How much to read as an entrepreneur (opens in new tab)

Some specific things you should make sure you don't read too much about:

- Anything about venture investment or finance related to fundraising, company valuation, liquidation preferences, etc. Your investors will tell you everything you need to know.

- Management. There's really nothing here you need to know about. Hire fast, fire fast, have a ping-pong table and catered lunches. It's that simple.

- Product development and project management. You are a visionary and everything you are doing is novel and innovative, so don't waste your time on these subjects.

- Computer science. Really, it's nothing like it was 20 years ago when the only language was FORTRAN or whatever. Everything you need to know about building software you can learn from attending a talk or two at a conference, provided it doesn't interfere with networking. Just make sure you only go to node.js-related talks because everything else is old, outdated, and useless. Also, don't even bother worrying about databases. MongoDB is the only thing you need.

- Marketing. This is especially useless since product is everything. Just build your product, put it online, make the app live in the app store, and go back to iterating on your product. They will come.

You can get any knowledge you need related to any of this by just building a business. Since you are clearly going to be the next Steve Jobs, you don't have time to waste reading useless things.

"Some men learn all they know from books; others from life; both kinds are narrow. The first are all theory; the second are all practice. It's the fellow who knows enough about practice to test his theories for blow-holes that gives the world a shove ahead, and finds a fair margin of profit in shoving it." - John Graham

Reading also has an additional cost, which is if you read things that are wrong it can teach you incorrect things in addition to wasting your time reading it. Especially in the startup space, a lot of people like to write their experiences into lessons when they have no basis for doing so. I imagine they want more people to read their article/blog post and it is some manner of self promotion. That is fine, but as a reader, you can just ignore whatever their have to say, it probably isn't useful.

Paul Graham is an obvious exception. He writes semi infrequently (1-2 essays a month as of recently), goes to great lengths to have them edited by people with diverse viewpoints and based on his position and experience has a great perspective to give useful lessons. There are other good writers, but not many, and pg is probably the best due to his unique perspective. And in my opinion, HN voters seem to vote up "entertainment" stories more than useful ones. So you can't assume if something is on the top of HN, it is useful in any way.

A rule I've found helpful is generally to read nothing except what applies to your current or next step or two.

Otherwise you risk reading stuff you can't act on, and forget by the time you need it.

Instead bookmarking and categorizing using a tool like delicious/diigo gives peace of mind that nothing will be lost and when I need it, it'll be there.

I don't know. How healthy should your diet be as an entrepreneur? These questions are silly.

I think the key here is to not take time away from more important things to read. When you are sitting in front of a computer there are a million things you could be doing to push your startup forward.

What I've done a lot of recently is play the audio of articles (using Apple text-to-speech) while exercising, stuck in traffic, etc. Allows me to "read" a ton while not taking any time away from normal work time.

I almost never read articles sitting in front of my computer anymore.

Reading is incredibly important. I am not talking here about startup related material, but wider than that. Startups operate in shifting currents and global trends.

Sources like the Economist, HBR and Foreign Policy are useful. Reading quality analysis is never wasted time. Even if you disagree with it, it forces you to think about why you hold a position.

I agree with the author. The reading part is only secondary to the doing part. Especially there are so many articles out there and when you read too much, their ideas start conflicting with each other.

As Micael (the author) says "So nowadays I don't read books and articles about entrepreneurship because I think I need the knowledge to succeed, but merely for inspiration or because I sometimes feel curious about some company or person."

This paragraph really resonates with me "The knowledge you need to have for your startup to succeed is in general not written in books or articles. The knowledge you need will be so specific to your particular company, with your particular employees, in your particular industry, in this particular time, with your particular product, with your particular goal and vision – that you need to generate that knowledge yourself by trying stuff out and iterating."

I have not yet created a sustainable business, but I know for sure that if I had tried without reading HN, articles and books every day for 2 years I would have had to learn those things "on the job", by creating failed start-ups.

In particular, what I think I have gained most from reading is developing my ability to search for good problems and solutions in the idea space, while in the past I was just adept at developing technical solutions without thinking enough about what else I could be doing. It took a while to change the mind set from "I want to build cool technology and hope it can make money somehow" to "I want to build something useful that people are willing to pay for, that is perhaps also interesting technology wise".

Articles and blog posts are usually not worth reading, some are even poisonous, as they promote some fad or groupthink. Books, especially those that people whom you trust have recommended do worth the time to read, older books, even better.

I devour books, sometimes for technical knowledge, other times for context. But in the end, it's all just part of the data input process.

How valuable any given bit is, whether it comes from experience or reading, is entirely subjective based on the entirety of the blended data set, my state of mind, the needs of my core project at any given moment in time and my desired outcome.

Plus, as Amanda Palmer said, "We can only connect the dots that we collect," so if books allow us to collect more or better dots faster, sometimes faster than experience, why not add them to the mix?

I read mostly because I find it enjoyable. I would consider a voracious desire to read and soak up knowledge a core tenant to being a hacker. Sure, we all need to get our hands dirty by doing things, but working in technology requires a nearly insane breadth of knowledge, and I just cannot imagine someone improving without lots and lots of research.

You have accomplished far more by writing a note that becomes popular on HN than by reading all the HN submits for the last X months. To the extent that being an entrepreneur is a for profit endeavor, you've wisely set up a dragon-- that is, the guilt that we don't read enough, to slay for just recognition. Nicely done.

I like this article.

The takeaways are the takeaways, including how fast one can learn and adapt.

The especially salient point is that book learning and planning are all well and good, the reality of trying something in the real world is a practical teacher.

I would probably say that it's good to have something that keeps you inspiring during your entrepreneurial journey. However 99% of what you need comes from experience and not from books.