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How to think like an entrepreneur, wherever you are

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Re: How to think like an entrepreneur, wherever you are

#21

Post by dabent »

brlewis wrote: post #17

Founders at Work is a good book of web startup case studies. Are there others? What I really want is a place where people who run web startups post, "here's something I did to improve my product" and "here's something I did to reach my market" with specifics about their product and market. That's how I could build a mental database of "chunks". HN is often too high-level (acquisitions, financing) or too low-level (pr…

The "Traction" podcasts by Gabriel Weinberg are very good.

http://tractionbook.com/

They have real discussions of what people did to get their business going.

Re: How to think like an entrepreneur, wherever you are

#22

Post by tomjen3 »

This is very good information, but there is a danger in just sucking up as much information as possible. Study hacks blogged about a very interesting study some time ago (http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-grandmaster-in-the...) in which it was found that time spend studying chess was only weakly correlated with how good you where - if you merely put in the hours, you could learn to become pretty good at chess, but the grandmasters didn't just study more or harder, they studied in a different way.

Rather than simply memorizing chess games, they read old games and tried to predict what the next move would be - which the intermediate players didn't do (or at least not very much).

So if you want to be a business grandmaster, you may have to read the businessbooks in an entirely different way from what everybody else does.

Re: How to think like an entrepreneur, wherever you are

#24

Post by icey »

tomjen3 wrote: post #22

This is very good information, but there is a danger in just sucking up as much information as possible. Study hacks blogged about a very interesting study some time ago ( http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-grandmaster-in-the... ) in which it was found that time spend studying chess was only weakly correlated with how good you where - if you merely put in the hours, you could learn to become pretty good at che…

I had a chemistry teacher who used to say "Consumption does not equal comprehension" during the materials review the day before all of his tests.

His point was that memorizing notes wasn't going to help you pass; you had to actually work on solving problems in order to really learn the material.

Re: How to think like an entrepreneur, wherever you are

#26

Post by ahoyhere »

icey wrote: post #24
tomjen3 wrote: post #22

This is very good information, but there is a danger in just sucking up as much information as possible. Study hacks blogged about a very interesting study some time ago ( http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-grandmaster-in-the... ) in which it was found that time spend studying chess was only weakly correlated with how good you where - if you merely put in the hours, you could learn to become pretty good at che…

I had a chemistry teacher who used to say "Consumption does not equal comprehension" during the materials review the day before all of his tests. His point was that memorizing notes wasn't going to help you pass; you had to actually work on solving problems in order to really learn the material.

I agree with both of you.

That's why I (author of the essay) added that you have to look at the case studies and ask yourself what you would have done, how that could be applied to other situations, etc. That's the only way to build reusable mental patterns (IMO - not sure if there's scientific evidence for that! except mental practice of athletes, musicians, etc...)

Too bad I had a word limit to work with :D

Re: How to think like an entrepreneur, wherever you are

#28

Post by pchristensen »

hboon wrote: post #13
davidw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my favorite business books is 'Growing a Business' by Paul Hawken. It's from the 80ies, but much of his advice would look quite at home in a blog post by 37signals or some such.

Not available on B&N and Amazon as eBook. Sigh.

It's worth killing the tree for.

Re: How to think like an entrepreneur, wherever you are

#29

Post by AndrewWarner »

minouye wrote: post #20
brlewis wrote: post #17

Founders at Work is a good book of web startup case studies. Are there others? What I really want is a place where people who run web startups post, "here's something I did to improve my product" and "here's something I did to reach my market" with specifics about their product and market. That's how I could build a mental database of "chunks". HN is often too high-level (acquisitions, financing) or too low-level (pr…

Mixergy often has highly actionable information based on the interviews that Andrew does. If you find interviews that are relevant to your industry/product/vertical, they can be really helpful.

Thanks. I try to model my interviews on JL's work.

Re: How to think like an entrepreneur, wherever you are

#30

Post by ahoyhere »

brlewis wrote: post #17

Founders at Work is a good book of web startup case studies. Are there others? What I really want is a place where people who run web startups post, "here's something I did to improve my product" and "here's something I did to reach my market" with specifics about their product and market. That's how I could build a mental database of "chunks". HN is often too high-level (acquisitions, financing) or too low-level (pr…

I strongly encourage you to bridge out beyond just "startup" media. It's not as if the idea of beginning a company from nothing is a new concept these past 5 years.
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