Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful? | Hacker News Reader

Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?

13 pointspython_kiss39 comments

About 14 months ago, I had little knowledge of how to execute a startup. In particular, I wasn't familiar with any online marketing tactics. The following books helped me a lot in that respective, and more:

1. Positioning, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing/Branding, Focus, Marketing Warfare

2. Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing (I didn't like "The Big Moo", "Free prize inside" or "Small is the new Big").

3. Founters At Work

4. Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, The Tipping Point (Blink! was alright). I am looking forward to reading "The Long Tail" and "The starfish and the spider"...has anyone read them yet?

6. Why We Buy

7. Hackers and Painters

8. The E-Myth revisited

9. The Art of the Start

10. On War, The Art of War by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu (not exactly for startups, but definitely useful)

11. Crossing the Chasm

Very good list. I've been compiling a list for a while now using google notebook. Its a big mess and many of the books I have yet to read but it links to a few good lists such as the ones on joelonsoftware and onstartups.

http://www.google.com/notebook/public/14636089903511277449/BDQiPSgoQ98yW0vQh

Also python: long tail is a good read, drags out a bit though. Possibly more my attention span at fault there.

great list. I'll take some time to go through this. To this I'd add the

- JOS software reading list [0]

- JOS management reading list [1]

There are gaps in these lists but pretty much cover the best for both programmers & business - types. But the lists needs updating as I note pg's 'Painters & Hackers' is not listed nor is Cal Hendersons 'Building Scalable Websites' [3].

Reference

[0] Joel On Software 'Book Review, reading list'

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html

[1] Joel On Software, 'Management reading list'

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.html

[3] Cal Henderson, 'Building Scalable Web Sites, 978-0596102357':

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/0596102356

Hackers and Painters is on my list three times :)

I'm going to have to check out Cal Hendersons book sometime but first I have to make a good site then I can worry about scaling it.

yeah shows how much I read. Hence why i like short lists. Take the time to also listen to CH on Carson Workshops [0] & this one [1]. Also check out the O'Reilly chapter from the book [2].

[0] Carson Workshops, 'The Future of Web Apps, carsonworkshops.com/summit, Cal Henderson'

http://media.libsyn.com/media/carsonsystems/Cal_Henderson.mp3

[1] Carson Workshops, 'Building Enterprise Web Apps on a Budget How We Built Flickr, ~ 10Mb, 10 min.'

http://odeo.com/audio/1207043/view

[2] O'Reilly, 'O'Reilly, Building Scalable Web Sites, Cal Henderson. Chapter 5: Data Integrity and Security, ~ 5Mb'.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/web2apps/chapter/index.html

Ahh, if only google notebook would actually structure the data in a pretty way just like your numbered citations

the question is ... can you extract your data?

Then you can do with it, what you like! This is the bane of my existence and I want to own this problem!

Cal addresses that by arranging his book in roughly the order that you should think about things. He recommends that you think about:

1. Version control

2. Issue tracking

3. One-click deploy

4. Internationalization

5. Security

before you start building your application, then you build and release it, then (and only then) start thinking about:

6. Email

7. Web services

8. Scalability

9. Statistics & monitoring

10. APIs

This mostly squares with my experiences (both with my own startup - currently on step 3, with 4, 5 and a launch-ready app already done - and working for others). The only changes I'd make are:

1. Move statistics and monitoring up the priority list, before launch. You want that data available to drive feature implementation.

2. I'm of two minds on internationalization. I think that most apps can wait until they're popular before they need to internationalize. However, i18n is really difficult to do later, after you've already built an app. I watched LiveJournal go through the process, and it wasn't pretty. So even though you don't need it, you may want to do it upfront because it'll be much harder later.

Now I think I need this book. Your right about stats, I would move them to number 6 or perhaps even to prelaunch.

