Ask HN: Book about startups? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Book about startups?

6 pointskaolinite6 comments

I'm currently reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I'm enjoying it so far however, whilst a great book about how to run a startup, it isn't teaching me much about startups themselves.

I need to know about seed capital and the differences between 1st stage funding and 2nd stage and what angel investors are and what mezzanine means, etc, etc. That kind of thing. (By the way, I know what some of those are, but they're just examples).

So, is there a book that anyone can recommend about startup finance and how to actually found a startup and obtain funding? I'm based in the UK which would be relevant to any books targeted at the legal side of things, however I'm looking more for an overview of the various terms and stages of setting up a company.

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I think the best way to learn about startups and funding is to hear what founders have to say. For this I recommend Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston, http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/d... While this isn't specifically about funding, many of the founders talk about their funding experience, because this tends to be a painful part for many of them.

As mindcrime mentioned in his comment, Brad Feld's Venture Deals is a great book, though focused on raising from VCs.

Another great source is not books but YouTube. The "This week in venture capital" series is usually interesting. For example here is the most recent episode, with Naval Ravikant, co-founder of AngelList: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_MJCASwsY This way you don't only learn about startups and funding, but also about key players in the industry. I'm in the habit of watching those videos daily as I work out on my elliptical trainer... As I learn about a certain investor / founder in one video, I search for more videos of them. Some are more interesting than others. For example Mark Andreesen is always a pleasure to listen to.

If you prefer reading, some interesting relevant bloggers are Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, Chris Dixon and Mark Suster.

The best source for information about startups is the web, not books. You can probably learn 90% of what you need to know from reading everything on these two links:

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

http://venturehacks.com/archives

The details of deal terms are not very important until you're actually raising money. You'll have a lawyer at your side when you do that anyway. The hard part is building a product that users love. Focus 99.9% on that.

Guy Kawasaki - The Art of the Start - http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Start-Time-Tested-Battle-Harde...

Brad Feld - Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist - http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalis...

Dermot Berkery - Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur - http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Venture-Capital-Serious-Entrep...

Jeffrey Bussgang - Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-up to IPO on Your Terms - http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VC-Game-Venture-Start-up/dp/...

William Draper - The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs - http://www.amazon.com/The-Startup-Game-Partnership-Entrepren...

A pretty fantastic book I just started reading is called: "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days" and you can get it at http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/d...

Gives you in the trenches advice via a unique interview style that really gets you into the mind of these guys when they were just starting.

You could search the whole Venture Hacks archive but I would suggest to buy the Venture Hack Bible http://leanpub.com/venturehacks and Pitching Hacks http://venturehacks.com/pitching

Rules for Startups http://rulesforstartups - main points from 50+ books.

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