Josh Kaufman’s book The First 20 Hours seems relevant here: https://first20hours.com/

(You May recognize Josh as the author of The Personal MBA, which is an excellent book.)

By striking out on your own, you mean launch a business? Highly suggest checking out The Personal MBA, Art of the Start, Fogcreek's Software Management Reading List and a book called SPRINT by Google Ventures! GOOD LUCK!

Seeking Wisdom is also really, really good. Super approachable and underrated.

The Personal MBA is also great, but I do agree that it's poor form for Josh to recommend his own book.

I don't hold MBA, but I was recommended The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. Amazing book.

I'd say >95% of the material covered in my business track could have been learned by reading "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. If only it had been around when I started.

A good place to start, read Josh Kaufman's book The Personal MBA.

Here's his presentation @ Google> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp8H8EMm464

I am partway through reading The Personal MBA, and the book of quotes you mentions sound very, very different. Sure, The Personal MBA is not a deep dive into any subject (it's not meant to be) but it's got a lot more meat than just quotes from other textbooks.

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. In general, books about the ups and downs of a particular business are better than books about business in general. That said, The Personal MBA is a good primer on the basic concepts of microeconomics. Just in case anyone reading this thread could use that!

And I can personally say (as someone who received a review copy ... thanks Josh!) that the Personal MBA book is great. My teenage siblings even found it interesting enough that they have told me things they learned from it. It's seriously great.

The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman
The First 20 Hours - Josh Kaufman
So Good They Can't Ignore You - Cal Newport
The 4-Hour Workweek - Tim Ferriss
The 4-Hour Body - Tim Ferriss
Stop Acting Rich - Thomas J. Stanley
James Altucher - Choose Yourself

I would highly recommend "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman.

He also lists several other good books in there. Even if you're not in charge of the entire business, you'll have a good idea of the "big picture" of how it runs.

The Personal MBA, Josh Kauffman

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz

Not open source, but worth checking: The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman.
Will help you know what those $xx.xxx MBAs can teach you.
I believe that's not an actual MBA substitute; but it's good to know if the content is for you before enrolling into an actual MBA.

I read "The Personal MBA".

I honestly wouldn't recommend it as a purchase. It's mostly definitions that you can skim through in an afternoon. There is a lot of pseudoscience/broscience in it, and the info on nutrition is wrong. Most of the important info of the book is in/only the first chapter.

I'm not advocating for an MBA either, but I think you'd get more value from the MBA network of a good program than a $20 book.

the Personal MBA, it outlines all the importance points of 2000 business books.

What you are partly struggling with is known as Akrasia. Read "The Personal MBA" chapter 7 by Josh Kaufman.

I launched a business book: "The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business." Basically, business fundamentals for hackers.

http://personalmba.com/personal-mba-book-launch/

Synthesize the knowledge from hundreds of books I've read into short chunks of consumable advice, similar to The Personal MBA.

That or write several fiction books.

Check this list out: http://www.bookhuddle.com/list/491/Recommended-Technical-and...

This list is made up from books I've read, books friends and coworkers have read, books on Joel Spolsky's Management Training Program, the Personal MBA reading list, and books recommmened by people on Hacker News.

The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business - Josh Kaufman

The Personal MBA is a great program and his book is just as good (http://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/15...). My wife and I are part-way through both and he covers just about everything you could care to know about running a successful business.

I have a BA and MA from a large state school and found the most rewarding things from my tenure in college were the relationships I built--not the classes. I would NEVER go into debt for a Master's or MBA--it's just not worth it. Find someone else to pay (scholarship, assistantship, teaching) or get to work, it's better experience anyway.

I'd recommend checking out Joel Spolsky's Reading List: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum... You might want to start with Guy Kawasaki's "Art of the Start" and Josh Kaufman's very useful "The Personal MBA"

An MBA from an elite school has a lot of potential for your network.

If you're just seeking the knowledge and skills of an MBA, you might look to open material instead. I'm currently reading a book called The Personal MBA for a similar passion. It's pretty unorthodox, but I do recommend it so far. It might help you decide too.

You can see my outline of all the chapters and subsections here:

https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/books/The%20P...

Here's some that I have found useful:

Hack Your Education by Dale Stephens - http://goo.gl/O27Z8

Lean Startup - http://goo.gl/YVGuU

Startup Communities by Brad Feld - http://goo.gl/CaGTA

Rework by Jason Fried and DHH - http://goo.gl/IzGeB

The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman - http://goo.gl/Ucf3u

There's nothing wrong with what you, by the way. You are forging your own path and you will find some obscure niche that no-one cares about which turns out to be lucrative enough to keep you occupied. It will all work out in the end.

