A new experiment for me last year was to read five books at the same time. I discovered this idea through Shane Parrish.
AS I’ve been building SparkPath technology, I read five books on startups. When I finished a chapter, I moved on to read a chapter in the next book, and so on and so forth.
While reading, I wrote the most important quotes and lessons I needed at the time. I kept these in a journal.
The benefit one this approach was that I was able to distill the business lessons and advice I needed the most, instead of trying to analyze the merit of each book individually.
Here are the books, along with a few thoughts I found useful as this part of my journey.
The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
- Operate in conditions of extreme uncertainty. Need to build a learning machine, fueled by a genuine desire to discover the truth that underlies my vision. Go deep — ask the 5 whys.
- Build-Measure-Learn. Use time/speed and quality as allies.
- State assumptions explicitly and test them rigorously. Start with riskiest assumptions. Bypass excess work that does not lead to learning. Eliminate risks.
- Get to know your customer and their needs in order to create feedback loops.
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Thiel’s book is popular in the startup and venture capital communities, but it has applications beyond this realm. With a healthy dose of contrarian thinking, Thiel shares his unique perspectives on several topics.
But very few ideas are both contrarian and correct. And, yet, finding that combination is critical to successful investing, entrepreneurship, or even career development. Which is why this book has unique value.
Here were a few quotes that caught my attention:
- On believing: ‘we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered.’ ‘…(there) are many more secrets left to find, but they will yield only to relentless searchers.’ JPM: I need to instill this sense of wonder in kids. There are important problems to solve, and breakthroughs to be discovered.
- On the future: Look beyond the popular narrative that the future is purely chance… have a bold vision for it.
- On courage: ‘Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius. ‘
- On the job of a startup: ‘(they need to) question received ideas and rethinking business from scratch.’ ‘A great company is a conspiracy to change the world.’
- Principles to start a business: 1) Start small and monopolize; 2) Scale up; 3) Don’t disrupt (avoid competition)
- On what rules to follow: ‘The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.’
- On learning startups: ‘(It’s) a methodology, not a goal.’
- On competitive advantage: ‘As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage. Anything less than an order of magnitude better will probably be perceived as a marginal improvement and will be hard to sell, especially in an already crowded market.’
- How to convince someone to work on your startup: ‘the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people.’
- On building teams: Build a tribe of like-minded people fanatically devoted to the company’s mission. They should be obsessed with something those on the outside have missed.
- On interviewing: ‘(Ask) ‘What is something you think is true, but that most people disagree with you on?’
- On AI: ‘Replacement by computers is a worry for the 22nd century.’ ‘The most valuable businesses of the coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make the obsolete.’
- On careers: ‘Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve.’
- On education: ‘Our schools teach just the opposite: institutionalized education traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge. Everybody who passes through the American school system learn not to think in power law terms. Every high school course period lasts 45 minutes whatever the subject. Every student proceeds at a similar pace. At college, model students obsessively hedge their futures by assembling a suite of exotic and minor skills. Every university believes in ‘excellence’, and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that ‘it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.’ This is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
- Get traction and build products in parallel: 50/50 split.
- Explore 19 traction channels through a bull’s eye approach: Brainstorm possibilities, prioritize best choices for your business, test, and then focus.
- JP choices: 1) Content marketing 2) Target Blogs 3) Email marketing 4) Speaking Engagements. Other: Sales, Social Ads, Publicity. +Facebook and LinkedIn as tools to do a few of these things.
Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
This book passes a practicality test for me, as I can list it under my ‘I wish I would have read this years ago!’ category.
Most entrepreneurs make some fundamental mistakes in how they structure their company. For example, they become over involved in the sales process, they don’t differentiate their offering, they don’t create systems that allow the business to thrive without them, etc.
These mistakes prevent them from eventually selling their businesses, which is a goal that many have. (To include even more people, you could substitute the ‘selling your business’ for ‘retiring.’)
This book addresses these mistakes with clear advice to follow if you want to successfully sell your company one day. It is a great way to operationalize the ‘Start with the end in mind’ principle.
