Ask HN: Inspirational books on entrepreneurship | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Inspirational books on entrepreneurship

12 pointsheelhook9 comments

I've been struggling lately with finding inspiration to pursue what I've always been very fond of, startups, entrepreneurship, building things just for fun, etc.

I got quite burned out with my last startup, which I winded down about a year ago. Since then I've taken a regular job, been doing well at it, but I have yet to feel the fire-in-the-belly urge to build awesome things.

I thought about reading some books about stories that could help me rekindle that passion.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

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I enjoyed Randy Komisar's "The Monk and the Riddle." The core message I took away from the book is that that your passion should not be just for "entrepreneurship" or "start-ups" but rather how an idea or company can make a real difference to people.

That's an interesting pick, as it touches on exactly the issue I ran into in my last startup: getting customers, getting traction but finding myself unmotivated by the problem being solved. Not seeing myself doing that for another year, let alone the rest of my life.

While I was working on my previous startup I actually started asking myself how other founders kept themselves motivated while dealing for really long periods of time with the same industry and similar set of problems (even if they are approached with multiple hats, like engineering, marketing, finance, etc.)

Thanks!

I am the author of the book, "How We Did It". For the book, I interviewed 100 entrepreneurs from all walks of life. From the tech world, people interviewed include the founders of companies like Freelancer, Udemy, Fiverr, Tagged.com, Unroll.me, PluralSight and Grooveshark. Other people interviewed include consultants, Yoga trainers (YogaFit),bakers, jewelry makers, etc.

Writing the book was a huge experience for me thanks to the inspiring stories that these entrepreneurs told me. You can find it on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/How-Did-entrepreneurs-struggles-experi...

A couple that were quite entertaining for me were:

1) Hatching Twitter 2) The Everything Store (Amazon Story) 3) Mindset: The New Psychology of Success --This one was particularly interesting when thinking about employees and recruiting and what to look for in people that you are working with. After the author introduces the concept it gets a little dry for a chapter or two, but then really interesting after that. 4) The Hard Thing About Hard Things - this one was inspiring from a management/CEO perspective. When thinking about building a company that people enjoy working for (and all the tough stuff that comes with it) this is a great read.

You can also listen to radio programs like "entreprenuer on fire", you can get podcasts from the app "Tune in radio", you'll hear lots of stories. There are other programs about entrepreneurship in that app.

I liked "Founders at Work".

"Rework", Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson.

Atlas Shrugged novel by Ayn Rand

Poor recommendation in my opinion.

It's less 'inspiration' and more 'political dogma'.

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