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Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

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Re: Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

#31

Post by aristus »

python_kiss wrote: post #20
notabel wrote: post #15

"Hackers and Painters" had an immense impact on me a couple of years ago. Like pg, I multiplex art and hackery (I suck at painting though--sculpture, printmaking, and theatrical design are my areas), so to read a book that validated and supported that duality was to find a good bit of clarity regarding my course in life. I still go back to H&P every few months, when I get worried about such things. Just yesterday I s…

Has anyone read "ANSI Common Lisp" by pg, yet? The painting on the front cover is actually by Paul :) http://images.pearsoned-ema.com/jpeg/large/9780133708752.jpg

Sure -- it's what got me into Lisp hackery after I had plateaued on other languages. This led to Emacs and then RSI, but 2 out of 3 ain't bad. :)

Re: Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

#32

Post by aristus »

I've had to make up for a college education so these may be old hat.

Alan Kay's UI lectures: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978270

Ed Tufte, especially Envisioning Information

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

Ed Yourdon: Death March... this is a great guide to dealing with enterprizey development. This shows you what to avoid in your own org.

Re: Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

#33

Post by bhb »

Some of these have been mentioned, but these stand out for me

Programming:

Getting Real

The Pragmatic Programmer

Hackers and Painters

Business:

Good to Great

Start Your Own Business (I knew basically nothing about small business before I started, and it's a good intro)

Crossing the Chasm (good so far, haven't finished)

Technology/Culture:

The Long Tail

The World is Flat

Productivity/People:

Getting Things Done

Getting to Yes

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Re: Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

#34

Post by bhb »

python_kiss wrote: post #2

About 14 months ago, I had little knowledge of how to execute a startup. In particular, I wasn't familiar with any online marketing tactics. The following books helped me a lot in that respective, and more: 1. Positioning, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing/Branding, Focus, Marketing Warfare 2. Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing (I didn't like "The Big Moo", "Free prize inside" or "Small is the new…

"The Long Tail" is definitely worth reading, although I sort of felt it was a topic that only deserved a long essay expanded into an entire book. Then again, I felt the same way about "The Tipping Point" - interesting idea and points, but it probably could have made just as big an impact in a book half the size.

Re: Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

#35

Post by nostrademons »

danw wrote: post #6
bootload wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

great list. I'll take some time to go through this. To this I'd add the - JOS software reading list [0] - JOS management reading list [1] There are gaps in these lists but pretty much cover the best for both programmers & business - types . But the lists needs updating as I note pg's 'Painters & Hackers' is not listed nor is Cal Hendersons 'Building Scalable Websites' [3]. Reference [0] Joel On Software 'Book Review,…

Hackers and Painters is on my list three times :) I'm going to have to check out Cal Hendersons book sometime but first I have to make a good site then I can worry about scaling it.

Cal addresses that by arranging his book in roughly the order that you should think about things. He recommends that you think about:

1. Version control

2. Issue tracking

3. One-click deploy

4. Internationalization

5. Security

before you start building your application, then you build and release it, then (and only then) start thinking about:

6. Email

7. Web services

8. Scalability

9. Statistics & monitoring

10. APIs

This mostly squares with my experiences (both with my own startup - currently on step 3, with 4, 5 and a launch-ready app already done - and working for others). The only changes I'd make are:

1. Move statistics and monitoring up the priority list, before launch. You want that data available to drive feature implementation.

2. I'm of two minds on internationalization. I think that most apps can wait until they're popular before they need to internationalize. However, i18n is really difficult to do later, after you've already built an app. I watched LiveJournal go through the process, and it wasn't pretty. So even though you don't need it, you may want to do it upfront because it'll be much harder later.

Re: Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

#36

Post by nostrademons »

My list, categorized:

Business & Management

1. Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen

2. Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins. Built to Last is more applicable for startups.

3. Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Anyone who has to manage a team of programmers and hasn't read this will fail utterly, unless they've already failed before (or been on a failing team). There's a lot that's counterintuitive about software project management.

4. Peter Drucker's work. Kinda long and repetitive, but some good insights.

Marketing

1. All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. I like this better than Purple Cow, Guerilla Marketer's Handbook, and The Big Red Fez. Most of those have fairly obvious stuff.

2. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

3. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

Technical

1. Building Scalable Websites by Cal Henderson

2. High Performance MySQL by Jeremy Zawodny

3. Pragmatic Programmer by...well, it's mentioned elsewhere here.

There are lots of other technical books I like, but most of them aren't directly relevant to the startup I'm building

Re: Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

#37

Post by danw »

nostrademons wrote: post #35
danw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers and Painters is on my list three times :) I'm going to have to check out Cal Hendersons book sometime but first I have to make a good site then I can worry about scaling it.

Cal addresses that by arranging his book in roughly the order that you should think about things. He recommends that you think about: 1. Version control 2. Issue tracking 3. One-click deploy 4. Internationalization 5. Security before you start building your application, then you build and release it, then (and only then) start thinking about: 6. Email 7. Web services 8. Scalability 9. Statistics & monitoring 10. APIs…

Now I think I need this book. Your right about stats, I would move them to number 6 or perhaps even to prelaunch.

Re: Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

#38

Post by domp »

vo0do0 wrote: post #23
domp wrote: post #10

I really liked "The Tipping Point". Anything by Malcolm Gladwell I would have to recommend.

I agree 100%! Awesome insights and helpful concepts/information

Definitely. It was great to read this when I had the beginning stages of a company idea in my head. Made me think of it in a completely different way.
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