Startup Resources: Recommended Reading

Other books, articles, and talks you should check out to learn about startups.

  1. Startup overview
  2. Why startups
  3. Startup ideas, validation, MVP
  4. Design, Data, Distribution
  5. Picking a tech stack
  6. Clean code
  7. Software delivery
  8. Startup culture
  9. Startup hiring
  10. Learning and teaching
  11. Startup courses

These startup resources are based on the book Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams by Yevgeniy Brikman. These resources are a work in a progress. They are also open source, so you can add your contributions by submitting a pull request to the Hello, Startup GitHub Repository. To see how these resources fit into the bigger picture, check out the The Startup Checklist, which is a comprehensive collection of everything you need to do to launch a startup.

Startup overview

Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams

https://www.hello-startup.net/

This book is the "Hello, World" tutorial for building products, technologies, and teams in a startup environment. It's based on the experiences of the author, Yevgeniy Brikman, as well as interviews with programmers from some of the most successful startups of the last decade, including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Stripe, Instagram, AdMob, Pinterest, and many others. If you're at all interested in startups, this book is for you.


Paul Graham Essays

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

Paul Graham is the co-founder of Y Combinator and his essays contain just aobut everything you need to know about building a startup.


Hackers and Painters

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596006624?ref=hello-startup-20

Many of Paul Graham's best essays packaged up as a book.


The Lean Startup

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307887898?ref=hello-startup-20

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.


Founders at Work

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590597141?ref=hello-startup-20

Founders at Work is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company.


The Hard Thing About Hard Things

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062273205?ref=hello-startup-20

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.


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Starting Your Startup

https://vimeo.com/26134764

Choosing your technology stack is one of many decisions you’ll have to make when creating a company from scratch. Along with this, you’ll need to figure out who you should found a company with, who you should take money from, what the company culture should be, management processes, and who to hire when. Joe Stump will be covering basic technology stack choices (cloud v. hosted, frameworks, etc.) as well as other critical decisions one faces when starting a startup.


Why startups

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Why Software is Eating the World

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460

Marc Andreessen's famous article that explains why every company is becoming a software company.


Mobile is Eating the World

http://a16z.com/2014/10/28/mobile-is-eating-the-world/

There is no point in drawing a distinction between the future of technology and the future of mobile. They are the same. In other words, technology is now outgrowing the tech industry.






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Phil Libin at TNW2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-8xAUx5Y6s

Evernote CEO Phil Libin: “My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs? Don’t do it”





Startup ideas, validation, MVP


Where Good Ideas Come From

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594485380?ref=hello-startup-20

The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery--these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson's answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines.


Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0738205370?ref=hello-startup-20

The best-selling guide to overcoming creative blocks and unleashing a torrent of great ideas-updated for a new generation of problem solvers.


Everything is a Remix

http://everythingisaremix.info/

There are no new ideas. Just copy, transform, and combine.







Design, Data, Distribution

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321965515?ref=hello-startup-20

Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, hundreds of thousands of Web designers and developers have relied on usability guru Steve Krug’s guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design. Witty, commonsensical, and eminently practical, it’s one of the best-loved and most recommended books on the subject.


The Design of Everyday Things

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465067107?ref=hello-startup-20

The Design of Everyday Things is a best-selling book by cognitive scientist and usability engineer Donald Norman about how design serves as the communication between object and user, and how to optimize that conduit of communication in order to make the experience of using the object pleasurable. One of the main premises of the book is that although people are often keen to blame themselves when objects appear to malfunction, it is not the fault of the user but rather the lack of intuitive guidance that should be present in the design.


The Non-Designer's Design Book

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0133966151?ref=hello-startup-20

This book explains basic, universal Web design principles and techniques to novices. Using lots of full-color examples, Robin and John demonstrate how Web design is different from print design, how to create Web pages, how to make graphics and where to find them, and how to get your well-designed Web site up for everyone to admire.



How to Measure Anything

http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/0470110120?ref=hello-startup-20

A revealing look at the power of measurement in business and the world at large, this book asserts that there are no actual 'intangibles' and that virtually any business quality can be measured.


Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/1400064287?ref=hello-startup-20

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions.


Crossing the Chasm

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060517123?ref=hello-startup-20

A marketing book by Geoffrey A. Moore that focuses on the specifics of marketing high tech products during the early start up period. Moore's exploration and expansion of the diffusions of innovations model has had a significant and lasting impact on high tech entrepreneurship.


The Four Steps to the Epiphany

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0989200507?ref=hello-startup-20

The essential book for anyone bringing a product to market, writing a business plan, marketing plan or sales plan. Step-by-step strategy of how to successfully organize sales, marketing and business development for a new product or company.



Picking a tech stack

NoSQL Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0090J3SYW?ref=hello-startup-20

The need to handle increasingly larger data volumes is one factor driving the adoption of a new class of nonrelational “NoSQL” databases. Advocates of NoSQL databases claim they can be used to build systems that are more performant, scale better, and are easier to program. NoSQL Distilled is a concise but thorough introduction to this rapidly emerging technology. Pramod J. Sadalage and Martin Fowler explain how NoSQL databases work and the ways that they may be a superior alternative to a traditional RDBMS. The authors provide a fast-paced guide to the concepts you need to know in order to evaluate whether NoSQL databases are right for your needs and, if so, which technologies you should explore further.


