - Make a plan
|
| - Execute it
|
| - Execute Faster
|
| - Even more Faster
|
| If you get stuck in some parts such as Market Validation, then
| picking up the recommended book will be useful. It's easier to
| learn after failing.
|
| I used to take months thinking about idea, market validation,
| half-decent codebase. Nowadays it's more of build in a day and
| try the best marketing channels according to the product. Then
| onto the next one. Improved "Turn Around Time" really helps in
| increasing number of iterations.
|
| If it's loved(tolerated) in its worst possible self, then it has
| a chance.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| I've read all but three of these books and I've been building
| startups for 12 years.
|
| Some of them are excellent, some have better alternatives since
| they were published, and some are outright obsolete/no longer
| valid.
| crimsontech wrote:
| Which ones are excellent?
| ViperPilot wrote:
| Seconded. Also, what are the alternatives?
| marcopicentini wrote:
| Nowadays, you could learn more and faster using Chat GPT-4 rather
| of reading such books.
| dennisy wrote:
| Very sad to see such comments. We humans will still require
| attention spans longer than goldfish even with GPT.
| Applejinx wrote:
| My first thought was '20 books on starting a profitable SaaS
| business that were all actually written by ChatGPT'.
|
| I'm guessing if the 20 books are actually written by people in
| all seriousness and the belief that they understood and cared
| about the subject, they're probably still going to be better
| than what we'll have in ten years, which is 200 books all of
| which are echoing voids of ChatGPT.
|
| It'll be a lot cheaper to produce such books and put them into
| the marketplace if you don't actually have to write, learn, or
| know anything: so much cheaper that it'll become untenable to
| write 'real' books.
|
| Which mostly means 'marketplace' will stop meaning anything.
| Knowledge will still mean something but we'll have to arrive at
| it and disseminate it in different ways that don't resemble the
| commercial marketplace, as that will not stand up against the
| cheapness of AI labor.
| ethanbond wrote:
| The one book I've "quizzed" GPT4 on, it gave sufficiently good
| answers to convince someone they understood the book but
| actually missed almost everything salient about it.
|
| Not super relevant but this was Henry George's Progress &
| Poverty, so a pretty well-known book with fairly detailed
| arguments.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I read a lot of startup books. The value is spending time in
| these books to really internalize them.
|
| Summarization tools have existed for a while. They don't take
| off because they can solve the core problem of deep learning.
| It takes time to reshape how you think. Reading some summaries
| won't do that.
| geniium wrote:
| I feel this too
| BigElephant wrote:
| Can you explain how you use Chat GPT-4 to do this?
| pc86 wrote:
| You can't.
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| Any books on generating ideas?
|
| I feel like im stuck on step 1.
| hackernews333 wrote:
| Try to do any task on a computer and you'll find 95% of
| existing things suck and can be improved. You can sell these
| improvements. Don't worry about competition, that just means
| your idea has been validated. Make stuff you want to use
| yourself, that way even if you fail to sell to others, you're
| not at a complete loss. Plus you do not need to repeatedly
| iterate with a customer if you are the customer.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| To add to this, the bigger the improvement you offer, the
| easier it is to sell.
|
| Selling a 10% improvement it hard, selling a 10x improvement
| is much easier...
| pmichaud wrote:
| Ask a lot of people what their problems are, and when a pattern
| emerges, try to solve it for them.
| juliushuijnk wrote:
| You might have ideas, but don't write them down because you
| don't think they're profound enough (yet). In that case, I'd
| suggest to track those ideas in an app or book. This gives you
| something to play with and reflect on, find patterns.
|
| If you actually have few ideas. then that is also fine. Why do
| you think you need ideas? You can think about or work on other
| people's ideas.
| lubujackson wrote:
| Ignore ideas, notice problems. If you focus on that, profitable
| startup ideas will come from noticing small, repeatable
| annoyances.
|
| Cool ideas are the bane of startups. What you need are problems
| that lack sufficient solutions. Sometimes a solution does exist
| but not for certain groups or only at certain budget levels -
| that's a startup! Flow like water to fill gaps in the market.
| geniium wrote:
| Running Lean, by Ash Maurya. It's a great blueprint on how to
| start.
|
| +don't hesitate to take shortcuts
| nsb1 wrote:
| IaaS - Ideas As A Service. There's your idea.
