Books recommended by profitable founders | Hacker News Reader

Books recommended by profitable founders

microsaashq.com

140 pointswyem87 comments

Just want to point out that lists like these do suffer from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>.

Also: it's quite possible that luck and generational wealth is a huge factor to whether or not you become profitable, in which case their book recommendations may or may not be useful.

And finally: did these founders read these books _before_ they became profitable, or afterwards? As the website says: "a few [succesful founders] weren't into reading books at all"

A brilliant XKCD for survivorship bias: https://m.xkcd.com/1827/

Survivorship bias - yes; but I think it's still better than getting recommendations about books and productivity systems from people who do nothing but peddle advice.

This is a false dichotomy. And it is also not clear that these books had any effect on the company outcome.

No. If you see the quotes of the founders in the same article, a few have clearly discussed how the books had an impact on their business strategy. This is what I truly found insightful.

Given the apparent lack of consistency (no book suggested by more than 3/100), the results seem pretty random. Not sure you wouldn't have done as well asking the advice peddlers for recommendations of other author's books.

Yeah, that's the core point.

This is something I wondered about too, and always do when looking at recommendations, particularly by single individuals.

What I like about this list in particular is that it clearly admits that reading these books by far does not guarantee anything. After all, they're recommendations.

However, having read almost all of these books before and during my own entrepreneurial journey, I positively noticed the absence of many fluffy "self-help" types that usually get recommended for new founders (the Napoleon Hill kinds of monstrosities).

This suggests that filtering who's recommendations to follow was a good idea.

That suggests that no matter how much survivorship bias is in the books themselves, the act of recommending them indicates that the founder who read the book AND built a successful business found SOMETHING valuable in the work that they deem worth reading.

This is so true. Irrespective of whether the founder read the book before or after building the business, this still makes sense to see a recommendation from a successful founder.

Yeah, definitely. A few really good recommendations are actually in the quotes by the founders in the same article.

Indeed. You'd view recommendations from Sam Bankman-Fried differently today compared to 3 months ago.

Yeah, in this light, it would be interesting to see the books that were recommended by the successful founders, but not recommended by unsuccessful ones.

Well, the interviews are from successful founders only for now.

What they should really do is collect book recommendations from ALL founders right when they start up (make it a required field in the incorporation paperwork, lol), then after N years, group them into the recommendations by failed founders and the recommendations by successful founders, and use a Chi-square test or something to select the most significant differences between the two sets of recommendations.

Hope you are kidding with this statement :)

Yes :). I'm just saying that it could theoretically be done properly in a way that addresses GP's criticisms, but it would be impractical.

It seems like an impractical but useful thought experiment, which I think makes a good point about why these lists should be taken with a grain of salt. To take things further, we could improve the experiment by randomly assigning books to founders when they start! HN folks are quick to point out when many scientific results as “correlation not causation”, and this isn’t any different, in my opinion.

If only there was an organization with access to a bunch of founders just before they start up with OPM...

> Just want to point out that lists like these do suffer from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>.

Worse. These books are like porn. They are not real but a mimic the real act. No one I know and is rich can thank their success to reading these types of books. It's like people living to 100 when asked what helped them live that long and they come up with all sorts of made up reasons.

Well, a few of the founders have clearly mentioned how their business has been influenced by their recommended book. It depends on the book. And of course reading alone doesn't make anyone successful. A good book is like having a mentor.

Helps with sales. I would endorse books for a fee as well.

Reading is the closest thing we have to a Vulcan mindmeld. In terms of transfer it's faster than listing and watching.

It's like having multiple mentors.

My immediate thought was a more useful list would be “Books recommended by repeatedly profitable founders”.

If you read the interviews, you'll find some of the founders are actually 'repeatedly profitable'!

This is a good HBR article on the topic, "Stop Reading Lists of Things Successful People Do":

https://hbr.org/2017/03/stop-reading-lists-of-things-success...

Most analyses show unsuccessful business people do all of the exact same things that successful business people do, at least when it comes to the sorts of things you find in these books.

If you have the same routine as Mike Tyson, you are definitely guaranteed to not win the world boxing championship. But you can be sure it will make you very fit, healthy and a decent boxer along the way.

You might not become the next Jeff Bezos and that is ok. Being the millionaire next door is good enough for most people.

