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Books on Entrepreneurship

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57 pointskpgrio19 comments

Having helped start a business & taken it from no revenue to mid 7 figures in revenue, I think what's missing from this list is books that convey how

1/ uncertain & dark the days of building a business are 2/ you're at the mercy of randomness (despite having a strong sense of agency)

In that sense, a few books that tell you that darkness is a rite of passage for building great companies would be

1/ Soul of a New Machine - http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder-ebook/dp...

2/ Fooled by Randomness - http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Markets-Incer...

3/ Coders at Work - http://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Programm...

4/ The Innovators - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21856367-the-innovators

5/ The Hard thing about hard things - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18176747-the-hard-thing-...

6/ Are your lights on? - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11221270-are-your-lights...

Totally agree with you there. Will certainly check out those books and keep the list updated. Thanks for the suggestions :)

I'd say reading a book on interpersonal relationships is better, then sales, then finance/accounting, THEN some entrepreneurial startup books.

1. How to win friends and influence people

2. 7 habits

3. Any good sales book (I liked http://www.amazon.com/10-Steps-Sales-Success-Shorten/dp/0814... )

http://www.amazon.com/Successful-Cold-Call-Selling-Examples/...

4. Accounting for dummies or something like that, same with finance (I have a degree in Finance, was much more helpful than I realized)

5. One or so of these books (Parent listing).

Most people don't realize every job involves selling. Relationships and communicating effectively along with having good understanding over the whole business is helpful. If you don't think any of the sales stuff applies to you, I wish you good luck :-)

Definitely! I particularly liked "How to win friends and influence people". And you're right, every job does involve selling and getting along with others :)

Also worth mentioning in this context is To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink.

Haven't read it, but heard very good things about it. Definitely on my reading list now :)

I'd actually recommend avoiding The Lean Startup if you read anything at all and have been paying attention to blogs and the news. It doesn't say anything you haven't already heard, and is kind of high level (or "hand wavy" if you want to be harsher).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_startup contains most of what you need to know.

Moreover, with a few exceptions, many modern entrepreneurship books simply assimilate and tune content that the authors have already presented online.

I read HN daily and I found the Lean Startup a good book, much better than the "patchwork quilt" of advice you get online.

An Inquiry Into The Nature And Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith 1776

Haha - I think maybe only the directors of The Adam Smith Institute have read the original. Fortunately, after one of them did, he wrote this: http://www.adamsmith.org/sites/default/files/resources/conde...

http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra

http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/...

Thanks for sharing, that looks like pretty cool book to read and recently published too :)

Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling is the one that spoke to me in my position the most: http://smile.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launchin...

He has a podcast, Startups For the Rest of Us, that you can listen to for free on iTunes.

About 15 years ago, I developed a startup challenge for micro-enterprises called the Thousand Rand Challenge (about $100 at the time). That became a large-scale project, starting 1,000 businesses simultaneously. We Creative-Commons the results here: http://startup.wikia.com/wiki/Thousand_Rand_Challenge

Lean analytics is one of the highly recommended book to read. In fact, most of the book by Eric Ries are worth to read especially for startup entrepreneur.

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

I really like the book Different by Youngme Moon.

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