Principles
Although a fairly dry read, I found this book valuable for providing a counterargument to some other management theories. Many people advise others to pick their battles and let people get away with being irrational if the decision is not obviously critical to the big picture. Furthermore, people often assume that this advice is objectively […]
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Business Adventures
I read this book because I heard it was Bill Gates’ favorite business book. It is a collection of true stories about business events in the 1960s. The narration is quite detailed, sometimes describing the appearance of the scene and feelings of individuals. I found the stories pretty boring, partly because the stories are so […]
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Zero to One
This book has really good reviews, but I think it is mostly due to “success bias”: people have a tendency to overrate anything associated with successful people. There were very few original ideas in this book, if any. The main thesis is that we live in a time of technological stagnation and that entrepreneurs should […]
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The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
Overview of the basic concepts of marketing. The laws are simple, but they aren’t always obvious. The emphasizes that successful marketing is more about appealing to the customer’s psychology than their rational decision making process.
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Crossing the Chasm
This book provides a great mental model for how high-tech marketing works. It presents a technology adoption bell curve divided into customer groups based on how early they will adopt a new technology. The groups correspond to innovators who try new technologies for fun, early adopters (or visionaries) who are the first to find a […]
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The Lean Startup
This book talks about how to apply the scientific method and the principle of evolution to business development. The most valuable thing I got from the book was the ability to look at business development from this perspective. It also helped me to appreciate the risk of taking too long to release your product. A […]
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Founders at Work
This is a collection of interviews with founders of technology companies. There are a few interviews that are extremely interesting and enlightening. The founders mostly discuss the issues they encountered and how they became successful from a high-level perspective. One of the interesting points that came out in several interviews is that it isn’t necessary […]
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The Bootstrapper’s Bible
Seth Godin paints a realistic picture of what it is like to start a business. Specifically he focuses on businesses started by bootstrap funding, which means that there are no external investors. This type of funding is desirable because it leaves the founder with the most control over the business. Some of the important lessons […]
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