Dundat Blog

As an budding (read wannabe) tech startup founder, I have been spending more and more time over the last couple of months learning how one goes about the process of taking a concept or idea to a working product. On the technical front, it seems much more straightforward. Design the application, learn the technology needed to put it together, start coding and deploy (yeah, right…). I am a Hacker, after all. On the business front however, things are much more complicated. The goal is to make money out of this venture. Either by generating a growing revenue stream from the product(s) or exit the company with (lots of) cash in hand, as a result. Despite popular belief, it is not as easy as building the application and deploying it to the web or the Apple App store and waiting for the money to start rolling in faster than my wife can spend it.

So, as was the case of my technical learning, I started a focussed and well planned learning process to figure out what it was I needed to learn and develop a plan to fill in the gaps. Fortunately, finding online sources of information was easy. Those led me to conferences, seminars and books. Lots of books. Here are some of the resources I found and use:

Online Sources:

• Quora – probably the best question and answer site for any in the startup business. You can follow me on Quora.
• Stanford University eCorner – Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship hosts weekly seminars where they bring in entrepreneurs and business owners and have them present to the class and answer questions. It is available as a Video or Audio Podcast and an iTunes U offering. A must watch. I have found some of these to be exceptional in my growth as a startup founder and will post what I learnt from some of the talks in future posts.

• TechCrunch – Excellent, up to date news of the tech world, focussed on startups. Very funding focussed though. My favorite are two feature they have – Founder Stories and Ask a VC. These are video interviews with Founders and VCs respectively. Very informational. As with the Stanford U eCorner sessions, I have already taken notes from several of these. I will convert my notes to a consumable form and post.
• Hacker News – covers both Business and Tech focussed articles from around the web, in one site. A must read for all Tech Entrepreneurs. Reading Hacker News has really become a part of my daily diet. (Hosted and curated by the folks at Y-combinator.)
• Startup America Partnership – Started by President Obama to foster entrepreneurship across the US, this organization’s website has become an excellent place to find resources that your startup may need. I have found other company to talk to, event to attend ad articles to read. Startup America is led by Steve Case and Scott Case, whom I recently found out are not related! They have plans to create an entrepreneurial environment across America.

Events and conferences:

Meetups – every major metropolitan area has meetups. These are most commonly hosted via meetup.com. I have also found some via LinkedIn. Interested meetups I have attended have been on:

• Python and Django development
• Mobile development
• Lean StartUp Meetups

Apart from the content of these meetups – which ranged from exceptional to useless – the opportunity to meet up with and network with other likeminded entrepreneurs was priceless. I also met a lot of technical people, who were not entrepreneurs, but would love to work at a startup. As they say – always be recruiting!

Entrepreneur focussed conferences and conferences – I have so far attended a conference by Tech Cocktail and am attending one which is a pitch to VCs event next week. I am sure I will learn a lot on how to make a great pitch – whether targeting a VC or not and when the time comes, be ready to do my own pitch. I will post what I learn. I plan to attend major conferences like Disrupt or SXSW, schedule and budget permitting. (I am bootstrapping, remember). On that note I would like to give kudos to the Tech Cocktail team. They had a Starving Entrepreneur ticket at their last event. It was much appreciated.

Books:

I need several posts to cover books I have read or am reading. Personally I like to be reading several books at a time. Residual effect from college I guess, but for me it keeps me going as I never get tired of the material this was. Sometimes a book is great enough to keep me going cover to cover without diverting to another book, but that is rare. Here is a list of books I have collected to read or reference, once I started down this path:

