Ask HN: Which books can teach me to invent and design a great SaaS product? - rayalez
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ealexhudson
In all honesty, none of them. You can read and learn about many of the
practices you will need, but it's entirely possible to understand the practice
without being able to perform it.

For example, you can read any book on throwing the javalin and the quality of
the book really doesn't matter much: it could be an amazing book, but no book
is going to enable you to throw the javalin well. It can tell you how to do
it, give you tips on what to try and what to avoid, but it can't help you in
the actual doing.

You probably know enough about the practices to be able to design and build
something already. The key is action; to do it, and to learn in reality what
works and what doesn't. It's like throwing the javalin: the first few are
going to be awful, but if you know the principle, after a bit of practice it
will start to become a respectable throw (even if not world-beating).

I use the javalin metaphor because people can spend a lot of time building a
SaaS. Treat each attempt as a throw, and recognise that if you spend the next
three/six months on one throw then you're really not going to learn very much
and it's not great practice.