Designing Data-Intensive Applications

http://dataintensive.net/

NoSQL… Big Data… Scalability… CAP Theorem… Eventual Consistency… Sharding… Nice buzzwords, but how does the stuff actually work? As software engineers, we need to build applications that are reliable, scalable and maintainable in the long run. We need to understand the range of available tools and their trade-offs. For that, we have to dig deeper than buzzwords. This book will help you navigate the diverse and fast-changing landscape of technologies for storing and processing data.





Clean code

Code Complete

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0735619670?ref=hello-startup-20

Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming, Steve McConnell's original Code Complete has been helping developers write better software for more than a decade.



Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321503627?ref=hello-startup-20

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is now an established technique for delivering better software faster. TDD is based on a simple idea: Write tests for your code before you write the code itself. However, this "simple" idea takes skill and judgment to do well. Now there's a practical guide to TDD that takes you beyond the basic concepts.


Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201485672?ref=hello-startup-20

Refactoring is about improving the design of existing code. It is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code, yet improves its internal structure. With refactoring you can even take a bad design and rework it into a good one. This book offers a thorough discussion of the principles of refactoring, including where to spot opportunities for refactoring, and how to set up the required tests.




Coding Horror

http://blog.codinghorror.com/

Jeff Atwood's popular blog on software development.


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Joel on Software

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/

Joel Spolsky's popular blog on software development.


Startup culture

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0932633439?ref=hello-startup-20

Demarco and Lister demonstrate that the major issues of software development are human, not technical. Their answers aren't easy--just incredibly successful.


The Mythical Man-Month

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201835959?ref=hello-startup-20

Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects.


Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594488843?ref=hello-startup-20

Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people—at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his paradigm-shattering book Drive, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.


Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0446563048?ref=hello-startup-20

The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success.


Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060566108?ref=hello-startup-20

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies -- they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 -- and studied each company in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies?"





How great leaders inspire action

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers.














Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201616416?ref=hello-startup-20

Describes how to improve your software development by integrating accountability, transparency and responsibility into your daily development process. This book helps you how to: involve the whole team; increase technical collaboration through pair programming and continuous integration; reduce defects through developer testing; and more.




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Gary Hamel: Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment

http://www.managementexchange.com/video/gary-hamel-reinventing-technology-human-accomplishment

Watch Gary Hamel, celebrated management thinker and author and co-founder of the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX), make the case for reinventing management for the 21st century. In this fast-paced, idea-packed, 15-minute video essay, Hamel paints a vivid picture of what it means to build organizations that are fundamentally fit for the future—resilient, inventive, inspiring and accountable.


Startup hiring

Cracking the Coding Interview

http://www.amazon.com/dp/098478280X?ref=hello-startup-20

Now in the 5th edition, Cracking the Coding Interview gives you the interview preparation you need to get the top software developer jobs. This is a deeply technical book and focuses on the software engineering skills to ace your interview. The book is over 500 pages and includes 150 programming interview questions and answers, as well as other advice.


Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job

http://www.amazon.com/dp/047012167X?ref=hello-startup-20

The pressure is on during the interview process but with the right preparation, you can walk away with your dream job. This classic book uncovers what interviews are really like at America's top software and computer companies and provides you with the tools to succeed in any situation. The authors take you step-by-step through new problems and complex brainteasers they were asked during recent technical interviews.









Learning and teaching

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060891548?ref=hello-startup-20

On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher.



The Cathedral and the Bazaar

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596001088?ref=hello-startup-20

The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary (abbreviated CatB) is an essay, and later a book, by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design.


So Good They Can't Ignore You

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455509124?ref=hello-startup-20

In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice. Not only is the cliché flawed-preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work-but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping.


Timothy Gowers: The Importance of Mathematics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsIJN4YMZZo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This video is a lucid, dynamic presentation of the deep and important question of the relevance of mathematics to society, delivered by one of the best mathematicians of the modern age.


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Richard Hamming, You and Your Research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This course is intended to instill a "style of thinking" that will enhance one's ability to function as a problem solver of complex technical issues. With respect, students sometimes called the course "Hamming on Hamming" because he relates many research collaborations, discoveries, inventions and achievements of his own. This collection of stories and carefully distilled insights relates how those discoveries came about. Most importantly, these presentations provide objective analysis about the thought processes and reasoning that took place as Dr. Hamming, his associates and other major thinkers, in computer science and electronics, progressed through the grand challenges of science and engineering in the twentieth century.



Startup courses

How to Start a Startup

https://startupclass.co/

Y Combinator's How to Start a Startup. Everything we know about how to start a startup, for free, from some of the world experts.


Peter Thiel's CS 183: Startup

http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup

Class notes from Peter Thiel's CS 183: Startup course at Stanford University.


Startup Engineering

https://www.coursera.org/course/startup

Spiritual sequel to Peter Thiel's CS183 course on startups. Bridges the gap between academic computer science and production software engineering. Free class on Coursera.