Besides nothing bad ever happened to anybody when they read more books, got more disciplined, did more exercise, eat healthy, took more proactive action and whatever it takes to improve their lives. Even the worst case scenario leaves you in a better state than where you started.

Elizabeth Holmes wore black turtlenecks, gave engaging speeches, was massively paranoid about secrecy and promised more than had currently been delivered. She slightly missed becoming Steve Jobs or a millionaire next door.

That's probably a bad example because she did succeed in replicating the part of Steve Jobs that really came from him, which was the ability to enthrall people with whatever was said, like some kind of guru.

You’ve jumped to conclusions. “If you work out like Mike Tyson, then you’ll definitely get into shape.” Ok I agree.

“If you act like Jeff Bezos, you’ll definitely become a millionaire.” How?

context matters

the guys who’s 5’5 should adapt different routine to become good then someone who’s 6’5.

in business the key is to find how your talents can be used best by you.

lastly, reading the wrong books is wasting time and time is all we got. it is akin to murder.

Its difficult to read the 'wrong' book, but its definitely easy to waste time reading lists you may never be able to recite, leverage, or even remember you read.

One key difference:

If everyone exercised more and ate more healthily, then everyone's physical condition would improve (apologies for being slightly ableist here).

However, if everyone read more books and took more initiative in the workplace, the market would adapt so that not everyone would benefit from it. Businesses would simply adjust downwards how much they pay for a given competency.

I feel like that's missing the point of reading books (and honestly seems like a very non-founder mentality). Reading books should be primarily for personal benefit, understanding more of the world, having a stronger grasp on how to communicate your ideas, showing more empathy for others. These really aren't directly marketable towards compensation (at least, not in the same way as a textbook), it's about being a better person.

Honestly if everyone had more of these traits, there'd probably be a lot more small businesses and fewer dejected corporate employees who feel there's no hope for the future but to grind up the ladder.

Yes, true, I glossed over those benefits of reading more.

I guess my conjecture is that whatever advice you give people to "succeed in business", the monetary rewards for following it will be drastically different if 5% of people follow it vs 95%.

My hunch is that markets adjust to whatever the baseline level of competency is, and I don't see how that's different if there's a lot more small businesses. To succeed in fitness and health you must compete with yourself; to succeed in business you must compete with others.

The comments on this thread are an indication that only a few would be doing it, its because what it is, 'you have to be doing it'. It requires doing work. Most people are imagining a magic pill approach to self help stuff.

In all my reading of self help books, the advice comes along as obvious common sense stuff, except that stuff didn't come naturally to me. First time I read the GTD book from David Allen, all of it did feel revolutionary. After a few weeks it felt so obvious, it was left scratching my head. Why wasn't doing this before? Eat that frog was somewhat similar. If you have finite hours to do a thing, why would you spend it on doing work that wasn't very rewarding to you. Stuff like ruthlessly prioritising your interests above everything else, is pure 'common sense', but rarely do people do this.

Recently books like Atomic Habits have shown many people, stuff like exercise, or cooking a healthy meal should be a life habit in itself. You are better off developing a life long habit of doing a certain set of things that are a long term pay off.

Another book I read a while back, said something very obvious. Like You are 100% responsible for your life. Regardless of whether you wish to take control or not, you are in total ownership of anything situation. You can chose to not take control and act, but you are indeed in control.

This really puts the ownership of time, resources and even the future under your total control, and on a second look, this indeed seems to be the case. Except that when I actually came to realise I definitely think and act more proactively to put life interests above everything else.

As a general rule, I only have positive things to say about some of this advice.

if everyone read more books, took career development seriously, etc i do agree that some qualities or skills would lose a bit of market value, but the overall take that no one would be better off seems like way too much if a zero sum perspective.

i think a higher standard of professional competency in general would benefit everyone, and i can’t imagine some sort of equilibrium of skillsets in the labour market where there would be no opportunity to set yourself apart in your field.

Intuitively it seems that duplicating superficial things like which books you read would have very low value and be a big distraction. Some of the core activities probably help, but then all the factors outside your control likely dictate the final outcome. So things like work hard, help people and cultivate relationships are likely valuable but no guarantee

It could be that the "things successful people do" are necessary but not sufficient. It's good to know that "Most analyses show unsuccessful business people do all of the exact same things" but it would be more interesting to know if there are successful business people who don't do those things (most) successful people do.

Good point. And frankly, we can't even be sure they read the books, or at the very least what they took away from them.