Dan, thank you for sharing that awesome list. Joel's recommended books are great; in fact, back when I was developing a micro ISV, I used to turn to Joel's website for advice. That is where I discovered Paul Graham's "Hackers and Painters". Since then, I have shifted my allegiance to a new mentor :) I think the book brought three major changes in how I think:

1. Think big: Since I was developing a micro ISV, I had never really considered scaling the business to millions of customers (aka users). "Hackers and Painters" entered my life just a few weeks before I was about to launch my product; and I realized I had to develop something that can scale. I took a leap of faith and decided to instead pursue web startups; the opportunities for growth were many times in magnitude.

2. There are others like me: Toronto, Canada is not exactly a Silicon Valley. So uptil then, I didn't know there were so many other young entrepreneurs pursuing the same goals as me. Eventhough I wasn't acquainted with other hackers, I could at least gain a sense of security that I am not alone.

3. The Art of the Start: The single most valuable lesson I learned from Paul's book was the governing dynamics of web startups. Before reading it, there was not much inspiration or reason to think big because even if I did venture into online startups, I wouldn't know what to do.

While I have read some excellent books, I can credit Paul's work for watering the first seeds.

"The Long Tail" is definitely worth reading, although I sort of felt it was a topic that only deserved a long essay expanded into an entire book. Then again, I felt the same way about "The Tipping Point" - interesting idea and points, but it probably could have made just as big an impact in a book half the size.

"Hackers and Painters" had an immense impact on me a couple of years ago. Like pg, I multiplex art and hackery (I suck at painting though--sculpture, printmaking, and theatrical design are my areas), so to read a book that validated and supported that duality was to find a good bit of clarity regarding my course in life. I still go back to H&P every few months, when I get worried about such things.

Just yesterday I started reading "Founders at Work", and from what I've gotten through, it's going to be great. More on that later, if this thread last.

Has anyone read "ANSI Common Lisp" by pg, yet? The painting on the front cover is actually by Paul :)

http://images.pearsoned-ema.com/jpeg/large/9780133708752.jpg

Sure -- it's what got me into Lisp hackery after I had plateaued on other languages. This led to Emacs and then RSI, but 2 out of 3 ain't bad. :)

Business side:

Most business books are fun to read, but it's really hard to say that any have been truly helpful. Most lean more to the motivational/inspirational side, instead of focusing on case studies. My suspicion is that business is probably not best learned from a book. But I'll list a few I like anyways.

Alan Sugar: The Amstrad Story - Great story about how Sir Alan grew an empire selling stereos out of the back of a car. Instructive because his key insights revolved around understanding what the average user wanted, as opposed to the technical elite.

Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison - He started his first company at 33 after working for other high tech firms. This book is neat because Ellison adds his own comments in the footer when he disagrees with the biographer.

Founders @ Work - Pre-ordered it. I was tempted to read it all at once, but decided to spread it out over 2 weeks. I'm glad that I did - there's a lot to digest....

Product side:

Designing Interactions - If you want to design great user experiences, it helps to see the thought processes great designers go through to create successful products.

Bulletproof Web Design - Well written, concise. Cederholm knows CSS.

Hardening Linux - I've seen many guides at the bookstore. This one appealed to me because it has both breadth and depth. The chapter on configuring firewalls was alone worth the price of the book.

I really liked "The Tipping Point". Anything by Malcolm Gladwell I would have to recommend.

I agree 100%! Awesome insights and helpful concepts/information

Definitely. It was great to read this when I had the beginning stages of a company idea in my head. Made me think of it in a completely different way.

Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Win friends is great. I managed to find an old yellowing copy at the local library shelved under economics :) For those too AD to read it you can just check out these lists of rules to follow on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People

I had long pined to read Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, but couldn't convince myself to spend the money; when I arrived at university, I immediately found a copy, and greatly appreciated it (not to say I agreed with every point). I thence read Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and found it fascinating--for anyone who's ever taken an interest in typography, visualization, or the theory of communication, it's an excellent read. Even if none of that interests you, you'd still benefit from the book: it shows you how to think analytically about human factors, which is a relatively rare discipline.

