

Ask HN: Resources for learning business side of startup ( new company )?? - chenglu

I am deep in technical things and have little or less knowledge of business side of start-up.<p>What are your resources to learn business side or must know things e.g.<p>- Finance
- Accounting
- Sales and Marketing
- Taxes
- Operations<p>Kindly list any or all of your go to resources for deep knowledge of Finance and Sales.  Everything else will follow I believe.<p>Let&#x27;s create one master thread as I can&#x27;t seem to find easily in historical posts. Assume that only one to three person will be running the start-up ( or new business ) for few months and knowledge of basic items that they should have.<p>Your comments are welcome and don&#x27;t forget to link the resources you already use.
======
mindcrime
> \- Finance - Accounting - Taxes

My take has always been that you don't need to be an expert on these things,
you just need to know the basics... enough to not do anything blatantly
illegal or whatever - with an eye towards hiring somebody (even just a
contractor or outsource agency) to deal with this stuff when you have real
revenue. But for most startups, "you should be so lucky to have the problem"
of actually getting far enough for accounting and taxes to matter. If you do,
there are tons of agencies that offer "part time CFO" services and outsource
accounting.

To get the very basics, I just reference stuff like _Cost Accounting for
Dummies_ , _Financial Accounting for Dummies_ , _Managerial Accounting for
Dummies_ and a college accounting text I bought for a quarter at a used book
store.

> Sales and Marketing - Operations

I'm going to take a pretty expansive view of what this includes, so I'll start
with two books:

1\. _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ \- Steve Blank

2\. _The Art of the Start_ \- Guy Kawasaki

Also, for the basics on stuff like "how to incorporate" just look for any of
the generic NOLO[1] books that you can find in the small business /
entrepreneurship section at Barnes & Noble. There'll be something like "How to
incorporate your business". Note that you can probably go a long way in terms
of developing "product market fit" before you even bother incorporating.

But once you get to a point where you need to handle money, you will need a
business bank account. To open one of those, you'll typically need two or
three things: A copy of your company's Articles of Incorporation / Bylaws
(you'll have filed these when you incorporated), an EIN number[2] (you can get
this online in about 10 minutes from the IRS) and a minimum deposit. And
whoever goes down to open the account will probably need their personal ID
(drivers license, whatever).

If you have co-founders, are raising capital, etc. and need to deal with
equity issues, there are some "stock" documents[3] out there from YC that you
may want to look into. There is also a lot of info out there on equity,
startup funding, etc. at VentureHacks.[4] There are also several good books on
dealing with VC's, etc. BUT... a note: Not all startups need to, or should, or
can, raise money from VC's. Be careful not to obsess over fund-raising.
Remember, the real goal is to _make money_ not to _raise money_.

OK, going back to sales and marketing for a bit... I am getting tired of
typing, so I'm just going to dump a list of books and/or links to previous
discussions here and skip the exposition for now.

 _Mastering The Complex Sale_ , _The Prime Process_ and _Exceptional Selling_
all by Jeff Thull.

 _The Ultimate Sales Machine_ \- Chet Holmes

 _Sell or Be Sold_ \- Grant Cardone

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4417443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4417443)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591574)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8049940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8049940)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8050058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8050058)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7653263](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7653263)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495939)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496969)

[1]: [http://www.nolo.com/](http://www.nolo.com/)

[2]: [http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-%26-Self-
Empl...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-%26-Self-
Employed/Apply-for-an-Employer-Identification-Number-%28EIN%29-Online)

[3]:
[https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/](https://www.ycombinator.com/documents/)

[4]: [http://venturehacks.com/](http://venturehacks.com/)