Don't get me wrong. I love such lists and am constantly on the hunt for new reading matetial. But there are flaws in these lists that are worth being aware of.

I read "Start Small, Stay Small" back in 2011 and it helped me set realistic expectations. It helped me create a long term vision for my product with the expectation that it may always just be a side project and that was okay. I've been running it for 11 years now and while it's not a full-time job, it's a nice sustainable side business that keeps chugging along even if I have to ignore it from time to time.

Nice! This is the model that I personally love. Will check out the book.

Author of Start Small, Stay Small here. Thanks for the mention, and I'm glad the book was helpful for you. It sounds like you've built a great business that does exactly what you want it to (support your lifestyle), which IMO is one of the main points of bootstrapping.

Glad to see you coming in and replying.

The best advice I've seen is from the Patreon CEO, Jack Conte. (spoiler: It's don't listen to generic advice.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTpBFiW5PBo

For sure, I think this is absoutely key and then one has to then wonder, if advice has to be specific to the person and the excat set of circumstances you are in, then you are perhaps the best place person to give yourself such advise, I wonder then if this is what people should develop instead, the ability to reason and to think more rationality, to break apart problems and figure out soultions and then apply this to there own life, rather than looking to books for answer, we put these people on pedestals, like they are some kinda super genius that figured out the answer, but the truth is, they are people, just like us, of course books can provide sparks of insight that help you come up with your own ideas though.

I think this all comes from the biggest thing that I think a lot of people fail to grasp and that is just how crazy complex the world actually is, we reduce things so much to make it easy to describe and communicate but the amount of factors happening that we have little or no idea about is crazy, far more than we can comprehend, so often people reduce there success down to a few soundbites or advise to someone else.

The thing that drove this home for me was when I heard 'there are even more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe', Chess is a small board, with a few pieces that have clearly defined allowed moves and yet it becomes crazily complex, if a small game board is like that, what about an entire planet with pieces (people/environment) that we do not understand.

My recommendations (stick almost exclusively to autobiography):

- My Father Marconi (degna marconi)

- Made in Japan (sony founder)

- Made in America (walmart founder)

- How to win friends and influence people (though I hear all 4 of N Hill's books are worth their weight in gold). Alternatively I read "Never Eat Alone" which is similar and also great.

- Autobiography of Ben Franklin

Made in Japan is an awesome read. The books recommended in this article are more relevant as they are from bootstrapped founders.

Just in case, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is by Dale Carnegie, not Napoleon Hill.

Oh wow! Thank you so much for the correction. I somehow got those wires crossed in my head. I'm not sure if I read any of N Hill's stuff. But I recently ordered outwitting the devil on a friends recommendation.

I saw Tim Ferriss do a presentation at Google Campus once.

He was there for about 4 hours, so of course, somebody asked what he'd be doing with the rest of his week since he'd finished working.

He said those kind of events aren't work since he enjoys them.

I'll add the book 'Make' be Pieter Levels as a short, no-nonsense, no-fluff, 'guide' to shipping an idea to the public quickly.

Yes, that's a nice one!

Does this post not provide the list of books at all? I would think with a title like that the list would be there. Instead there are illegible screenshots with confusing graphs... I think your site would get more hits if the list was there to reference.

It's a bit complicated since they break down the books on various factors (books recommended, books with 3+ recommendations, etc...)

I have a simple rule about reading a book. If one person recommends it to me, it makes the list to read. If two people recommend it to me, I read it next.

There's really no significance of these book recommendations outside of the general idea that you're more likely to be successful if you read regularly. It's a shame nobody reads as much anymore given it's such a cost-effective way to change your life. Successful founders read. Big tech leaders read. It can change your life if you commit to doing it 30 minutes a day.

There is significance. These are bootstrapped founders. Made it on their own without investments. So, more relatable specially when they tell you how any book helped them in making business strategies.

not sure how much of this correlation talks about founder's personality rather than turning the reader into a succesful entrepeneur. Not that there is no value in the books, but reading alone doesn't build companies, as well as correlation and causation etc,

Mindsets can change though, and sometimes seeing how successful people think, how they act, what they read, can help adjust your own mindset. If you're a debbie downer, death-to-capitalists, anti-entrepreneur, then no books will likely help you, but if you're aspiring, then these can help guide you, shape your thinking.

That being said, your point is valid, reading these alone won't make you successful, that has to come from long, hard work, and just a little bit of luck.

