Entrepreneurial Inspiration

Photo: I love the idea…

I just thought I would share a few books and such that I’ve read or am reading which are providing entrepreneurial inspiration for me at the moment.

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age [aff link] is a book I ordered a couple of weeks ago to read on holiday but I actually started and even finished it before I’d left.

It is a collection of essays related to computing, life and business. All of which are thoroughly readable and, I found at least, rather interesting. Many of them relate to Paul Graham’s experiences starting his own start up. They mostly focus on how to out smart your competitors, and how to out manoeuvre them by using better technologies (Lisp) and other general david vs. goaliathness.

Well worth a read.

Getting Real

Getting Real is an ebook released by 37signals (Basecamp/Ruby on Rails etc.) that you can download for $19. It’s relatively short, so can be read pretty quickly and contains much practical advice around design, marketing, coding and other issues related to startups.

The main takeaway I absorbed was that they strongly believe in a design first then code mentality, which goes against how I would probably work but that is mainly down to my shocking design skills vs. relatively okay coding skills.

They think a startup’s work flow should be as follows:

idea -> sketch -> design -> html -> refine -> code.

They strongly believe in prototyping, getting stuff out quickly, not wasting time on functional specifications etc. etc.

Anyway, it’s interesting, it’s quick, it’s cheap and it’s coming from the people who made Ruby on Rails, Basecamp et. al., well worth a read.

YCombinator Startup Library

Finally, a free collection of articles/blog posts compiled into one HUGE PDF. Containing posts by the aforementioned Paul Graham, the whole YCombinator Startup Library and other selected articles. It is 600 odd pages but almost certainly contains some serious knowledge. Download here, found via Garry Tan.

Startup Failure Disections

Learn from other peoples’ mistakes by reading what they have to say about their failed startups. Somethings are glaringly obvious but other problems will be things you may not have thought of before.

Disection of Lookery.
The number one reason my startup failed.
The last AnNounce(r)ment – this one is really detailed, some of the big problems seemed to be technology choice, which led to speed to market problems.

If anyone has other interesting links or articles I’d love to read them.

Related posts:

1. In the news – 25/06/07

Tagged as: books, critique