
Show HN: The Found a Business Book – Interviews with Entrepreneurs - jjets718
http://www.foundabusiness.com
======
edw519
Pros:

    
    
      - about half the interviewees are HN regulars
      - the other half look very interesting as well
      - nice sample chapter
      - DRM-free pdf
      - one good idea can from this can change everything
      - a thumbs-up from Dan Shipper
      - supports & encourages a young member of this community
      - re-confirms that the good/inspriring on HN outweighs the negative
    

Cons:

    
    
      - data inside may be free elsewhere
    

The Pros win. I'm buying it. Thank you, Jack.

~~~
mindcrime
_\- data inside may be free elsewhere_

I thought about that too, but then realized that even though some (maybe many)
of these people have published interviews "out there" for free, each interview
stands to hit on some unique insight or thought that a previous one missed.
Given all the other "pros" you mentioned above, especially

 _\- supports & encourages a young member of this community_

I had no trouble deciding to buy a copy.

I just wish I'd been this motivated when I was in High School. :-)

~~~
jjets718
Thank you so much for your kind words and for buying a copy of the book!
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

------
dshipper
Worth noting that the guy who wrote this is 17 and still in high school.
Pretty impressive stuff.

~~~
jjets718
Thanks, Dan! I really appreciate it!

------
orangethirty
Interesting landing page. The choice of three <h1> feels weird. You usually go
from <h1> to <h3> for the sub-headlines. The <h1> being the main _hook_. I
would actually move your second headline ("Do you wish you could learn about
business from some of the world's best entrepreneurs?") to the top, and then
move the other ones to <h3> tags.Adding a picture of the book cover to the
page usually helps sales due to how connects the price to a "tangible" product
(even if its not). Make the free sample offer more noticeable. I did not see
it the first three times I browsed the page. Tip: use a different color other
than blue. The call to action button also washes away in the theme. Since you
are using bootstrap, test using the btn-danger class (which makes it yellow),
and change the button font color to black or dark grey. The page background
should be a bit lighter to ease readability. Maybe use a light pattern from
subtlepatterns.com. Instead of using italics in the second sub-headline ("Then
The Found a Business Book is for you.") test changing the font color to a dark
red. It tends to improve how much of the page people read.

Still, a very good start. Much better than most startups out there.

~~~
jjets718
Thank you so much for all of this feedback regarding the design of the site.
I'll definitely be sure to incorporate some of this feedback when updating the
site!

~~~
orangethirty
Given that you are currently getting lots of traffic, the best time to test is
right now. A .5% improvement could translate into quite a good amount of
money.

------
jjets718
Hi everyone! I'm the creator of The Found a Business Book. I'll be around for
a while to answer questions if you have any!

~~~
mtrimpe
Hey there. The book looks pretty impressive! I'd really get someone to do at
least a little bit of design on the landing page though.

There are mostly just basic typography and spacing issues, but it can make a
big difference in how professional your presentation looks.

~~~
jjets718
Thanks for the feedback and kind words! I agree that the landing page needs
improvement, and that's something I hope to work on soon!

------
kumarski
These entrepreneurs are great, but they all look like they do web stuff only.

The only thing I think about when I see this is: "The facebooks are great, but
what about the Maersks"

Kudos to you creating something, but maybe the title is a bit too ambitious.
The fact that you are 17 and have done this is commendable, but I strongly
recommend that you reach out and try to get exposure to the entrepreneurs who
build physical product innovations.

Best of luck champ.

~~~
jjets718
Thank you very much for the feedback! My plan is to add more entrepreneurs to
the book in the future, and I will definitely try to add people who have
created physical products.

~~~
kumarski
Godspeed.

------
thatthatis
Books like this should really offer a money back guarantee.

Why? It signals quality and enables speculative purchasing.

The quality signal I think is obvious.

The speculative purchasing is an incremental sale. Emotionally, I'm not going
to purchase this book without a guarantee unless I've decided to commit time
to read it. However, with a guarantee I can buy it on the chance that I might
read it. It's not logical, I know, but it is how customers work emotionally.

Also, economically your guarantee is basically free. 99% of the time its not
worth my time to request the refund even if I don't like the book. The 1% is
if your book has made me emotionally angry due to its poor content (1 book
I've ever read).

But, people will game the system? No they won't. At least not in sufficient
volume to make it worth worrying about. If I want to scam a free copy of your
book, it's likely I can find a pirated version faster than I can get my wallet
and enter my credit card number.

~~~
unreal37
Yeah, I don't get the downvotes. I guess this comment goes against the spirit
of congratulations and encouragement in the rest of the thread.

Sure, money back guarantees work for lots of products. The late-night
infomercials have proven that. And they work because they influence buying
(it's no risk!) but don't cause too many returns in reality. Irrational human
behavior.