Yours is the sort of background where getting an MBA (or equivalent) might be helpful, and would be a nice combination with tech skills + understanding of business in general. If nothing else. you would quickly find yourself above the "thermocline of effort" where you get paid a lot for not doing all that much work, which might fit your goals. A gentle first step to see if this might work for you would be reading "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman.

My five year old is a voracious reader. I feel like this is one of the most important educational tools you can give anyone. We stress to her that if you can read, and comprehend, there's nothing you cannot learn. That's why I included the first two on this list.

How to Read a Book - Mortimer Adler

How to Read Slowly - James Sire

The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman

The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham

Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

Does the idea of more debt excite you? In my opinion, it's too costly, and not a good return on your investment.

The things you'd learn from an MBA track can be learned from books, much more cheaply.

I'd start with "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. He's got several other books in there that he recommends.

I recommend these books, in this order:

Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill (this is timeless!! MUST READ)

The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman (this will give you a well-rounded education on business, if I had this before college I wouldn't have been a Business Management major!!)

The First 20 Hours - Josh Kaufman (rapid skill acquisition)

The 4-Hour Workweek - Tim Ferriss (how to break down complex stuff into the most essential parts, and win)

Tools of Titans - Tim Ferriss (stand on the shoulders of giants and see how other prominent folks are successful)

I agree with it. The real world teaches more than the classroom. I have written quite a bit about the efficiency of business education and have created alternatives as well.If you will permit me,
Do we need MBAs: A 5 part series http://bighow.com/tags/doweneedmbas
Do we need MBAs: A presentation http://www.slideshare.net/pramitsingh/the-success-manual-do-...

Inspired by The Personal MBA, I went one step ahead and created The Success Manual: Guide to 130 important skills
- It contains summaries of 100+ Greatest business books. Version 2.0 is on the way http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com

I think it has become the lore that you need to be a geek to build a successful software business.

There are always exceptions.

With regards to MBA's is there any evidence that getting one makes people more sucessful in their careers?

I know it helps if you already have a job to climb the ladder, but I don't think there is much in an MBA that isn't covered in a book like "The Personal MBA" and isn't much you will learn the hard way that isn't covered by starting your own company or joining a startup.

But each to their own.

If you're interested in my book, the link is in my profile; it has practical tips specifically for freelance programmers/developers/consultants/coders/software engineering people. But if you are purely interested in improving your business skills, then I recommend reading "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman.

Also, I'm a developer but my father is a Silicon Valley business lawyer. He wrote a chapter of "The Software Engineer's Guide to Freelance Consulting" that is available for free. https://codefor.cash/legalideas

Something I wish I'd known when I started freelancing about 8 years ago: Being good at your craft (like programming) is assumed. In order to do well at freelancing, you also have to have some business sense.

There are all sorts of great resources about how to business online, but it didn't even cross my mind at the beginning that that would be important. Once I started learning how to business freelancing became waaay easier.

Things like how to invoice, how to negotiate, how to talk to a client, how to schedule your time, how to budget, how to market yourself, how to network, etc etc etc are not at all related to programming, but can make the difference between a happy freelancing existence and a miserable career.

I've been fortunate to have a pretty lovely freelance web development career. My key has been finding clients that are smaller companies and not full time, with a long ongoing project.

Smaller companies allow you to build a relationship with the owner of the business, and to position yourself as not just a pair of hands to write code, but a trusted advisor who takes the business's actual needs into account when writing code (which is how you compete with global talent).

Not full time means you can have multiple clients at once to give you a nice advantage over a full time job: if one source of income dries up, your income doesn't go to zero.

Most of my clients have been multi-year projects. I'll slowly build their webapp for around 10 hours a week at most. I've worked about 20 hours a week for the last 8 years, lived in lower cost of living areas, and spent the rest of my time on doing whatever I feel like.

Some resources I'd recommend:

* The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman - a nice overall summary of how to run a business

* The corpus of Kai Davis's material (https://kaidavis.com/), including his super valuable/highly entertaining podcast Make Money Online (https://makemoneyonline.exposed/)

* How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - how to interface with fellow humans (freelancing/business is mostly a human activity)

Happy to help anyone who's interested in freelancing if I can, send me an email.

