Ask HN: Best books to build up entrepreneurial mindset? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best books to build up entrepreneurial mindset?

39 pointsaristofun20 comments

When you grow up in a working class family building a business does not come naturally.

You don’t see it everyday, you don’t feel it from the inside. You don’t form subconscious knowledge of how it is done.

Then great books and educational resources are to the rescue!

Could you please name your personal top 3 of such a resources that not just pump you with emotions (most films are out of the table) and not just throw microeconomic formulas and theories at you,

But the ones showing you the truthful picture of inside-outs of a small to large businesses, with specific details and meaningful cases to learn from?

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Just do it rather than read books but if you want read something on the side I would suggest https://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest-Entrepreneurs/d... . It is epitome of Don't judge a book by its cover. Title is stupid and cover is ugly but book is very good and probably best book about general entrepreneurship. Then if you wanna go to startup rabbit-hole I would read next https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/080... .

Upvote for the Felix Dennis book "How To Get Rich". Definitely not what you'd think from the title. The Audible narration is an excellent performance and gets the British humor & tone of the book. Won't make you rich and I don't think it's very practical, but it is excellent and highly entertaining. Felix Dennis was a magazine publisher of many of the early computing magazines, many of which are now owned by Future Publishing.

You have to weigh the balance: is time spent reading books with second hand knowledge worth more than time spent actually doing it and learning first hand? At some point you have enough knowledge to stop absorbing lessons from others to start adding your own. The most obvious ones are explained in five minutes:

- keep an eye on your cash, it is possible to go bankrupt with a viable business just by running out of cash on hand

- limit recurring costs

- don't hire until you really have to

- sell first then perfect your product

- limit recurring costs.

IMO the theory is what gives you the confidence. You know it works, that the actions taken are repeatable.

The basics of how to start a startup: https://playbook.samaltman.com/

Growth. Or figuring out when your startup is doing well or poorly, runway, why it takes so long: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

I think when people criticize a startup's profitability, they don't really understand that the goal of a startup is to grow assets, not earn money, and then then sell those assets to someone who can make more money from it.

A very different book to the usual, Startup Owner's Manual: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/09...

It's a good book on validating what works and how ambitious to be. Much of it is in the form of checklists, which help you decide the next step. It's not a boring book, though. I haven't read through the whole thing as we got off the ground before finishing the book. It's the book that got my ex-co-founder away from more traditional businesses and into startups.

I’m currently reading To Sell Is Human and I can’t recommend it enough.

There’s two sides of entrepreneurship, creating and selling. I tend to focus on creating as I’ve always felt a bit of distaste towards sales and marketing. This book does a great job of reframing sales, and explaining natural human behaviour in our economic system.

I've collected a number titles here https://verdverm.com/books/

Top three, at least for me but depends on your business type, are...

Lean Startup, Crossing the Chasm, The Challenger Sale

A Business and it's Beliefs is hands down my favorite philosophy book

Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything https://www.amazon.com/Art-Start-2-0-Time-Tested-Battle-Hard...

Agree with the comment that you need to start. Having now my third (small) business. After I have had a ML-startup.

I learned most by doing it. There are so many things you need to do and know as a business owner (product development, marketing, sales, HR, finance). You need to learn to quickly grasp the basics and then implement it.

I would certainly recommend reading books about entrepreneurship as they help to sharpen your mind and offer new perspectives. But certainly don’t use it as an excuse to postpone ‘just starting’. Disguised as: ‘I need to learn just a bit more and then I am ready’.

Good luck with it!

> Disguised as: ‘I need to learn just a bit more and then I am ready’.

Not relevant to me (OP), as I have already started multiple endeavors (and failed most of them).

So any decent books recommendations are still welcome. Thanks.

Check out the lean startup movement, in particular the book Running Lean:

https://www.amazon.com/Running-Lean-Iterate-Plan-Works/dp/10...

I found it really helpful.

Hey! We launched the Founders' Loop - a place for entrepreneurs to discover specific information about:

• Fundraising • Hiring • Growth

and a lot of other categories.

Join Learning Loop for founders here: https://app.learningloop.org/loop/founders

"The Millionaire Fastlane" changed how I view the world and pushed me to try and become an entrepreneur, terrible title but fantastic book.

E Myth Revisited Lean Startup Zero to One

Not a book but just a personal opinion, that building is the easier part, marketing is way more difficult and it is way more important. If you want to be an entrepreneur, it's not going to be very fun or stimulating

What made the switch for me was NNT's Black Swan and the rest of the books in the series.

"How to make a million before lunch" by Rachel Bridge and "Tune In"(forgot the author(s) of this book, and cannot find it online either!)

I just recently read The E Myth Revisited after seeing it reccomended here lots of times. Great book.

Keep in mind to hit a balance between consuming knowledge and applying them.

> book

This is one of those things where you actually have to Do It instead of Read Theory.

It's rarely advised to go into any complex endeavor without any education, that's just bad advice

Yeah that's advice for those who read so much that they cannot have time to do (I'm one of them :) A kind of procrastination.

Maybe there's a tipping point where the advice starts working, but anyway not great advice for a complete starter.

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