Ask HN: I have no “business sense” what to do about it?

(1) The worst reason to start a business is because somebody you don't know (e.g. Bill Gates) was successful at it.

(2) Personally knowing somebody who succeeded at a business (e.g. my uncle raised chickens) can be a good reason.

(3) The institutional way to learn "business sense" is to get an MBA. You could self-study out of the curriculum on your own (e.g. books, videos) but if you really go they will stuff you into a suit and get you behaving like an MBA... Thus you'll get a little more deference than you deserve for your first job.

I would suggest not trying to jump directly from your current role to an entrepreneur / startup founder role. Start by finding business-oriented people in your current company and talking with them. Just try to learn more about how the business works.

Given that you say you work in "non-tech" environments, it seems likely that you are not completely surrounded by tech people and should be able to find non-tech people who are willing to talk to you, even just informally, about the business. Even if you are in a low-level role isolated beneath a bunch of layers of tech management, you should at least have access to either (1) a manager or manager's manager who understands the business better than you do, or (2) informal contacts with non-tech folks (could just be people you chat with at lunch or regularly say hi to in the hallway). Use whatever resources you can find. People generally respond positively to people who show an interest in them and what they do.

Another route is to join a small startup, where you will inevitably have more exposure to the business side than in a larger company. Find a place where you tech skills are needed, but where they're flexible and value people who get outside their comfort zone. Show that you are eager to learn the business, and maintain humility and "beginner's mind". This is the route I took in transitioning from a pure software engineering role to one that spanned engineering, product and project management, and interacted with pretty much every side of the company: sales, marketing, legal, accounting, recruiting, etc.

I think the best way to learn. I was in a similar situation - I wanted to start making money selling things, but had no reputation, network, etc. All I did was work on OSS in relative isolation.

Since around 1.5 years ago I started the following:

- Make Twitter account. Build your brand. If you are doing exciting things, people see and follow. This helps you build your potential market, too. My niche is programming courses/books. - Start learning how to market yourself and your content. This means post blog articles, etc

Maybe this is not the exact advice you are looking for or what you are wanting to achieve, but building an online brand and reputation is relatively low energy work (maybe 30m a day to check/respond/post some stuff) and is a good way to learn about marketing and that sort of thing.

WTH is a "business sense" when its' at home? And yes the "H" in my question is a bad word. I am a creative thinker...therefore ...according to a whole bunch of people I ignore entirely, I should have no business sense. Yet on my laptop at any given moment, I maintain about 100 files all for business which are viable-now my definition of viable is that they solve the immediate problem I was thinking about. Fiscal viability is yet to be proven- (IE: they haven't been built out and validated with actual customers and money yet. I am not techie and the build out and daily running of such things is...BORING.

I'd be happy to find a remote build partner for a small share of profits, but I just haven't had the time or motivation to go looking for one.

All the stuff you listed are negatives. What do you have??? Patience? Kindness? Persistence? If so, you are doing better than half the people on here and in the World generally. Most people can stick to things for no more than five minutes and give up at the first sign of trouble...only here it's called "pivoting" I think.

I think you should buy a techy business, like Eric Siu did with SingleGrain, for a $1...and then build it. Yep, sounds difficult, but no more so than drowning yourself in all the homework and time-wasting crap listed below. Look at MicroAcquire, Flippa etc and find a biz you like. Do more of what's already working, stop doing what isn't and then buy more. So many founder, coders etc...put things together and then walk away when the magic money Easter Bunny doesn't show up with a giant check...you wouldn't believe it. Some of them just want someone else to come along and take their ugly baby off of their hands...Be That Someone.

"I maintain about 100 files all for business which are viable-now my definition of viable is that they solve the immediate problem I was thinking about. Fiscal viability is yet to be proven- (IE: they haven't been built out and validated with actual customers and money yet. I am not techie and the build out and daily running of such things is...BORING."

Well I'm impressed.

Don't be...I'm incapable of executing...so there they will sit.

Look on the bright side, you are on HN asking this question and have taken a brief inventory of skills you think you lack. And be thankful you don’t have a nose for following the latest crazes.

If I were in your shoes and serious about this, I would try my damned to get a job in a company where I can work closely with their top executives. Work you toosh off and learn from them. Then consider an MBA.

But don’t lose yourself to $. ;)

I've run little businesses, been self-employed as a freelancer and agency, run startups, been in management at small businesses and other intrapreneurial roles maybe 22 years now - and I still don't feel like I have great "business sense".

Its a learned skill. And with any learning journey you just have to plug away at.. learning. Read business books and take notes on them. Treat it like you're doing a self-directed MBA. Pick stuff off of reading lists or use the Blinkist app to find good ones. Run a very simple easy business as a side hustle for a bit to practice. Work in a seed-stage startup. You'll pick up a lot.

The answer depends on why you want to grow a business sense. What are you trying to achieve with your business skills?

If you want to understand the business world, the management aspect of it, I suggest reading Peter Drucker's Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices.

If you want to get better at networking, I would suggest reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

If you want to understand marketing, I would suggest, Marketing: An Introduction by Philip Kotler

Peter Thiels' book Zero to One might be a good starting point to understand the start-up world.

But for a general instinct about business, you have to stay curious and learn how people think and behave. Being curious about anthropology, psychology, economics, news, trends, sociology are key.

> What are you trying to achieve with your business skills?

To be blunt, I mostly want to escape the world of wage work and make money. Not an obscene amount, but perhaps more than I would otherwise.

This is the same reason people play the lottery.

If money is all you are passionate about you are going to have a very hard time.

The people that succeed as entrepreneurs are passionate about what they are doing regardless of whether they succeed.