A must read for entrepreneurs that are thinking bigger (as they should) than a service based model.
Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
Building off the Lean Startup mindset, Sprint outlines a process for very fast experimentation. This is an approach that many organizations desperately need to test their ideas.
For me, it reinforces the idea that I need to test my ideas quickly with my target audience, rather than building something big before I put it out into the world.
Definitely a book well suited for corporate audiences, but with principles that apply to anyone that wants to innovate.
Other books I read in 2019
The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
The transformational book I was looking for in 2018.
I typically read books on 1) how people work; 2) how the world works and 3) how business works. I believe this book is here to teach me ‘how to live.’
I read this book from cover to cover, and then immediately started reading it again. This time, I took detailed notes for every chapter.
It is so important to me at this time, I plan on continuing to read it to strengthen the ‘observer’ and ‘awareness’ within me. It is how I want to live my life.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk
- An interesting read if you are looking for some marketing inspiration.
- The so-called “immutable laws” are neither laws nor immutable. They are, at best, rules of thumb that often change and contradict each other.
- A great example of an author creating a business book that leads to them being perceived as the authority in the field. There is a chapter encouraging the readers to spend more money on ads, and there is a ‘Warning’ chapter about the resistance they are about to face.
- Notes for SparkPath: the Law of The Opposite (#9). Position SparkPath in opposition to the strongest attributes of the incumbent.
The 4-Hour Workweek
Tim Ferriss has elaborated principles and tactics to help others create a business and a life on their terms. I hope to integrate many of them as I build my business.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
Since reading Rework from Jason Fried, I knew that there was a different model for building a software company. His latest book is a great update on the Basecamp philosophy, as well as a timely read for me.
As I am entering the startup world and culture, I am hearing a lot of the opposite advice found in this book. In the startup world, the workaholic mindset is celebrated, yet it may be the very thing undermining many startups’ success.
This book has reminded me that I need to create my own path, regardless of what others are doing.
In the 3rd grade, my teacher told me I was great at coming up with ideas and starting projects, but that I struggled to finish them. This is still true to this day.
I read Finish from Jon Acuff to help me become a better finisher. It helped.
I learned about:
- Paying attention to the lies I tell myself when I set, start and work on goals.
- Recognizing the destructive role that perfectionism can play when working on a goal.
- Key questions to ask myself when I set a new goal and measure my progress.
I created a worksheet to help me do this. Feel free to try it the next time you set a goal.
Some of my favourite quotes:
“It’s not supposed to be perfect, it’s supposed to be finished.”
‘When you don’t finish a goal, you break a promise to yourself.’
‘Goals that you refuse to chase don’t disappear — they become ghosts that haunt you.’
The 12 Week Year Field Guide
Another interesting system for accomplishing goals. It’s all about the 12 week year system they created.
Unfortunately, I have found the system too incompatible with startup culture. I need short experiments and pivots. Planning a linear approach to three month goals, even if it is better than yearly goals, is still not the right way to build a learning organization.
I might go back to this book in the future, but it’s not the right tool for me at this time.
What Color Is Your Parachute? for Teens
I read this book in preparation for a meeting with the author. My goal was to influence them to include the Challenge mindset throughout.
Unfortunately it didn’t work. The Challenge mindset could perhaps be a part of the next edition, but only as a half-page edition. You gotta start somewhere!
Secrets of the Baby Whisperer
A source of inspiration and ideas for parenting. Not an evidence-based approach, rather stories and principles for an experienced caregiver.
Started but didn’t finish
Psycho-Cybernetics
I tried reading the “original self-help” book, but it was too painful!
Principles
I read the section on Life, and will read the section on Work in the future. I enjoyed watching Ray’s thinking process unfold.
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Overall, a great start to the year in terms of reading pace, but I struggle to keep up in the last half. Happy to have lived another year as a reader.
The Untethered Soul on it’s own changed my life. I can’t wait to read the next book that will change my life.
