

Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs - RiderOfGiraffes
http://tappen.posterous.com/nice-summary-stanleytang-256-must-read-conten

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Umalu
This is an impressive list of articles, and includes some of the best articles
I have read on these topics. However, seeing so many of these articles in one
place made me think two seditious thoughts: (1) Larry and Sergey didn't need a
single one of these articles to start Google, and (2) if everyone else reads
and acts according to these articles, you should probably do the opposite.
Just as generals fight the last war, advice articles seems determined to
duplicate the last success. If you want the next out-of-left-field success,
you need to be where no one else is even thinking to look.

EDIT: Yes, I realize I've just added another advice article to the pile.

~~~
true_religion
Here's a counter seditious thought ;-)

Everyone spotlights the biggest success stories (in your case Google) and
tries to exrapolate what the average should do to be like them.

However, the average case won't be like the outliers _regardless of what
methodological is followed_ , and maximizing the profit for the average
startup is likely wildly different from maximizing the profit of the outliers.

Secondly, Google acted like an average startup--seeking funding, seeking sale
to Microsoft, Yahoo, et all---until they stumbled upon their disruptive
technology: ads.

So unless your startup is likely to revolutionize the industry its good advice
to follow proven techniques for profit making.

~~~
Swizec
Failing that, you should know what others have done before you lest you repeat
the same mistakes.

After fifty startups find out something doesn't work, should the fiftyfirst
really try doing it?

~~~
bmelton
Sometimes, I'd venture, that is exactly what makes the fifty first succesful.

There are guidelines to what you should do, and what you shouldn't do, but
_every case is different_. Clearly, there are things that you aren't likely to
ever want to do (rm -rf /), but there are plenty of instances in which a
company didn't succeed doing x, and then a later company succeeded in doing
exactly x. Whether it was due to a difference in the timing, or a difference
in the market, or that something else within the company made x work
differently for them than their predecessors, who knows.

Admittedly I'm just playing devil's advocate, but I feel like not enough focus
is given to learning from these sorts of guides vs just blindly following them
as a business plan.

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matthiaswh
As others have pointed out, the term "must read" is often times thrown around
very loosely. I'd probably be more satisfied with this if it were labeled "256
Articles for Starting Entrepreneurs That Might Help You Out" but that just
isn't as catchy. The 'summary' part also threw me for a loop, as there aren't
any summaries.

That being said, it's a fairly comprehensive list that does hold a lot of
merit.

------
DanielRibeiro
I found Eric Ries to be remarkably underrepresented on this list. I've
assembled a list of some of his best presentations and related work on this
bundle: <http://bit.ly/fXzcTQ>

It mostly falls on product strategy, culture, idea, and general startup
advice. Mostly product strategy.

------
jarek
Unrelated fact: the stock "article" picture at the top is from a Polish
article about snap elections and Polish politics circa 2006.

Web copy: <http://www.wprost.pl/ar/86230/Wybory-szeryfa/> (pictured part is on
the second page), machine translated:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.wprost.pl/ar/86230/Wybory-
szeryfa/&prev=hp)

------
mfalcon
How much "must read" articles, books, blogs do we've to read in order to be
successful?. I don't think it's bad to read an article or so once in a while,
but there is no "must read" list.

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smarterchild
This doesn't really seem like an abridged version of a month's worth of
reading...

If you get enough information, of course you can make a good business. The
challenging part is condensing that so you can learn the right lessons in a
non-geologic timescale.

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dabent
This is a case where someone's HN reputaion made the collection a "must read"
for me. RoG has done a great job here of knowing what's been posted, more than
"finding dupes" and adding to the conversation. I look forward to checking out
the list.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
It's very kind of you to say so, but in the interests of full disclosure I
must declare that I've had no hand in creating this list. I've read several of
the linked articles and found the general quality to be high (by my standards,
for my rather limited context) and so thought I'd share it.

I even suspect it was posted here some time ago, but was ignored. I found it
in my "Great Articles" experiment that I'm starting to review that to see if I
can turn it into a more generally useful tool.

ADDED IN EDIT: Yes, thought so, here it is:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1753144>

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weixiyen
None of these are "Must Read"

------
fleitz
Probably the best advice is to learn to write compelling titles like "Must
Read articles for Starting Entrepreneurs" vs. "The links on HN I've upvoted in
the last year"

------
theodore
useful != "Must Read"

~~~
AlexC04
Despite your downvote, I agree with this.

Two things came to my mind when I landed on the page with links to 256
articles.

1) this isn't a "summary" of articles this is a "list of" articles. There's no
time savings to be had by going through this list. In my opinion, it would be
a wonderful & time saving "summary" if the article author read the article,
and listed the key points contained within. As far as I can tell, the author
of the list could just as easily have included the articles based on "has
catchy title & contains a significant amount of text" How much repetition &
Overlap? Which leads into my _second_ thought upon landing on this page:

2) "Analysis Paralysis" - in the quest to become and entrepreneur one may very
well get caught up on preparing to make that leap. There are numerous ways to
do that, and the time spent reading those articles (256 articles * 10 minutes
= 42 hours) could very well be better spent _actually doing something_

Anyways, I'm sure there are those that disagree with me (as evidenced by the
down-vote you received). I certainly didn't evaluate the quality of the
articles and maybe they're truly amazing, but I agree, this list isn't "MUST
READ".

It looks like it's probably a quality list, but not "must read" or "a summary
of"

EDIT: What I'd really love to see is an article entitled "What I've learned
from reading all 256 'Must Read' articles" (don't leave out watching each of
the videos linked up in full. That's at least 10 hours of TED talks)