1. The Art of the Start – Guy Kawasaki: This and the next book by Guy come at the StartUp and Entrepreneurial field from Guy’s own unique perspective. He shares great insights – he was the second Software evangelist at Apple. I have not yet read Enchantment, but watched Guy’s pitch for the book on Stanford’s eCorner and it is on my iPad, waiting to be read.
2. Rules for Revolutionaries – Guy Kawasaki
3. Enchantment – Guy Kawasaki
4. Founders at Work – Jessica Livingston: All great artists and architects spends a good part of their education studying the works of other greats. Jessica’s book is like an archeological dig on some great startups, from Microsoft to 37signals. A must read.
5. Good to Great – Jim Collins: This is an all time classic. I read it years ago, when it first came out. Plan to read it again soon, or at least page thru it to refresh my mind.
6. The Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb: (Not related to the Mila Kunis movie , guys…) This is a great book on randomness and the relationships between events. One takeaway from this books – don’t trust experts. Goes well with the Hacker creed.
7. The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell: This and the next two books by Malcolm Gladwell are modern classics (I have not read What the Dog Saw yet). In Tipping Point Malcolm explains why some ideas ‘tip’ or in the startup lingo – go viral, and others do not. Who the Mavens are – people like Scoble who can make an app go gangbusters with a tweet. In Blink Malcolm explains the roots of intuition and expertise. How does one and should one follow one’s gut, provided one has trained ones gut to make the right call? In Outliers he explains who outliers are. Why one needs around 10,000 hours of grinding it out to become an expert. Why Gates and Jobs are the same age…
8. Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
9. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
10. What the Dog Saw – Malcolm Gladwell
11. The Goal – Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt: This is a book that I have wanted to read for a long time. It goes over how Dr. Goldratt developed a system of continuous improvement, while working in an environment with constrained resources. Think bootstrapping. I will post a detailed review after I have read it.
12. Technological Revolution and Financial Capital – Carlota Perez: A classic on understating the sources and impact of funding.
13. Win – Frank Luntz: Frank Luntz has been an advisor to presidents and Fortune 500 companies, doing both political and corporate branding. I have heard him speak. He knows how using (or not using) the right words can impact the message behind what one is saying. Must read for anyone who is constantly pitching.
14. Rework – Jason Freid of 37signals: This was a breath of fresh air. It gave me a respite from the typical thinking that most startups have – it’s all about funding; vanity metrics; working crazy hours and going big. 37signals has become a large, successful and respected company without any of these.
15. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning – Andy Hunt: A great book on the power of intuition and learning, from a geeks perspective.
16. Unleashing an Ideavirus – Seth Godin (free eBook): Need to know how to make something go viral, download and read.
17. The Innovators Dilemma – Clayton Christensen: A classic. A must read for all innovators. This is where the term ‘disrupt’ came from.
18. The Long Tail – Chris Anderson: As a blogger (read my other blog unroadwarrior.com – on airline miles and hotel points), long tails has been a fascination. It is what causes content created years ago to generate traffic years from today.
19. The Search – John Battelle: John explains why the battle is about searching for content (or your content being found).
20. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey: A Masterpiece. This book needs to be a course in high school.
21. 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – John C. Maxwell: Another classic. It is probably the best book on leadership ever written. John Maxwell has spoken at the White House, Congress and the UN, to name a few and countless business conferences. He is the best at teaching leadership.
22. Influence – Robert Cialdini: This and the next book are great books on how marketing and influence work.
23. Yes – Robert Cialdini
24. Business Model Generation – Alexander Osterwalder: If you want to learn how to develop a business model that can sustain, scale and generate revenue, this is the ultimate source. Alexnader’s canvases are all over my office.
25. The Lean Startup – Eric Reis: A modern classic. This book changed my whole approach to my startup. I will go into much more detail on this book in my next post.
26. The Four Steps to the Epiphany – Steve Blank: Steve Blank teaches Entrepreneurship at Stanford. I have watched several videos by him. Ordered this book just last week.
27. Running Lean – Ash Maurya: Ash has taken Alexander Osterwlader’s Business model canvas and modified it for Lean Startups, specifically web/mobile startups. I have been implementing his practices.
28. Steve Jobs – Walter Issacson: If there is a place for an Entrepreneur to start, this book is it. I have read about of a third of the book so far. I will post more on it later. One lesson I have learnt already – don’t emulate the early Jobs. Emulate the Jobs who had learnt from his mistakes and learnt how to address his weaknesses.

Please suggest books that I should read, in addition to these. I will post a list of technical books that are excellent (like Design for Hackers – Kadavy) that I have collected too.

I will continue posting about my learning journey. Thanks for the encouragement and feedback.