Here is what I did when I moved from development to product & Marketing

1. Follow people in the same field
2. Ready up on blogs and posts : I use Zite, Flipboard and medium
3. A book that helped me to a large extent is Good to great by Jim Collins (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/00...)

Also The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman http://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-World-Class-Business-Educ...

4. Video from people in the same field.
5. This article https://medium.com/@noah_weiss/50-articles-and-books-that-wi...

Some great tools:

1. Trello - Project/product and pretty much manage any thing
2. Qlikview - Data Analysis : Excel on Steroids

It's a very short list, but I am learning on the job :)

The phenomena is called Cognitive Dissonance [1] and more-so probably Illusion-of-truth [2] effect. That being said, if anyone is interested in the half-truths of getting an MBA, read Josh Kaufman's The Personal MBA[3]. The first few chapters analytically and precisely decipher the myths around the MBA. In fact he doesn't go as far as to say "Don't get an MBA", rather "Here are the facts, make your own decision".

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_memory#Illusion-of-tru...

[3] - http://personalmba.com/

Like others have mentioned it depends on your goals.

Do you want to build a passive income side business you can run from the beach? Check out The Personal MBA. https://personalmba.com/

Do you want to build a huge rocketship and IPO? Check out Y Combinator's "How To Start A Startup". https://startupclass.samaltman.com/

While these are not "software-specific" business books, I would say it's more important to spend time mastering the fundamentals[1] of business, which is the skill of finding people who want to pay for what you have. Everything else like management[2], operations[3], and marketing[4] can come secondary. This may sound cliché only because real business skills are boring, the same way "To get healthy, diet and exercise" sounds boring.

[1] https://jamesclear.com/fundamentals

[2] Marc Andreessen: The Hard Thing About Hard Things

[3] Eliyahu Goldratt: The Goal

[4] Chip and Dan Heath: Made To Stick

> On business, joshkaufman recommends Kaufman's The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business over Bevelin's Seeking Wisdom and Munger's Poor Charlie's Alamanack.

What a rat. Recommends his own book over two others. This is exactly what is wrong with University textbook selection. They're often just picking their friends, or someone who picked their textbook. Crooked and corrupt.

My take? Skip business school. You can learn nearly everything a biz track would give you by reading "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman.

I admit it. I'm an outlier here. Unless you're going to be a doctor/lawyer/engineer, college isn't worth the time or money.

You can get the business acumen without the hefty college tuition bill. I'm a business grad. If I had it to do over, I'd have skipped college and went all-in on learning to code. (I code now, I'm self-employed, and I'm making the best money I've ever made.)

If you want to be a creative, steer your educational pursuits where can get you what you need much cheaper.

It pains me to see people go to school, graduate with a huge bill, and then get a crappy job.

If you like podcasts, there’s a great one by Kai Davis and Nick Disabato called Make Money Online. I can also recommend the Indiehackers podcast. The greatest insight to effort would probably be The Personal MBA by Josh Kauffman, a really great business book. What sells is solving expensive problems or making companies with lots of money better or more efficient at making money. You can get into conversations with decision makers by cold emailing people saying that you’d like to buy them coffee and talk about their business. Lots of them are busy and will not reply or say no. Some will say yes. These are informational interviews not sales calls because you don’t have anything to sell yet. Or you could go to your local chamber of commerce meeting and talk to people.

One recent Indie Hackers episode had Nathan Barry on. He swore by the tactic of doing presentations on a topic that would be useful to small business owners at chamber of commerce meetings, collecting emails and adding people to a mailing list. Apparently most of the leads he got didn’t convert themselves but they referred other people who did. All for the price of free coffee and donuts, a presentation and time.

My background is also CS and I'd recommend wholeheartedly "The personal MBA"[0].
It organizes the fundamentals of business in a clear and concise fashion that will be easy to understand and hard to forget.
The book is not in depth of course but rather a comprehensive overview.

protip: skip the first self-promotional chapter, I was so put off by its poor taste that it made me delay reading the book by a few months. The rest is great though!

As others have mentioned, startup school[1] is also a goldmine. In my opinion it's less thorough on fundamentals and more focused on key lessons and understandings that only come with handling a successful startup. Many authors cover the same topics but the startup school presenters are actually authoritative on them, kudos!

The lean startup[2] is also a must, offering solid advice on how not to waste time, which equals runway, as a founder.

Another good one is Never Split the Difference[3], which teaches you a few tricks to fend for yourself while raising money in the world of VCs which, may I remind you, negotiate for a living.