In fact most all entrepreneurs do not succeed at first. It usually takes a long string of serious failures until you find your footing, and the only thing that will carry you through is the passion you have for your project.

You've got a long road ahead, if you're still wanting to go down it, start by focusing on what you are passionate about, find other people to talk with, build your knowledge and network and find a way to solve a problem better than the competition.

Good luck!

If that's your goal, being an entrepreneur is not the way to go. Especially start-up entrepreneurs work an obscene amount of time and most of them fail at making money.

For your purposes, you don't need business skills, you need investment skills and you have to save money. Save as much as you can, don't get into debt, reduce spending and save your money in assets that will generate regular revenue. I have trained professionally about finance. I don't know many non-academic books regarding finance and personal finance for a beginner. Maybe our friends here can share their favorites.

If you haven't read it, Tim Ferriss' four hour workweek might give you some ideas though.

There's nothing wrong with what you, by the way. You are forging your own path and you will find some obscure niche that no-one cares about which turns out to be lucrative enough to keep you occupied. It will all work out in the end.

Yours is the sort of background where getting an MBA (or equivalent) might be helpful, and would be a nice combination with tech skills + understanding of business in general. If nothing else. you would quickly find yourself above the "thermocline of effort" where you get paid a lot for not doing all that much work, which might fit your goals. A gentle first step to see if this might work for you would be reading "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman.

You sound stressed that there is a lot you don’t know. If you can be patient you can learn a lot in 10 years at a reasonable pace. I’d advise doing something like a “sweaty startup” just to get in the business mindset. This is the doing jobs for your neighbours or making stuff and selling it on eBay. The trick is selling people what they want, not what YOU are passionate about. Someone is more likely to buy a phone charger than a cool-idea-saas subscription. Use your day job to get leadership skills and spot problems too and learn a good all round “stack” ideally web dev based which you can reuse in your projects.

No such thing as business sense. There's doing as the first part, learning from your mistakes and try again. Your goal is to find what works. There are a lot of arm chair entrepreneurs who talk but never do anything. Most that try aren't successful the first time but if you try and learn then eventually you will succeed. Don't talk about it and wish. DO something! Start by selling something and go from there. If it fails find out why it failed and start again with a better base and ideas. I bet you put more energy into writing your post than starting a business. Think about that.

The place to start is by falling “into touch” with people you know. Contrary to the intuition of people like us, most people are open to reconnecting...or think about it this way, people have not reached out to you because they are at least as worried about rejection as you are.

Decent people tend toward staying decent people.

Most of business sense is understanding people. You can hire accountants and lawyers and software engineers. You can’t buy genuine interest in other people. But you can build it up yourself. Good luck.

Perhaps you could consider using Apple computing's history for inspiration? The two Steve's used their individual talents to achieve a combined result.

P.S. Never forget Pareto... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Read the Lean Startup, I think it is helpful for software entrepreneurs

I think you need to focus on your strengths and your personal interests. Many startups etc are people trying to fix things they lack in their lives or they can do better.

How does this work if you’re a “niche person in general”. Hell I don’t even solve half the problems I have because 1) They typically are more of a minor annoyance than a major problem and 2) When it comes to solving them, I quickly realize the solution is significantly more complex than I originally envisioned and the time and resources required to solve it aren’t generally worth it.

> the time and resources required to solve it aren’t generally worth it.

what if your solution can help a million others?

I feel like you are being a bit too hard on yourself. What do you enjoy about solving problems? doesn't matter how minor.

You mentioned you don't even solve half the problems meaning that you manage to solve the other half. What is the difference between the ones you solved and the ones you didn't?

"Business" is a broad topic, and trying to understand all of the different facets of it, in depth, in a short order of time, is probably not possible. But you can certainly get an overview of the different aspects and start getting a feel for what areas appeal to you, and get the foundation you need to grow from.

There are a lot of different ways you can accomplish this, ranging from reading books, taking classes, watching videos, talking to people in person, attending meetings, listening to podcasts... even watching television programs.

I'm in a meeting right now so can't focus a lot of attention on this right this second, but I'll drop a couple of thoughts based on my own experience. Later I'll try to come back and edit this, or reply to it, with some more thoughts.

Books:

1. The Art of the Start by Guy Kawaski

2. The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank

3. Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

4. Purple Cow - Seth Godin

Consider also biographies of business figures you may be familiar with, and historical accounts of important events in the business world.

Podcasts:

1. The Stanford "ecorner" Podcast series. https://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/

Classes:

1. You might consider something like BUS-101 "Introduction to Business" or whatever at a local community college if that's an option. If you were to go that route, I'd also recommend taking a "Intro to Marketing" and "Intro to Business Law" courses as well. Those three topics give you a lot of foundational knowledge.

2. I have not done this yet myself, but taking an Accounting class (or two) has often been recommended to me, and I do believe it's a good idea. Accounting is the "language of business" in many ways, and understanding cash flow, profit and loss, etc., are pretty important concepts for any business-person.

TV shows:

1. There are a lot of TV shows that are both entertaining and also contain useful exposure to various aspects of business and can be somewhat didactic. Of course the challenge may be picking out the real parts from the bits that are dramatized / fictionalized to an excessive degree. That said, consider some shows like Halt and Catch Fire, Billions, Power, Dallas, etc.

Events:

1. (Once they start occurring again) Consider attending networking events that may occur near you, that are "business oriented". That can cover a lot of ground, but you can meet a lot of people, start building a network of connections, possibly find mentor(s), etc. I'd mostly avoid sales / lead swap specific groups for now, as well as most "startup oriented" events, and look for something more general. Events put on by groups like the local "Chamber of Commerce" etc. are usually good.