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Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

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Re: Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

#81

Post by dadrian »

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.

Re: Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

#83

Post by eastbound »

shrubble wrote: post #72

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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

#84

Post by herodoturtle »

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.

Re: Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

#85

Post by germinalphrase »

pawurb wrote: post #49

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.

What’s the alternative model?

Re: Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

#87

Post by pedalpete »

samhsmith wrote: post #82

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

#89

Post by rgbrenner »

nukenuke wrote: post #65

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

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.

Re: Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?

#90

Post by yamtaddle »

rgbrenner wrote: post #89
nukenuke wrote: post #65

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

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…

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.

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