0: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9512985-the-personal-mba
1: https://www.startupschool.org/
2: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10127019-the-lean-startu...
3: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156469-never-split-the...

> Any books you recommend. Primary management skills where I lack:

- FYI: For Your Improvement, A Guide for Development and Coaching> http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/847538.FYI?from_search=tr...

- High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove > http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324750.High_Output_Manage...

- The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman > http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9512985-the-personal-mba?...

Largely dependent on what you mean by "business man", but going from dev to sales can be as easy as transitioning to a sales engineering / solutions architect role and getting exposure to closing deals that way. The next leap you'd make is figuring out how to get into a closing role; which will take a little patience in order to find a good fit (namely: a company willing to put someone with engineering experience in a closing role -- they're out there!).

If you mean other parts of the business (operations, finance, BD, etc), the pattern is probably similar -- find a technical role that's in that org and start there, with the intention of moving into the business side more and more.

If you mean "I'm a software developer and want to understand the business side of running a company better", there is a ton of reading you can do to learn how businesses work. Some books that were helpful to me:

  * The 4 Steps to Epiphany by Steve Blank
  * How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie 
  * The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
  * The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
  * Venture Deals by Brad Feld

Ultimately business skills are gained the same way you'd learn software skills -- self-study combined with exposure to the problems you're interested in solving.

Good article on the dangers of starting a business without actually knowing anything about how to do business. I've been reading "The E-Myth Revisited" and it's been really incredibly helpful in showing all the common pitfalls that folks fall into when trying to start up their own business, usually using the same logic of "These jokers don't know what they're doing, I'm gonna start my own thing and do it the RIGHT way!"

Highly recommend everyone check it out before starting a new business. I've been helping my father with his own small business, which is a bit of a total mess. Some of the advice in this book has been incredibly illuminating, regarding why so many small businesses are structured to fail, rather than aiming for success from day 1. Between that and a book like "The Personal MBA", I think that would be a solid background before getting anything off the ground.

I don't work for any of these folks or the authors, they've just made a big positive impact in the way I think about business.

Hmm... The closest thing I can think of is the book "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman.

In the book he talks about the "12 Standard Forms Of Value". These 12 forms of value cover pretty much any business you can possibly think of. In other words, if you're in business and making money, you're using at least one of these twelve methods.

AngelList ( https://angel.co for VC jobs and funding )
asks "What's the most useful business-related book you've ever read?" ...
Getting Things Done (David Allen),
43Folders = 12 months + 31 days (Merlin Mann),
The Art of the Start (Guy Kawasaki),
The Personal MBA (Josh Kaufman)

Lever ( https://www.lever.co ) makes recruiting and hiring (some parts of HR) really easy.

LinkedIn ( https://www.linkedin.com ) also has a large selection of qualified talent:
https://smallbusiness.linkedin.com/hiring

... How much can you tell about a candidate from what they decide to write on themselves on the internet?

I was in a similar position 4 years ago, before my first startup.

On reflection, the books I got the most out of that actually shaped my behaviour are...

THE PERSONAL MBA, JOSH KAUFMAN

Was blown away by this. Couldn't believe how much stuff I didn't know about. It covers everything you've asked about and more...

It's also written a bit like a Software Patterns/Recipes book, which I love.

I've read the MBA book about 5 times.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Personal-MBA-World-Class-Business-Ed...

PITCH ANYTHING, OREN KLAFF

You'll hate reading it. It will make you cringe. It's uncomfortable.

But it changed my attitude to business, my products, and deals a LOT. Which is REALLY important.

Applying some of these techniques had amazing results in any dealings with 3rd parties (sales, partnerships, deals). That's because I'm a softie engineer, not a battle-hardened business man. I still read this before attending any significant meeting.

http://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-P...

HOW TO BE THE LUCKIEST PERSON ALIVE, JAMES ALTUCHER

Covers everything in one way or another...

I keep coming back to the epic rule list in this book. I keep ignoring them in business, then learning the hard way that the list is right. He shares his failures and successes in a humerous way.

It's a real down-to-earth, eye opening book.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1461120705

OTHER

I'm reading Lean Startup, and have read Made to Stick, Letting go of the words, Ignore Everybody, Spin Selling, and tons more. All good books, but the 3 above were the biggest impact for me on all levels.

I've been teaching some folks how to code. It's helped a bit. I also have been reading more business books - things like the personal MBA [1], The Goal, how to win friends and influence people (old versions before he died). Basically, make an effort to speak their language, because they (probably) won't put in the effort to learn yours. Some will appreciate the effort and meet you half-way, others will be amazed that you can communicate with them.