I've had to make up for a college education so these may be old hat.
Alan Kay's UI lectures: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978270
Ed Tufte, especially Envisioning Information
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/
Ed Yourdon: Death March... this is a great guide to dealing with enterprizey development. This shows you what to avoid in your own org.

My list, categorized:
Business & Management
1. Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen
2. Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins. Built to Last is more applicable for startups.
3. Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Anyone who has to manage a team of programmers and hasn't read this will fail utterly, unless they've already failed before (or been on a failing team). There's a lot that's counterintuitive about software project management.
4. Peter Drucker's work. Kinda long and repetitive, but some good insights.
Marketing
1. All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. I like this better than Purple Cow, Guerilla Marketer's Handbook, and The Big Red Fez. Most of those have fairly obvious stuff.
2. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
3. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
Technical
1. Building Scalable Websites by Cal Henderson
2. High Performance MySQL by Jeremy Zawodny
3. Pragmatic Programmer by...well, it's mentioned elsewhere here.
There are lots of other technical books I like, but most of them aren't directly relevant to the startup I'm building

If you want a company, not just a startup: anything from Nolo press

- Tipping point (creates a urgency feeling)
- Built to last (tips and best practices)
- Blink (helps not to waste ideas, shows how your first impressions/thoughts could be useful)
- Phylosophy Books (Republic and Politics) - you can understand and have good insights about this social networking and community fever moment.
Anything you could read regarding usability, interfaces and scalability would help a lot when dealing with low money web2 related startups.
To know about extreme programming would be very good.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

That is indeed an excellent book for personal development. Anyone who hasn't yet read it should certainly look into it.

Founders at Work Hackers and Painters
(Disclaimer - I am moonlighting on my startup idea, but have these books to be a huge source of inspiration. Also, Joel's list is highly recommended. Another book, and it may seem off-topic is Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It helps to study the lives of those who have managed to pull off very successful businesses)

There's plenty of interesting books out there and many are fairly specific for the task you're trying to solve. The book that has helped me out the most is Getting Things Done by David Allen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done
It's better than any other personal development book.

GTD didnt work for me.
The bits that I did find useful were
1) make lots of lists
2) read your lists often

some that haven't been mentioned:
- the innovator's dilemma by clayton christensen
- blue ocean strategy (kim and mauborgne) -- these two books give you a little bit more of a framework to evaluate where your idea adds value and give you examples of how/why some successful companies have been successful
- high tech startup by nesheim -- a little dated, but lots of info
- negotiation/people books: getting to yes (fisher, ury) and getting past no (ury), influence by cialdini (useful for more than just startups)
- maybe some management books: peopleware (demarco and lister), the art of project management (berkun), first, break all the rules (buckingham)
- founders at work (livingston) to get inspired
+1 to crossing the chasm, and the godin & gladwell books, art of the start
blogs: onstartups.com, fred wilson, brad feld, seth godin, etc., guy kawasaki
-drew

Some of these have been mentioned, but these stand out for me
Programming:
Getting Real
The Pragmatic Programmer
Hackers and Painters
Business:
Good to Great
Start Your Own Business (I knew basically nothing about small business before I started, and it's a good intro)
Crossing the Chasm (good so far, haven't finished)
Technology/Culture:
The Long Tail
The World is Flat
Productivity/People:
Getting Things Done
Getting to Yes
How to Win Friends and Influence People

The Magic Lamp 'Goal setting for people who hate setting goals' - Keith Ellis
its not self help for slackers :-) its just a really good book about organizing your goals and seeing them through.

Be Quick - But Don't Hurry by Andrew Hill with John Wooden. This book reveals the secrets of running a successful organization.

startup by jerry Kaplan. This book really gives you the insight and adrenaline involved in building an idea which was too early for its time. Emotional stuff :)
iCon: the unofficial biography of steve jobs. Tremendous into steve's character

Agile Web Development with Rails was very helpful

Founders at Work :)
and Felix Dennis' "How To Get Rich"

"real life" by Me

Dilbert :)

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