Comment by samsolomon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samsolomon | Hacker News Reader

I love the DO NOT READ list in this article.

> Delivering Happiness: It’s solid, Tony’s a smart dude, but light on real tactics and not truly relevant to most startups. More for a corporate crowd I think.

I didn't feel like I learned anything from Delivering Happiness. People have looked offended when I tell them it was a poor book.

> Anything by Gary Vaynerchuck: Gary’s a really nice guy and really smart, but I feel like most of his stuff is rah-rah inspiration and energy. It’s for people who haven’t started, or are trying to find that courage. Not totally, but 80% of it is geared towards those people, not directly operating entrepreneurs.

Spot on. I like Gary, but his books are mostly cheerleading.

> The Fountainhead: Or Atlas Shrugged. Or any Ayn Rand book. I am not even going to make a comment on her philosophy — I don’t care. But I promise there is nothing in here that will ever help you actually start or build a business. It will help you fantasize…which doesn’t help build. And it’s no mistake that the largest concentration of Radians are in politics and finance — two industries built on destruction and taking, not on building.

Atlas Shrugged is among my favorite books, but definitely nothing applicable to people building a business.

I've read Delivering Happiness, and I thought his review made it sound like he hasn't. Here's what he says:

It’s solid, Tony’s a smart dude, but light on real tactics and not truly relevant to most startups. More for a corporate crowd I think.

But if he'd read the book, he'd know that it's not for a corporate crowd. It's for people who do customer service. That's what the entire book is about, and why it's so on point. It has nothing to do with tactical startup tips.

I find it interesting that he slags The E-Myth, which is one of my highest recommended books, especially since he says "It’s about small business" which by definition pretty much all startups start as. I.e. the single most important takeaway I got from it was "make sure every essential hat is worn by someone". Which echos the advice in one of the items in DEC's official history book of sorts on the minicomputer era, that companies that succeeded did an adequate job of everything that was essential. I.e. you pretty much never bought DEC because of their mass storage offerings (and some of them were really bad after they got huge), but they didn't drop the ball on any of the essential things like documentation.

Which then allowed them to compete on things like CPU design (pity they screwed up being able to make the VAX fast), whereas many companies that failed simply didn't produce machines their customers could use.

Hmmm, this is both a disruptive technology, and one where product-market fit was relatively easy.

But other advice might be "sketchy", a lot of companies, especially of the HN variety, won't necessarily benefit from documenting them as if you were going to franchise them. But maybe some? Ride sharing and Airbnb's business models?

Atlas Shrugged is among my favorite books, but definitely nothing applicable to people building a business.

Well, it does give you a number of "don't do this!" or "watch out for this sort of person" or developments lessons, and the bit on laws for a society at our level of "development" is priceless:

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age of beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one 'makes' them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers and then you cash in on the guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

But, yeah, little positive that'll tell you what to do, the "invent a much better mousetrap" and, ahem, connect up with a market that needs it would seem to be a lesson is so obvious it hardly needs to be taught. But it does, as the author emphasizes, and there are many many books now that are really focusing on that.

I really wonder about his criticism of The Innovator’s Dilemma. I'll certainly admit it applies to only a subset of startups, and it probably introduced the now totally ludicrous disruption meme, but the lesson with examples of companies that used inferior but cheaper technology to find and/or create whole new markets is certainly useful, and using your "disruptive" technology to eventually eat the lunch of the incumbents gives you something to eventually shoot for. All of which I think we seldom see in people who propose to "disrupt" something.

The lessons about how incumbents are constitutionally unable to complete against this also, if sufficiently true, ought to help tamp down some the rampant paranoia I've seen so much of in startups.

The Art Of War: I LOVE this book, but again, not relevant on a day to day basis for most entrepreneurs.

Eh, that depends on your ability to generalize some of its lessons to the world you live in, which I'm sure it beyond a lot of people at the usual stages in their lives when they're starting up companies, especially giving the distractions of that process. But as the author emphasizes in his his very first point, your core team of people is the single most critical thing, and paraphrasing Paul Graham in one of his essays (which the author generally and perhaps specifically recommends), if you use average "stuff", you're likely to get an average result, and the average result for a startup is FAILURE!

Plenty of interpersonal things can be directly illuminated by The Art of War, lots of that involves threats subtle or more direct, the lesson about "death ground" is vital, etc. But you might as well add the roughly equally short The Prince by Machiavelli and no doubt other books, at least these two are short (and make sure you get a good translation of The Art of War, I wouldn't trust any that weren't done by a military officer, and therefore I recommend Samuel B. Griffiths' version: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195014766/).

More generally, how to you gain the wisdom to comprehend and put into place the lessons the author is teaching, especially if you're a callow youth? Reading (and rereading) "the classics" has long been a method for that, and one that works for me.

Emphasis on the re-reading, never stop learning, e.g. I'm on perhaps my 3rd pass of Churchill's The Gathering Storm, about the post-WWI period, it ends with him being appointed Prime Minister as the Nazi blitzkrieg falls upon the Low countries and France. First pass was in the '80s, 2nd I can't remember, and now I'm re-reading it about to turn 56 and learning even more from it, having, for example, learned a lot more about history, government and war all though the years.

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