Business Adventures By John Brooks. An awesome book. Must read for all.

I've just finished The Lean Startup by Eric Reis. I'm now onto 'Zero to One' by Peter Thiel. Also read Business Adventures by John Brooks recently. Oh! And 'Tales of Mystery & Imagination' by Edgar Allen Poe I've got for bath-time reading :)

Business Adventures, Crossing The Chasm, Hard Things About Hard Things, Only The Paranoid Survives are great books.

Love that story. It's told in more detail along with other stories like it in Business Adventures by John Brooks - https://amzn.to/3cq4Fs5

Here's the actual list: http://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Best-Books-2014

I'm reading Business Adventures right now. It's good, but nearly 50 years old, and it shows in places. Still, it's intelligent and well written.

This is that article: Business Adventures is a collection of Brook's New Yorker articles

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A little bit about Blinkist: we create thoughtfully-designed book summaries for the digital age, like the modern CliffsNotes for avid readers and lifelong learners. With the app you can read the key takeaways from Business Adventures, Thinking, Fast and Slow, or The Greatest Show On Earth in a short 15-minute read.

Agreed. Levine has a unique ability to peer deep inside the underlying mechanisms of modern finance and explain them clearly. Levine's writing reminds me somewhat of John Brooks, although Brooks was perhaps more interested in personas than mechanics. (If you've never read the Business Adventures collection, it's worth picking up!)

When I saw that Bill Gates called Business Adventures by John Brooks his favorite business book ever back in July, I figured he must have some deal with the publisher who was reprinting it.

According to the Forbes article linked below, they saw his blog post and rushed to reprint it based on the demand he created.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/07/28/how-bil...

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future - The subject is extremely interesting, challenging and thought provoking but I felt like Ashlee Vance (Author) was somewhat inspired by Walter Isaacsons Steve Jobs in terms of his portrayal of Musk as the genius who is somewhat a jerk. Either that or Vance was trying to convey that people like Musk and Jobs often are jerks....(6/10)

Extreme Ownership: Jocko Willink - entertaining listening in the car, perhaps no so much if you tried to read it. An impressive balance of storytelling and principles. (6/10)

Maximum City: Suketu Mehta - as someone who has lived in Mumbai for nearly five years, this book captured the pulse of the supercity as no other has. Able to describe the inherent beauty of modern India without resorting to the typical cliched western neuroses about the place. (8/10)

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics: Carlo Rovelli - Got recommended this book multiple times. Brief and succinct so Carlo must be commended for that. As a pop-science book it kind of paled in comparison to Bill Bryson's "Complete History" (6/10)

Rebels: Aris Roussinos - A raw, honest and powerful book that tells a story about many of the world's conflict zones from the perspective of someone who may get shot themselves. Refreshing and beautifully upsetting all at once. (7/10)

Mere Christianity: C.S. Lewis - A broad spectrum of thoughts about meaning and purpose that have obviously been considered for many years and then condensed in a very succinct way (8/10)

Business Adventures: John Brooks - A recommendation by Buffet and Gates, entertaining read with business principles built in (7/10)

Tools of Titans: Tim Ferriss - Obviously written for those of us who have allowed our attention spans to be destroyed by the constant sugary stimulation of the internet, Tim nails the balance of useful thoughts and observations from a broad array of guests while keeping it succinct and entertaining. (7/10)

Here are some books Buffett has recommended, I'm sure there are tons of other books, these are just the ones that have stuck with me.

Investing:
1) The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
2) Security Analysis - Benjamin Graham
3) Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits - Philip Fisher
4) The Little Book of Common Sense Investing - John Bogle
5) The Most Important Thing - Howard Marks

Economics:
1) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
2) Where Are the Customers' Yachts: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street - Fred Schwed
3) stuff by John Maynard Keynes (never heard him mention exact title)

Others:
1) Poor Charlie's Almanac - Charles Munger
2) Business Adventures - John Brooks
3) How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie

Then there are some things I've never heard him explicitly recommend but I think are definitely worth reading:
1) Letter to shareholders (all of them, you can find the ones of his partnership and earlier ones online)
2) The Snowball - Alice Schroeder
3) Tap Dancing to Work - Carol Loomis
(There are tons of books on Buffett, but these two are friends of his)

Also, if you ever go to his shareholders meeting, there's a whole list of "Buffett approved books". Some that I can remember from this years meeting (other then the ones mentioned above):
1) all of them found on https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/
2) Dream Big - Cristiane Correa
3) a bunch more that I cant remember

Finally on his investing, he has laid out a bunch of times what he believes is best for ordinary people who aren't going to devote most of their time to investing namely, buy a low cost index fund (he recommends Vanguards, I believe it was this one https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0540&... )
I'm not quite sure why so little people (that I know) listen to him. It seems that people want to show that they can outperform the market, but rarely do.

I think some of the classic tech business books are also good for “indie hackers”:

Andrew Grove’s High Output Management

John Brooks’ Business Adventures

Brad Felds and Jason Mendelson’s Venture Deals

Antifragile is on the list, but Fooled by Randomness is better I think as it’s shorter and contains almost all the ideas.

This story reminded me of the chapter in Business Adventures by John Brooks about the Ford Edsel.

The Edsel was one of the last large cars before economy cars became popular. The timing of the Aztek seemed similarly unfortunate. It was the first SUV crossover several years before crossovers became popular and it got flak for not fitting in with established vehicle types.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel

You may be much better educated than I on insider trading, but as I understand it courts have ruled that insiders have to wait a reasonable amount of time for the public to absorb that information. "Reasonable amount" seems to have changed over the years (first read about it in Business Adventures, Buffet and Gates' favorite biz book), but I note that most trading firms today state you must wait until the 3rd business day to act on that information.

Another issue is whether you know this is fact, but the public only knows it as rumor.

Of course, you'll want to consult a lawyer about all this.

Business Adventures by John Brooks
The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike

I just finished Business Adventures, although I got it on Audible when it came out. Amazing piece of literature. It's pretty crazy to know that each chapter is based on real life interviews and real events since they read like a novel.

Very well written. I've doubled back over most chapters to hear them a second time, picking up new things. The lessons in each chapter are still valuable today and really do stand the test of time. Highly recommended.

I guess it's a matter of taste as I greatly preferred Business Adventures to the Jobs biography. The Jobs book, while informative, felt like it was missing something. I got a better sense about the guy watching his old NEXT era PBS interviews than I did Isaacson's bio, which too often felt like a recounting of major events shoehorned into what Isaacson decided the theme of Jobs' life was.

I'd still recommend reading BA because the writing style is first rate (and unexpectedly funny). It's also worthwhile for the realization that, due to it's mid century setting, that while the materials and ideas of the business world have changed since the books time, people really haven't, thus business itself really hasn't changed as much as you might otherwise conclude.

From about 1870 to the 1960s stock quotes were communicated using stock tickers that communicated over telegraph lines and printed thin strips of paper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_tape

The system worked well until the 1960s when the volume of trading on busy days overwhelmed the system, sometimes delaying the quotes for hours. There had been plans to build a computer network already, but the data outages made it an urgent issue.

The classic book Business Adventures has a chapter on the chaos sowed by the failure of ticker tape.

https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-St...