
Ask HN: Inspirational books on entrepreneurship - heelhook
I&#x27;ve been struggling lately with finding inspiration to pursue what I&#x27;ve always been very fond of, startups, entrepreneurship, building things just for fun, etc.<p>I got quite burned out with my last startup, which I winded down about a year ago. Since then I&#x27;ve taken a regular job, been doing well at it, but I have yet to feel the fire-in-the-belly urge to build awesome things.<p>I thought about reading some books about stories that could help me rekindle that passion.<p>Thoughts?<p>Thanks!
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willdayton
I enjoyed Randy Komisar's "The Monk and the Riddle." The core message I took
away from the book is that that your passion should not be just for
"entrepreneurship" or "start-ups" but rather how an idea or company can make a
real difference to people.

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heelhook
That's an interesting pick, as it touches on exactly the issue I ran into in
my last startup: getting customers, getting traction but finding myself
unmotivated by the problem being solved. Not seeing myself doing that for
another year, let alone the rest of my life.

While I was working on my previous startup I actually started asking myself
how other founders kept themselves motivated while dealing for really long
periods of time with the same industry and similar set of problems (even if
they are approached with multiple hats, like engineering, marketing, finance,
etc.)

Thanks!

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esdailycom
I am the author of the book, "How We Did It". For the book, I interviewed 100
entrepreneurs from all walks of life. From the tech world, people interviewed
include the founders of companies like Freelancer, Udemy, Fiverr, Tagged.com,
Unroll.me, PluralSight and Grooveshark. Other people interviewed include
consultants, Yoga trainers (YogaFit),bakers, jewelry makers, etc.

Writing the book was a huge experience for me thanks to the inspiring stories
that these entrepreneurs told me. You can find it on Amazon here:
[http://www.amazon.com/How-Did-entrepreneurs-struggles-
experi...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Did-entrepreneurs-struggles-
experiences/dp/149759975X/)

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bitonomics
A couple that were quite entertaining for me were:

1) Hatching Twitter 2) The Everything Store (Amazon Story) 3) Mindset: The New
Psychology of Success --This one was particularly interesting when thinking
about employees and recruiting and what to look for in people that you are
working with. After the author introduces the concept it gets a little dry for
a chapter or two, but then really interesting after that. 4) The Hard Thing
About Hard Things - this one was inspiring from a management/CEO perspective.
When thinking about building a company that people enjoy working for (and all
the tough stuff that comes with it) this is a great read.

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joerich
You can also listen to radio programs like "entreprenuer on fire", you can get
podcasts from the app "Tune in radio", you'll hear lots of stories. There are
other programs about entrepreneurship in that app.

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NameNickHN
I liked "Founders at Work".

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sunseb
"Rework", Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson.

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athashri
Atlas Shrugged novel by Ayn Rand

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hackerboos
Poor recommendation in my opinion.

It's less 'inspiration' and more 'political dogma'.

