Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Startup related books and videos

Saturday, November 1st, 2014

I just finished 7 day startup by Dan Norris. I like this book. It gives you a step by step plan how to launch in 7 days. I would really recommend reading it (especially for somebody who struggled to launch and stuck in “wantrepreneur” land).

Another book which I would recommend to read is Traction by Justin Mares. I wish I had this book 12 years ago when I have started my first startup. It gives a great overview of all kind of channels to get sales and sets up great framework how to explore these channels and  ultimately get some traction.

And as a final note. There is video of Stanford entrepreneurial classes.  It has a dozen of 45 minutes lectures from people who successfully built startups. I would say that content is quite uneven. Some of speakers were amazing (giving interesting info, explaining both pitfalls and shortcuts) and some wasn’t that interesting. Overall, it’s must watch series.

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“Zero to One” by Peter Thiel

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2014

Just completed reading Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Let me start first by telling what I liked about this book.

It has a very clear and well articulated idea (secondary idea). If you want to succeed (and survive) as an entrepreneur you should make your startup a monopoly. Initially, you want to become a monopoly on a tiny market and after you should expand. Clean and simple (and applicable with some stretch to a lot of companies which I know of)

Ugh.. It looks like I was able to squeeze most of usefulness in couple of sentences.

Aside of that (and paying five bucks to a billionaire) I haven’t found this book that useful. There are two reasons for that

  • The core idea of the book is too binary. Binary ideas most of the time are nice for a book (you can paint everything white and black) but don’t cut it in a real life (where you can find whole bunch of different gradations of grey). And frankly, you feel that it’s artificial idea (specially chosen for a book).
  • He has this idea and to prove it he throws everything at you and see what will stick (you can find in the book references to everything starting from ancient Egypt  to singularity and to some kitchen aid appliances).

Summary:

Skip it and treat yourself instead with a venti mocha frappuccino with some soy milk.

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