5 ms·

For those who haven't read the book: it's a great experience and gives you confidence in bootstrapping: that you can get things done just by starting and doing

by tferris 14y ago

For those who haven't read the book: it's a great experience and gives you confidence in bootstrapping: that you can get things done just by starting and doing it yourself and not waiting for some coding talent or VC money. So, it's definitely very motivating and I recommend to skim it instantly if you haven't done it before. But at the same time it's pretty old now and if you read HN for more than 3 months then the book won't offer any surprise. And though it's not very much about Rails or programming it still transports a specific and opinionated mindset about how life and in particular entrepreneurship has to work. From 37signals' point of view it's the only way how entrepreneurship should be approached while heavily despising other ways, as recently seen in DHH last post about players like Pinterest, Instagram or Quora. So, it's pretty much like Rails—there is only one way and no other—and thus, you should take some messages of the book with a grain of salt and be aware that it's aged and to some extent just a leverage for email Marketing for 37signals (also aging) products.

jasonfried 14y ago
"From 37signals' point of view it's the only way how entrepreneurship should be approached while heavily despising other ways" Nope. It's not the only way. It's one way. There are lots of ways to build a product and run a business. Getting Real is what we've learned. Same with REWORK - it's our experience and advice in book form. Neither book pretends to be the only way. If you have your own unique approach, and you think your experience can be valuable to those who haven't had your experience, take the time to write it up and share it with the world.
- tferris 14y ago
  > Nope. It's not the only way. It's one way. I don't know if DHH agrees on that—maybe you should check his latest post. > If you have your own unique approach, and you think your experience can be valuable to those who haven't had your experience, take the time to write it up and share it with the world. Good idea, thanks, but I won't write a book. Reading HN for some months gives starters the same full experience but less opinionated—so blogging, reading and posting to HN should transport knowledge very effectively, maybe easier than reading cumbersome PDFs and that's what I'd recommend for getting into startups. People get here the wide variety of different approaches. Don't get me wrong: I still highly recommend Get Real—again for all people here: it's a great book, it was groundbreaking, go, get it, provide your email adress to 37signals and read it, it's worth—but its content is not so outstanding as it was 5 yrs ago and for some more experienced ones maybe just a little tiny bit too opinionated. And that's all I wanted to say.
  - deleted 14y ago
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  - tferris 14y ago
    Another point just came to my mind: I am not a fanboy of Graham but as an example I do find Grahams essays more appealing, much closer to reality and thus more helpful, maybe not always that thrilling and motivating as Get Real was 5 yrs ago, but much more precise and expressive when describing startup business and what's really about. I remember one essay which discussed single versus multiple founder startups and I've never read before such an accurate picture of this topic. Motivational books like Get Real are good to just get started but I am afraid that that's enough to be successful and to finish in the long run. Their cookie-cutting black'n'white reality tells you, yeah everything is great, just do it, yes, you can. Then you start happily (which is great) but stop 3 days later without having a clue why things doesn't work out, grabbing the next cheerful self-help book and think it must be your fault because 37signals is 'so' successful and they must know how it works—no you just didn't get the full picture, essential building block were omitted. Besides: success is relative, just compare success stories from Dropbox, Airbnb and Basecamp, really different beasts and way of thinkings behind them (with good reason). When I read Get Real yrs ago I tried it like they said and I wasn't a fraction of that successful of what I was after reading 5 months HN.

by tferris 14y ago

jasonfried 14y ago

"From 37signals' point of view it's the only way how entrepreneurship should be approached while heavily despising other ways" Nope. It's not the only way. It's one way. There are lots of ways to build a product and run a business. Getting Real is what we've learned. Same with REWORK - it's our experience and advice in book form. Neither book pretends to be the only way. If you have your own unique approach, and you think your experience can be valuable to those who haven't had your experience, take the time to write it up and share it with the world.

tferris 14y ago
> Nope. It's not the only way. It's one way. I don't know if DHH agrees on that—maybe you should check his latest post. > If you have your own unique approach, and you think your experience can be valuable to those who haven't had your experience, take the time to write it up and share it with the world. Good idea, thanks, but I won't write a book. Reading HN for some months gives starters the same full experience but less opinionated—so blogging, reading and posting to HN should transport knowledge very effectively, maybe easier than reading cumbersome PDFs and that's what I'd recommend for getting into startups. People get here the wide variety of different approaches. Don't get me wrong: I still highly recommend Get Real—again for all people here: it's a great book, it was groundbreaking, go, get it, provide your email adress to 37signals and read it, it's worth—but its content is not so outstanding as it was 5 yrs ago and for some more experienced ones maybe just a little tiny bit too opinionated. And that's all I wanted to say.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- tferris 14y ago
  Another point just came to my mind: I am not a fanboy of Graham but as an example I do find Grahams essays more appealing, much closer to reality and thus more helpful, maybe not always that thrilling and motivating as Get Real was 5 yrs ago, but much more precise and expressive when describing startup business and what's really about. I remember one essay which discussed single versus multiple founder startups and I've never read before such an accurate picture of this topic. Motivational books like Get Real are good to just get started but I am afraid that that's enough to be successful and to finish in the long run. Their cookie-cutting black'n'white reality tells you, yeah everything is great, just do it, yes, you can. Then you start happily (which is great) but stop 3 days later without having a clue why things doesn't work out, grabbing the next cheerful self-help book and think it must be your fault because 37signals is 'so' successful and they must know how it works—no you just didn't get the full picture, essential building block were omitted. Besides: success is relative, just compare success stories from Dropbox, Airbnb and Basecamp, really different beasts and way of thinkings behind them (with good reason). When I read Get Real yrs ago I tried it like they said and I wasn't a fraction of that successful of what I was after reading 5 months HN.