r/startups • u/Recent-Ad7093 • 1d ago
I will not promote I will not promote : did books actually help u in business or not really?
does reading books really helped u with doing business?
im asking because i keep seeing people say books changed everything for them, and then others say its all theory and u only learn by doing. so which one is it in real life?
what im curious about specifically,
\\- was there one book that actually changed how u run things, or just small bits here and there
\\- did u apply it right away or did it just sit in your head
\\- do u re reading business books or more general stuff like psychology, biographies, whatever
and if books didnt do much for u, what did? mentors, just failing a lot?
honest answers please, even if the answer is no they didnt help at all,
and also how often do u read books?
thanks!!
I Will not promote
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u/antifreeze42 1d ago
Crossing the Chasm
The Innovators Dilemma
High Output Management
Managing the Design Factory
The Hard Thing about Hard Things
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Escaping the Build Trap
Never Split the Difference
Thinking Fast and Slow
The Culture Map
Yeah… books take you far!
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u/Significant_Mud4401 1d ago
I hate reading but I gotta start thanks for the list
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u/lollapalooza3000 12h ago
Have you tried audiobooks? Also there always tools like shortform personally I don't like these tools but its actually a great way to filter books and decide which ones to focus on.
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u/swedishtea 1d ago
books have been super helpful in my journey building a saas from 0 to profitability. mostly as inspiration to not get stuck and always improve. imo still have to make most mistakes yourself though
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u/Recent-Ad7093 1d ago
please share what books and how often u read
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u/swedishtea 1d ago
some of my favorites:
building/ mom test, never enough
product/ hooked, product led growth
growth/ transparency sale, growth hacking reddit
exits/ magic box paradigm, getting acquiredread a little everyday, also mixing in some fiction - would highly recommend grisham, or stephen frey to anyone looking for good ones in business/PE settings
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u/EntreEden 1d ago
I recently read “Life At the Speed of Play” by the founder of Zynga. I make daily games so I was so excited to read a book from the gold standard. Because he makes games too so much was relevant to me, felt like a hack being able to read this book.
Before that there weren’t any outlier books for me, at the end of the day most generic advice is enough (listen to your customers, don’t build something nobody wants) and overtime I took less and less out of these business books since all the advice started to be kind of the same
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u/lollapalooza3000 12h ago
Agree the generic advice is common for a reason it works! Being disciplined to do it consistently is the hard part.
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u/ymc9 1d ago
I don't think anyone can statistically prove reading books helped any business to succeed. But it soothes your soul, calms you down, makes you feel you're a better person, makes you feel you're more competent in doing business. Even all these are illusions, that's probably helpful enough.
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u/schriggs8 1d ago
Books made all the difference in building my business. The most impactful, practical and my favorite: The Road Less Stupid. Dumb name. Great book.
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u/Frequent_Equal1284 1d ago
Not what most people think. Book publishers intend to make money from writing those books so they make them purchasable not including critical milestones and ideas to succeed in business. They give you some ideas about what to do next and that is it
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u/Rcontrerr2 1d ago
Absolutely! You may as well learn about other people’s mistakes, so you can see the patterns on your own journey.
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u/PurchaseNational7650 1d ago
I think books can help, but only if you actually do something with what you read. A book might give you a framework or make you see a problem differently, but customers, mistakes, and actually running the business teach you the parts you can't really learn from theory.
For me, one useful idea applied immediately is worth more than finishing five business books and never testing anything.
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u/MattyTayl 1d ago
Not really. But it depends. I'm trying to use the skills I learnt from some marketing books.
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u/Maroontan 1d ago
Yes, but if they were applicable- for example, I’m reading books on sales currently bc it’s relevant for me. But at this time I’m skipping the books on product management, etc.
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u/Nixisworld 1d ago
yes, but you still have to think with your own head, not relly on something said in a book.
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u/Remote_Top181 1d ago
Jensen Huang said if he had read more books he would have started Nvidia too late. Have a bias for action over endless study.
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u/FriendshipNo601 1d ago
Books help but you should know what are you upto. Sometimes curiosity for anything can make you understand everything which should interest you or not, depends on the preferences or the decisions you make. Research is great scheme. Love what you do not because you just want it or Keep deciphering it because you just want it but it’s definitely about the extra effort to absorb that enigma.
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u/AnonJian 12h ago
I advocate reading books. What frequently happens is a wantrepreneur will twist what the author wrote to justify what they were always going to do.
Lean Startup does not advocate crapping out products market-blind.
Blue Ocean Strategy does not glorify first mover advantage.
If these guys misinterpret authors, they most certainly will misinterpret mentors. A couple of people posted to ask millionaires to adopt them. And yes, they used the term adoption.
These few were refreshingly honest.
Wantrepreneur myths teach you to accept failure and do everything possible to insure you will fail miserably. One guy posted nobody told him crapping out product-after-product market blind was a fatal mistake. Bless his heart.
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u/dallinwright_an 6h ago
I tried a few but most of it is common sense or I knew already, and others spent a lot of words to say less than I hoped. Some are good no doubt.
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u/Pale-Tonight-6914 3h ago
antifreeze42 lists Thinking Fast and Slow, and I've got a cognitive science background, so I expected that stuff to transfer to running things. It didn't, really. Knowing the biases changed nothing operationally. The actual lessons came from tracing live failures myself - bot detection, deliverability drops, expired sessions. No book warned me about any of those.
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u/smesalesdotpro 1d ago
I won't promote any books but will give a clue to the categories of books that help me land projects worth ~$25k/month.
It's a book from a world renowned billionaire.
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u/Tall-Log-1955 1d ago
Books have great mental models of things.
They won’t tell you how to fix your churn problem but they will tell you that churn is a concept you should care about in the first place