> sometimes seeing how successful people think, how they act, what they read, can help adjust your own mindset.

You cant get that from a book or an interview etc. "Successful people" are notorious at rewriting history to fit the path of luck, skill and chance that they navigated to get to where they are.

For every billionaire that showed their "Entrepreneurial flair" at a young age by running a lemonade stall on their front lawn there are 100,000 others who showed the exact same spirit that have net worths in the reigion of $0.

Agreed. But but most founders can't deny the fact that the books did help to some extent.

See the quotes of the founders listed in this article - a few of them have explained the impact their recommended book had on their own business strategy.

Sure. Survivorship bias is a thing. But for every billionaire, there are likely thousands of millionaires, and for every millionaire there are likely thousands of financially comfortable people. Some people give up before start, and I see that mentality more and more often, even here on HN, over the last ten years. Not sure if it's a generational thing or something else. Curious.

No correlation directly with the founders' personalities but definitely with their approach in successfully bootstrapping their businesses. The insights shared in the interviews and the way some of their recommended books had impact on their own business strategy, makes all this an interesting read!

Not included: an actual plain-text list of book titles, possibly sorted by frequency of recommendation. Instead there's a circular graph with far too many colors to match to the titles, a screengrab of a spreadsheet that's only listing the one-recommendation books, and a graph that claims to be grouping the book titles by number of recommendations, but appears to be in no actual order.

Well done, microsaashq.com. Well done.

Didn't find it in the list, but I heard it from Patrick Collison: The Dream Machine

"The story of the man who instigated the work that led to the internet—and shifted our understanding of what computers could be."

https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-M-Mitchell-Waldrop/dp/1...

High confidence that most HN users will like the story. The book gave me a sense of purpose and belonging in the 'computer industry'. Software and the internet were already magical to me. After reading the Dream Machine, even more so.

Learning about computing pioneers' vision for what could be has kept me motivated to learn and one day contribute to humanity's greatest endeavor.

No surprise to see Zero To Sold recommended by so many people. It's straight to the point.

Yeah, appears to be the most favourite one amongst the bootstrapped founders.

Would you please list a few key insights from the book? Thanks

Why doesn't the second chart (Books with more than 3 recommendations) use the same color mapping as the first one? You've already color-coded all these titles. Why switch the colors?

Conclusion - books won't help

Sometime back I read "How to Make a Million Before Lunch" by Rachel Bridge. It helps to get out of the "unicorn echo chamber".

If you want to have a profitable startup, focus on building your product and getting customer feedback. Reading books is a surrogate activity.

Reading a good book is just like having a mentor. And a mentor can help you only when you are doing something and not just dreaming! So, both are significant.

People are still recommending the 4 hour work week?

We never know what inspires people.

It was already dated when I read it 5 years ago. Motivated me to give myself permission to seek something other than employment.

I regularly recommend it with the massive caveat that half of the resources in the book have link rotted away.

I haven't worked for someone else in over 20 years, live in my favorite place in the world, and work when I want to. That book and the concept of "lifestyle design" are big contributors to my extraordinary happiness.

i didnt hate the book at all, i just didnt think deserves to show up in this list.

My favorite entrepreneur read this past year was Minimalist Entrepreneur from Sahil.

Heard good stuff about this one too.

Wondered if reading such books increases any chances of beeing profitable.

Seems so - from the founders' quotes in the same article.

doubt it. Most people read books for entertainment (which is fine!) then implement none of the recommended strategies in their life/business.

If you pick any book that is reasonably well regarded and actually implement some appropriate form of the strategy you will probably experience a benefit or even significant benefit... still, very few people do this. They read 20 books and implement nothing. Read one book and implement half of the recommendations and you will be far ahead.

Very true, if you can implement one of ten things taught in a good book to your life, that is much, much, much better than reading 30 books and implementing nothing.

I _immensely_ benefited from implementing one/two things from some books like Deep Work, Atomic Habits, The Mind Illuminated, etc.

Entrepreneurship is an extremely challenging practice. My biggest wins have come from seeing things in ways that don't occur to ordinary people and some of those insights I've discovered through books.

I’m surprised to see none of the recommendations were for classics on fundamentals like The Mythical Man-Month and Peopleware. It’s baffling to see executives in modern companies make management mistakes that can be avoided by heeding advice on those two books and others.

Odd way to do a humble brag, but okay

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