Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs • Hacker News Board

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#11

Post by AlexC04 » Mon, Jan 24, 2011, 7:12 PM UTC

theodore wrote: post #6

useful != "Must Read"

Despite your downvote, I agree with this.

Two things came to my mind when I landed on the page with links to 256 articles.

1) this isn't a "summary" of articles this is a "list of" articles. There's no time savings to be had by going through this list. In my opinion, it would be a wonderful & time saving "summary" if the article author read the article, and listed the key points contained within. As far as I can tell, the author of the list could just as easily have included the articles based on "has catchy title & contains a significant amount of text" How much repetition & Overlap? Which leads into my second thought upon landing on this page:

2) "Analysis Paralysis" - in the quest to become and entrepreneur one may very well get caught up on preparing to make that leap. There are numerous ways to do that, and the time spent reading those articles (256 articles * 10 minutes = 42 hours) could very well be better spent actually doing something

Anyways, I'm sure there are those that disagree with me (as evidenced by the down-vote you received). I certainly didn't evaluate the quality of the articles and maybe they're truly amazing, but I agree, this list isn't "MUST READ".

It looks like it's probably a quality list, but not "must read" or "a summary of"

EDIT: What I'd really love to see is an article entitled "What I've learned from reading all 256 'Must Read' articles" (don't leave out watching each of the videos linked up in full. That's at least 10 hours of TED talks)

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#12

Post by Swizec » Mon, Jan 24, 2011, 7:32 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #8

Umalu wrote: post #4

This is an impressive list of articles, and includes some of the best articles I have read on these topics. However, seeing so many of these articles in one place made me think two seditious thoughts: (1) Larry and Sergey didn't need a single one of these articles to start Google, and (2) if everyone else reads and acts according to these articles, you should probably do the opposite. Just as generals fight the last…

Here's a counter seditious thought ;-) Everyone spotlights the biggest success stories (in your case Google) and tries to exrapolate what the average should do to be like them. However, the average case won't be like the outliers regardless of what methodological is followed , and maximizing the profit for the average startup is likely wildly different from maximizing the profit of the outliers. Secondly, Google acte…

Failing that, you should know what others have done before you lest you repeat the same mistakes.

After fifty startups find out something doesn't work, should the fiftyfirst really try doing it?

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#13

Post by matthiaswh » Mon, Jan 24, 2011, 7:43 PM UTC

As others have pointed out, the term "must read" is often times thrown around very loosely. I'd probably be more satisfied with this if it were labeled "256 Articles for Starting Entrepreneurs That Might Help You Out" but that just isn't as catchy. The 'summary' part also threw me for a loop, as there aren't any summaries.

That being said, it's a fairly comprehensive list that does hold a lot of merit.

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#14

Post by bmelton » Mon, Jan 24, 2011, 8:16 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #12

true_religion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a counter seditious thought ;-) Everyone spotlights the biggest success stories (in your case Google) and tries to exrapolate what the average should do to be like them. However, the average case won't be like the outliers regardless of what methodological is followed , and maximizing the profit for the average startup is likely wildly different from maximizing the profit of the outliers. Secondly, Google acte…

Failing that, you should know what others have done before you lest you repeat the same mistakes. After fifty startups find out something doesn't work, should the fiftyfirst really try doing it?

Sometimes, I'd venture, that is exactly what makes the fifty first succesful.

There are guidelines to what you should do, and what you shouldn't do, but every case is different. Clearly, there are things that you aren't likely to ever want to do (rm -rf /), but there are plenty of instances in which a company didn't succeed doing x, and then a later company succeeded in doing exactly x. Whether it was due to a difference in the timing, or a difference in the market, or that something else within the company made x work differently for them than their predecessors, who knows.

Admittedly I'm just playing devil's advocate, but I feel like not enough focus is given to learning from these sorts of guides vs just blindly following them as a business plan.

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#15

Post by fleitz » Mon, Jan 24, 2011, 9:19 PM UTC

Probably the best advice is to learn to write compelling titles like "Must Read articles for Starting Entrepreneurs" vs. "The links on HN I've upvoted in the last year"

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#16

Post by gnaritas » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:59 AM UTC

Umalu wrote: post #4

This is an impressive list of articles, and includes some of the best articles I have read on these topics. However, seeing so many of these articles in one place made me think two seditious thoughts: (1) Larry and Sergey didn't need a single one of these articles to start Google, and (2) if everyone else reads and acts according to these articles, you should probably do the opposite. Just as generals fight the last…

> If you want the next out-of-left-field success

Most people are quite happy with plain old success; you generally don't need new industries or novel techniques to do that.

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#17

Post by mfalcon » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 3:13 AM UTC

How much "must read" articles, books, blogs do we've to read in order to be successful?. I don't think it's bad to read an article or so once in a while, but there is no "must read" list.

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#18

Post by jarek » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 5:11 AM UTC

Unrelated fact: the stock "article" picture at the top is from a Polish article about snap elections and Polish politics circa 2006.

Web copy: http://www.wprost.pl/ar/86230/Wybory-szeryfa/ (pictured part is on the second page), machine translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&...

Re: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

#19

Post by smarterchild » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 8:59 PM UTC

This doesn't really seem like an abridged version of a month's worth of reading...

If you get enough information, of course you can make a good business. The challenging part is condensing that so you can learn the right lessons in a non-geologic timescale.