But for $15, it's a really low investment for most people. If the price were a
lot higher (even $40), it might be worth needing to offer a money back
guarantee.

Does Starbucks offer money back guarantee on your coffee? If you drink the
whole thing and didn't enjoy it, they'll give you a full refund? No. It's not
for everything.

~~~
thatthatis
Money back guarantees are better for the consumers and better for the
producers. There's still psychology involved at $15, and more than anything
it's to mitigate loss aversion. If I spend $15 and the product sucks, I loose
a lot more than $15 worth of happiness.

Its fine if these guys don't like the advice.

And, yes, Starbucks does offer money back guarantees, usually at the rate of
"this one's free and so is the next one."

------
mstolpm
Seems there is only a PDF version? I'd suggest to add an epub and/or mobi
version: Much easier/better to use on mobile devices and tablets. Of course,
it is possible to convert a non-DRM PDF for customers, but it's a hassle.
Moreover, you could think about publishing on bigger platforms (Amazon, Apple,
Smashwords or even Leanpub) as well: that might increase reach. Perhaps lower
the price to 9.95$ in that process - that way you'd get 70% from every sales
through KDP (35% else).

------
kriro
Bought,

will read it on the train on Monday. Excellent timing since I just finished
reading all the interviews in "Founders at Work" that were on my most
interesting list.

I saw that I used Gumroad to pay for it and Sahil is interviewed in the book.
I think I'll read that one first :D

Edit: Small piece of advice: Imo it looks better and is easier to scan if
single points actually have some sort of bullet or similar. This goes for the
landing page (you'll learn X,Y,Z) as well as for the table of contents of the
actual book :D

~~~
jjets718
Thank you so much for buying the book! I think your feedback regarding the
landing page design and the design of the table of contents is great, and I
will definitely incorporate it soon!

------
ryangilbert
I started something similar with www.founders.cc (launches May 1)!

I'll definitely be buying this one as well. Looks like a solid list of
entrepreneurs.

~~~
jjets718
Hi, Ryan! I saw founders.cc on Twitter a while back. I'm looking forward to
buying your book as well! I think you're doing great work.

~~~
ryangilbert
Awesome! You should shoot me an email. I'd love to discuss both books.

DMd the email to you earlier.

------
ruswick
This book looks genuinely compelling, and is the first "HN books" in which
I've been truly interested for quite some time. Alas, the price is too steep
for me, and, were I in a position to buy it, this book would likely sit
dormant in my queue of unread books for months if not years. Still, good luck.

(As an aside, the website is downright unusable on mobile.)

~~~
jjets718
Feel free to email me at foundabusinessbook@gmail.com and I would be more than
happy to work something out if you want to read it!

------
wavesounds
When I was a teenager I was interviewing bands with a tape recorder and
printing the interesting parts in photocopied fanzines we would give away for
free at shows and record stores. Nowadays kids interview CEOs via email and
charge $15 to download a PDF of their responses. The times they are a
changing.

------
josscrowcroft
I'd like to buy, but ... in the spirit of only pursuing immediately-relevant
and -actionable information, is there anything in here about outsourcing, and
lessening the time expended on repetitive tasks? 4HWW-type material?

Cheers!

~~~
cityzen
Have you read Rob Walling's Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guid to
Launching a Startup? Quick read, lots of good info on exactly what you're
looking for: [http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-
ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-
ebook/dp/B003YH9MMI)

~~~
josscrowcroft
Thanks so much for the heads up :)

------
Disruptorsbook
I just bought the book! Working on something very similar
(www.Disruptorsbook.com) but we both have featured different entrepreneurs and
different angles. Would love to talk sometime!

------
noinput
Purchased, thanks for putting all these great opinions in one place. looking
forward to the read.

~~~
jjets718
Thank you so much for purchasing the book! Please feel free to let me know if
you have any comments or questions!

------
superfresh
Purchased. Great job putting this together. Looking forward to the read.

~~~
jjets718
Thanks for buying the book! Feel free to let me know if you have any questions
or comments!

------
mneumegen
Bought. Nice job, looks really interesting.

~~~
jjets718
Thank you so much for buying it! Please feel free to let me know if you have
any questions or comments!

------
treme
by chance, was this inspired by Mixergy?

Purchased.

~~~
jjets718
I'm not a member of Mixergy, but I think all of the work Andrew has done with
Mixergy has been great! This was in part inspired by Mixergy.

------
shadowrunner
Looks like a lot of value here, and congratulations to the author / editor for
shipping! One niggle though: no audio format (and if there is I didn't see
it).

Anecdotally, I saw noticeable jump in sales to my eBook No Budget Budget:
<https://leanpub.com/nobudgetbudget> when I added an audio book with it. Some
people either don't like to read or don't have the time.

Something to consider.

