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Books recommended by profitable founders
- misiti3780 4y agoPeople are still recommending the 4 hour work week?
- upen946 4y agoWe never know what inspires people.
- arvidkahl 4y agoIt was already dated when I read it 5 years ago. Motivated me to give myself permission to seek something other than employment. I regularly recommend it with the massive caveat that half of the resources in the book have link rotted away.
- orasis 4y agoI haven't worked for someone else in over 20 years, live in my favorite place in the world, and work when I want to. That book and the concept of "lifestyle design" are big contributors to my extraordinary happiness.
- misiti3780 4y agoi didnt hate the book at all, i just didnt think deserves to show up in this list.
- upen946 4y agoNo surprise to see Zero To Sold recommended by so many people. It's straight to the point.
- wyem 4y agoYeah, appears to be the most favourite one amongst the bootstrapped founders.
- ignoramous 4y agoWould you please list a few key insights from the book? Thanks
- nudpiedo 4y agonot sure how much of this correlation talks about founder's personality rather than turning the reader into a succesful entrepeneur. Not that there is no value in the books, but reading alone doesn't build companies, as well as correlation and causation etc,
- imdsm 4y agoMindsets can change though, and sometimes seeing how successful people think, how they act, what they read, can help adjust your own mindset. If you're a debbie downer, death-to-capitalists, anti-entrepreneur, then no books will likely help you, but if you're aspiring, then these can help guide you, shape your thinking. That being said, your point is valid, reading these alone won't make you successful, that has to come from long, hard work, and just a little bit of luck.
- shapefrog 4y ago> sometimes seeing how successful people think, how they act, what they read, can help adjust your own mindset. You cant get that from a book or an interview etc. "Successful people" are notorious at rewriting history to fit the path of luck, skill and chance that they navigated to get to where they are. For every billionaire that showed their "Entrepreneurial flair" at a young age by running a lemonade stall on their front lawn there are 100,000 others who showed the exact same spirit that have net worths in the reigion of $0.
- paulluuk 4y agoJust want to point out that lists like these do suffer from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>. Also: it's quite possible that luck and generational wealth is a huge factor to whether or not you become profitable, in which case their book recommendations may or may not be useful. And finally: did these founders read these books _before_ they became profitable, or afterwards? As the website says: "a few [succesful founders] weren't into reading books at all"
- rroot 4y agoA brilliant XKCD for survivorship bias: https://m.xkcd.com/1827/ https://m.xkcd.com/1827/
- kkoncevicius 4y agoSurvivorship bias - yes; but I think it's still better than getting recommendations about books and productivity systems from people who do nothing but peddle advice.
- cinntaile 4y agoThis is a false dichotomy. And it is also not clear that these books had any effect on the company outcome.
- wyem 4y agoNo. If you see the quotes of the founders in the same article, a few have clearly discussed how the books had an impact on their business strategy. This is what I truly found insightful.
- readthenotes1 4y agoGiven the apparent lack of consistency (no book suggested by more than 3/100), the results seem pretty random. Not sure you wouldn't have done as well asking the advice peddlers for recommendations of other author's books.
- 4y ago
- CabSauce 4y agoThe best advice I've seen is from the Patreon CEO, Jack Conte. (spoiler: It's don't listen to generic advice.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTpBFiW5PBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTpBFiW5PBo
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoFor sure, I think this is absoutely key and then one has to then wonder, if advice has to be specific to the person and the excat set of circumstances you are in, then you are perhaps the best place person to give yourself such advise, I wonder then if this is what people should develop instead, the ability to reason and to think more rationality, to break apart problems and figure out soultions and then apply this to there own life, rather than looking to books for answer, we put these people on pedestals, like they are some kinda super genius that figured out the answer, but the truth is, they are people, just like us, of course books can provide sparks of insight that help you come up with your own ideas though. I think this all comes from the biggest thing that I think a lot of people fail to grasp and that is just how crazy complex the world actually is, we reduce things so much to make it easy to describe and communicate but the amount of factors happening that we have little or no idea about is crazy, far more than we can comprehend, so often people reduce there success down to a few soundbites or advise to someone else. The thing that drove this home for me was when I heard 'there are even more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe', Chess is a small board, with a few pieces that have clearly defined allowed moves and yet it becomes crazily complex, if a small game board is like that, what about an entire planet with pieces (people/environment) that we do not understand.
- NiagaraThistle 4y agoI'll add the book 'Make' be Pieter Levels as a short, no-nonsense, no-fluff, 'guide' to shipping an idea to the public quickly.
- wyem 4y agoYes, that's a nice one!
- antcas 4y agoMy favorite entrepreneur read this past year was Minimalist Entrepreneur from Sahil.
- upen946 4y agoHeard good stuff about this one too.
- blowski 4y agoI saw Tim Ferriss do a presentation at Google Campus once. He was there for about 4 hours, so of course, somebody asked what he'd be doing with the rest of his week since he'd finished working. He said those kind of events aren't work since he enjoys them.
