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Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

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Re: Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

#11

Post by olalonde »

Paul Graham (YC/HN founder) has some good essays on startup/hacker culture. http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html is probably the one that had the biggest impact on me and is sort of a manifesto for startups.

Re: Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

#13

Post by teddyh »

Saying “Hacker/Startup culture” is a little like saying “C/C++” – they are not the same and should not be conflated. Actually, it’s more like saying “Lisp/Java” – many people are enamored by the latter and thinks that the former is very similar, but it is in fact only similar in some superficial ways, and completely different in design, values, and style.

Re: Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

#15

Post by arethuza »

I really liked The Lean Startup by Eric Ries - it's very opinionated (in a good way) about what a startup is and how they are rather different from "normal" companies.

All I need to do now is invent a time machine to send it to myself 20 years ago... :-)

It's also very prescriptive about the activities a startup management team should be focusing on which I suspect is a great place to start if you are coming into a new team in a leadership role.

Re: Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

#16

Post by calibraxis »

Not knowing much about him, let's throw a bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks:

- https://model-view-culture.myshopify.com/products/your-start...

- https://modelviewculture.com/

- Something by Don Reinertsen, maybe The Principles of Product Development Flow, maybe something else.

- Valve Employee Handbook http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...

- http://thinkrelevance.com/how-we-work

- Ries, The Lean Startup

All of these sources hide lots of dysfunction, so as always take them with a grain of salt. Take Ricardo Semler's fun books. In one of his Harvard Business School lectures, he mentioned how his books are artificially optimistic, because publishers want to sell more books.

Re: Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

#17

Post by diminoten »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #6

I've been looking for an entrepreneur book list for a long time too. I'm not nearly as experienced as your friend, so my books may be too basic. - Start here: http://www.ycombinator.com/resources/ There are many wonderful articles written by Graham himself. - The Four Steps to the Epiphany , Steve Blank. - The Art of the Start , Guy Kawasaki. - The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great C…

Aren't the two books by Steve Blank listed here mostly the same, content wise? I haven't read the Four Steps book, but in The Startup Owner's Manual, Steve Blank mentions it as being a successor, I think.

Obviously, someone who's actually read both could comment better than I.

Re: Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

#18

Post by [deleted] »

teddyh wrote: post #13

Saying “ Hacker/Startup culture ” is a little like saying “ C/C++ ” – they are not the same and should not be conflated. Actually, it’s more like saying “ Lisp/Java ” – many people are enamored by the latter and thinks that the former is very similar, but it is in fact only similar in some superficial ways, and completely different in design, values, and style.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

#20

Post by adriancooney »

teddyh wrote: post #13

Saying “ Hacker/Startup culture ” is a little like saying “ C/C++ ” – they are not the same and should not be conflated. Actually, it’s more like saying “ Lisp/Java ” – many people are enamored by the latter and thinks that the former is very similar, but it is in fact only similar in some superficial ways, and completely different in design, values, and style.

That may be true however, you have to cut the poster a little slack. He did post this on Hacker News which is run by the YCombinator, possibly the most prestigious startup incubator out there.
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