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| Maybe a website for people to share ideas for things they
| would want but don't have time to work on.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I used to read these types of books (including the most popular
| of the bunch listed here) years ago. I had this idea that if I
| just kept reading this stuff, I would eventually just "get it".
| (I never did. I "got it" much faster by reading individual
| comments from select people, and trying things out by myself)
|
| The thing is, it seems to me that many of these books are just
| extremely information-sparse. Very very lengthened ways of making
| a small set of points. And because of that, I don't particularly
| remember the lessons learned from the lot.
|
| 200 pages to tell you to talk to your customers? 300 pages to
| explain that you should focus on your core business and not get
| sidetracked?
|
| Here's a challenge to those who have read books in that list.
| Pick one you've found useful, and tell me how it changed you.
| Then look at your comment and decide whether the book could have
| just made that same point in that many words.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I've only read some of these books, but the ones I've read had
| 20 or 30 points or pieces of advice that took a few pages each.
| One of them would put just a few sentences on each page. If it
| takes you a long time to read the sentences that expand or
| illustrate the idea, learn to skim.
| dizzydes wrote:
| This.
|
| Maybe reading a few on Blinkist initially but all one really
| needs:
|
| - is repeatedly trying (even on a side project)
|
| - first principles thinking/common sense
|
| Why? Because:
|
| - all those books are repetitive
|
| - we learn faster by doing
|
| - problems a given project faces at a given time are highly
| situational
| scrollaway wrote:
| Yeah I really like the idea of Blinkist but I never tried it.
| Have you?
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| There's no way 20 books are necessary. You can achieve near
| expertise in many domains with 2 or 3 really good books, what
| do the remaining 17 add?
| wg0 wrote:
| Not every book is worth reading. There's only one or few
| original works and rest is always commentary or reaction,
| rejections and impressions.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Ive read most of these books over my career. There is
| absolutely a plateau of learning.
|
| I find the value in continuing to read these books is
| offering a new perspective (or at least new wording) on a
| topic I've lost touch with over time.
|
| For example, I don't really get much out of re-reading "the
| lean startup ". I know the core principles by heart. I do
| however tend to forget them over time. They get lost in the
| noise of my day to day. However, simply re-reading the same
| book doesn't bring them back sharply. I find, instead, that
| reading a similar book helps bring back the vividness.
| melx wrote:
| Oh cheers! I read The Lean Startup and due to my leaky memory I
| remember nothing! But it's as you say: 200 pages to tell
| "iterate more often on product updates". Hell yeah.
| roflyear wrote:
| SaaS always seemed like a way to scam investors, to me. At least
| with most products...
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| What would help me is a guide for all the non-core product
| considerations - legal compliance (gdpr, insurance, etc), and
| then non-core stuff like how to best implement costings (maybe
| $99 price tag sells >1% better than $100, etc). I'm not really
| sure where to look for this kinda stuff, maybe these books?
| maxFlow wrote:
| Pick two books at random and start building as you read them.
|
| Do you want to build a profitable business or do you want to
| theorize how to build one?
| doctor_eval wrote:
| > Do you want to build a profitable business or do you want to
| theorize how to build one?
|
| I was part of a startup with an inexperienced angel who
| insisted on bringing in a CEO. The CEO made a good pitch to me
| that we would adopt the lean startup model, so I went along
| with it.
|
| Anyway the moment he started, the book went out the door. We
| didn't have time to discuss things like strategy and market
| positioning and hypotheses (though he used the word at every
| opportunity) but we had plenty of time to have risk assessment
| meetings and road maps and CRM system integrations (zero
| customers mind you), monthly 3 hour board meetings and weekly 2
| hour "senior executive meetings". The board and executive was
| larger than our headcount. I had brought an experienced team
| into the business with me and they were just flown into the
| ground with this inanity. (It turns out that despite what I'd
| been told, CEO had only ever been in corporate settings and had
| basically no experience with starting a business).
|
| Anyway the outcome was as expected. I've been in startups my
| whole professional life and this was easily the worst
| experience of career.
|
| The moral of this story is that building a business is hard and
| none of the books are going to tell you how to do it. So I
| agree with the parent comment. Pick a couple of books, read
| them, and get going. If things don't work out, read a couple
| more.
|
| But for God's sake, keep your eye on the prize - have a clear
| vision, execute an early version of it, find some customers,
| iterate.
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(page generated 2023-06-11 23:01 UTC)