- breck 4y agoMy recommendations (stick almost exclusively to autobiography): - My Father Marconi (degna marconi) - Made in Japan (sony founder) - Made in America (walmart founder) - How to win friends and influence people (though I hear all 4 of N Hill's books are worth their weight in gold). Alternatively I read "Never Eat Alone" which is similar and also great. - Autobiography of Ben Franklin
- wyem 4y agoMade in Japan is an awesome read. The books recommended in this article are more relevant as they are from bootstrapped founders.
- djkivi 4y agoJust in case, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is by Dale Carnegie, not Napoleon Hill.
- breck 4y agoOh wow! Thank you so much for the correction. I somehow got those wires crossed in my head. I'm not sure if I read any of N Hill's stuff. But I recently ordered outwitting the devil on a friends recommendation.
- good8675309 4y agoI read "Start Small, Stay Small" back in 2011 and it helped me set realistic expectations. It helped me create a long term vision for my product with the expectation that it may always just be a side project and that was okay. I've been running it for 11 years now and while it's not a full-time job, it's a nice sustainable side business that keeps chugging along even if I have to ignore it from time to time.
- wyem 4y agoNice! This is the model that I personally love. Will check out the book.
- rwalling 4y agoAuthor of Start Small, Stay Small here. Thanks for the mention, and I'm glad the book was helpful for you. It sounds like you've built a great business that does exactly what you want it to (support your lifestyle), which IMO is one of the main points of bootstrapping.
- upen946 4y agoGlad to see you coming in and replying.
- jrvarela56 4y agoDidn't find it in the list, but I heard it from Patrick Collison: The Dream Machine "The story of the man who instigated the work that led to the internet—and shifted our understanding of what computers could be." https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-M-Mitchell-Waldrop/dp/1732265119 https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-M-Mitchell-Waldrop/dp/1... High confidence that most HN users will like the story. The book gave me a sense of purpose and belonging in the 'computer industry'. Software and the internet were already magical to me. After reading the Dream Machine, even more so. Learning about computing pioneers' vision for what could be has kept me motivated to learn and one day contribute to humanity's greatest endeavor.
- glintik 4y agoWondered if reading such books increases any chances of beeing profitable.
- wyem 4y agoSeems so - from the founders' quotes in the same article.
- vcryan 4y agodoubt it. Most people read books for entertainment (which is fine!) then implement none of the recommended strategies in their life/business. If you pick any book that is reasonably well regarded and actually implement some appropriate form of the strategy you will probably experience a benefit or even significant benefit... still, very few people do this. They read 20 books and implement nothing. Read one book and implement half of the recommendations and you will be far ahead.
- rg111 4y agoVery true, if you can implement one of ten things taught in a good book to your life, that is much, much, much better than reading 30 books and implementing nothing. I _immensely_ benefited from implementing one/two things from some books like Deep Work, Atomic Habits, The Mind Illuminated, etc.
- orasis 4y agoEntrepreneurship is an extremely challenging practice. My biggest wins have come from seeing things in ways that don't occur to ordinary people and some of those insights I've discovered through books.
- vcryan 4y agoIf you want to have a profitable startup, focus on building your product and getting customer feedback. Reading books is a surrogate activity.
- wyem 4y agoReading a good book is just like having a mentor. And a mentor can help you only when you are doing something and not just dreaming! So, both are significant.
- _448 4y agoSometime back I read "How to Make a Million Before Lunch" by Rachel Bridge. It helps to get out of the "unicorn echo chamber".
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoI’m surprised to see none of the recommendations were for classics on fundamentals like The Mythical Man-Month and Peopleware. It’s baffling to see executives in modern companies make management mistakes that can be avoided by heeding advice on those two books and others.
- jmartens 4y agoOdd way to do a humble brag, but okay
- ndavis 4y agoDoes this post not provide the list of books at all? I would think with a title like that the list would be there. Instead there are illegible screenshots with confusing graphs... I think your site would get more hits if the list was there to reference.
- michaelmcdonald 4y agoIt's a bit complicated since they break down the books on various factors (books recommended, books with 3+ recommendations, etc...)
- ACV001 4y agoConclusion - books won't help
- thenerdhead 4y agoI have a simple rule about reading a book. If one person recommends it to me, it makes the list to read. If two people recommend it to me, I read it next. There's really no significance of these book recommendations outside of the general idea that you're more likely to be successful if you read regularly. It's a shame nobody reads as much anymore given it's such a cost-effective way to change your life. Successful founders read. Big tech leaders read. It can change your life if you commit to doing it 30 minutes a day.
- wyem 4y agoThere is significance. These are bootstrapped founders. Made it on their own without investments. So, more relatable specially when they tell you how any book helped them in making business strategies.
- egypturnash 4y agoNot included: an actual plain-text list of book titles, possibly sorted by frequency of recommendation. Instead there's a circular graph with far too many colors to match to the titles, a screengrab of a spreadsheet that's only listing the one-recommendation books, and a graph that claims to be grouping the book titles by number of recommendations, but appears to be in no actual order. Well done, microsaashq.com. Well done.
- cgranier 4y agoWhy doesn't the second chart (Books with more than 3 recommendations) use the same color mapping as the first one? You've already color-coded all these titles. Why switch the colors?