Posted on
by

entrepreneur reading list
That’s what it feels like to be an entrepreneur.

Of course most successful entrepreneurs love to learn. They don’t learn just one thing every day, but rather many things – entire topics – and it happens almost naturally.

And with the interwebs being what they are, one of the best places to learn* is by seeing what other people are doing, have done and then written about online.

*Other places to learn: talking to people in person; just f***ing doing it and learning from your mistakes

24 Hours of Reading

To give you a sense of what I mean, I’ve spent the last day or so recording everything I came across.

Here’s what I’ve read during that time frame, a sample of what a Lessons Learned from Less* newsletter might look like:

  • CSS font-size property – See that comment up there? Wordpress didn’t have an easy GUI for small text so I had to remind myself how to do it with CSS.
  • Launchkit Screenshot Builder – Cool tool for building app store images. Saved this with my Evernote webclipper as it might be useful someday.
  • HypeQ – This feels like a click bait headlines app for app signups. Ugh! Pass…
  • INeedAResume – Create a good looking resume in seconds with their no frills template. Nice side project by Mitch Samuels.
  • 6 Apple Watch Surprises – Note: No actual surprises in this article. Click bait – 1. Jeff – 0.
  • March Madness Makers and Takers – Who actually wins in the tournament? The big conferences who take home all the $$.
  • Apple Is Out to Blow Up the Cable TV Model – Consumers keep saying they want to unbundle their cable to get cheaper bills and less wasted channels, but I’m guessing they’ll soon regret it, finding they’re paying just as much (or more) and miss channels they watched more than they think they did.
  • Fed Drops Patient Stance, Opening Door to June Rate Increase – Raising interest rates are on the horizon.
  • Startup School Opens With a Bang in Ponce City Market – Lots going on next door to BlueFletch HQ. I can’t wait to take a tour of it all.
  • College Baseball Player Kicked Off Team for Calling Mo’ne Davis a Sl*t – This is so upsetting in at least 4 ways: 1) that this guy said this to start, 2) that he didn’t have the social media intelligence to know that it would be even worse to say on Twitter, and 3) that he’s going to have such serious, long-lasting repercussions in his life because of this one incident, and 4) that this kind of thing keeps on happening.
  • Spiceworks – On a much more positive note, a good friend is looking to intern at Spiceworks so I did some digging to help her. What a fun, creative and exciting prospect. I hope she gets the job!
  • FinderPath – Lets mac users easily get the file path in Finder. How is this not just part of Finder though?!?
  • We Live in Public – While Meerkat is the “IT” app right now, I wanted to learn about the live streaming app space. Turns out it’s not new. Good follow up read on YouNow from the Verge.
  • Creative Mornings Atlanta: Miya Bailey – Did you sign up for it? If not you’ll have to wait for next month.
  • Dropbox: Why aren’t certain files on one computer syncing to another? – After an hour of research and testing this turned out to be a case of user error. Doh! Still, I was impressed with Dropbox’s support articles on the whole.
  • Why Phone Support is Key for SaaS Companies – A friend was recently asking me whether his new startup needed a support phone number and I conveniently came across this article at a relevant time.
  • Time to rethink per-user pricing for your enterprise SaaS? – I’m constantly teetering back & forth whether it’s best to price per user, or by some other metric. Of course there’s no silver bullet but here’s more ammunition for the fight.
  • Why Spotify Pays So Little – If you haven’t spent time learning how the business models work for streaming music services you should. The labels, the artists, the streaming services – it’s a world of haves and have nots.
  • Warren Buffett Just Wrote His Best Annual Letter Ever – A quick preview from Bill Gates on Buffett’s annual letter. He also links to the full annual letter, which I’m planning to read later.
  • Dear Data – Interesting?
  • Five Years Time – Good for the author (Gregory) for following through on his side project and turning it into a real thing. Follow through is a very important entrepreneurial skill.

Last, I came across this article, which is an appropriate way to end this post. Become a Better Entrepreneur by Subscribing to These 5 Newsletters – Do this now. Yes you! 1 (Hacker Newsletter), 3 (Hubspot) and 5 (KISSmetrics) are favorites of mine.