[1] : http://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/15...

The question is, do you want to move up?

If someone wants to move up within the organization, this is a quick reading list.

Getting to Yes -- If you only have a chance to read one, read this. It is about how to effectively collaborate toward a solution, and it works in functional work environments. It will be around in a big enough used bookstore.

How to Win Friends and Influence People -- Another oldie but goodie. It's a quick skim, and it's in every used bookstore. It has influenced interpersonal communication in the corporate world for nearly a century, and most people are taking their cues from this book.

The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business -- It's a condensation of many of the terms in business, and a reflection of the current corporate zeitgeist.

Then, read two top selling business books a year. They're usually quick reads, and you want to speak the same language as the people reading these books.

How does this help? By speaking the same language as the people making decisions, you are perceived as "one of them." This gives a common bond, and they perceive you as more likely to "understand business." By participating in collaborative conflict management, you are perceived to be a "team player." You can make the same good decisions without a confrontational work environment if all parties are speaking the same language.

And all of these will help you run your own company, because you will be talking to other businessmen who are reading these books. They will trust you more if they perceive you as "one of them," and you will be able to describe how your product produces a return on investment in their language.

In no particular order:

* Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

* Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

* The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday

* The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday

* The Effective Engineer, Edmund Lau

* The Lean Startup, Eric Ries

* The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman

* Certain to Win, Chet Richards

* Left of Bang, Patrick Van Horn & Jason A. Riley

* Native Set Theory, Paul R. Halmos

EDIT: list formatting

Agreed - Munger has been one of my very few heroes for a long time now. Poor Charlie's Almanack is a great read.

Munger's concept of mental models is the basis for my book ("The Personal MBA"), which comes out in January. The project started because I was looking for a comprehensive treatment of Munger's models, but couldn't find one.

Munger's models also tend to be very clearly focused on making investment decisions, which is great, but tend to overlook how to start / grow a business, so that's what I set out to create.

This approach is now the basis of my work with my clients and course participants, with huge success. Mental models work wonders for people with little knowledge of a topic - they're a great way to teach people something useful quickly.

Don't bother with an MBA course. Just go read "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. It covers the stuff business tracks do for MUCH cheaper. It'll save you a ton of money, and you can make a better investment. Seriously... grad school for business is NOT worth it. It wasn't worth it for undergrad, either.

I was a business major for undergrad. I'm kicking myself for not having just started with a CS major from the outset.

In no particular order:

* The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday

* The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday

* Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

* Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

* The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman

* The Effective Engineer, Edmund Lau

* The Lean Startup, Eric Ries

* Certain to Win, Chet Richards

* Left of Bang, Patrick Van Horn & Jason A. Riley

* Native Set Theory, Paul R. Halmos

* Introducing Go, by Caleb Doxsey.

If you'd like to read what I think of these books, you can read my blog post about them here: http://aalhour.com/blog/2018/01/02/review-of-my-2017-reading...

No. It is not worth the money or time to do more formal schooling than you've already done. You already have the paper that proves you've done the whole college dance.

Go read "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman, and read the books he recommends therein. That will get you the same education, and you won't have a tuition bill when you're done.

Also, you'll have work experience that you'd miss out on while taking MBA classes. Focus on strengthening your tech skills, and stay working. That'll be far more beneficial to you than another degree.

Seriously, it's not worth it like it used to be.

Well, to give credit where it's due, The Personal MBA is not a bad book. It has a slightly misleading title though. It should have been called "extremely short pieces about various aspects of business".

The real value of it, at least for me, is inspiration. I read a small chapter (which is often just a page or half) and think how it relates to my actual situation. This gives me some food for thought, and very often for action, for a couple of days. Then I go back to the book, read the next piece, and so on. I sometimes disagree with the author, but it's a positive experience overall.

I asked the same question a few years ago (tech background, needed to uplift my business knowledge/lingo). The response was "you should find a way to obtain the knowledge of an MBA, without having to do one".

As a result of searching a few years back, I ended up buying a copy of "The Personal MBA" and reading it through. This comes with the list of 99 business books, listed here; https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/

* I have no affiliation with the site, author or book. I'm just speaking from my personal experience and the benefit of business knowledge this gave me.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank

The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki

Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

Business Model Generation - Alex Osterwalder

The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman

Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Also, see:

http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-must-read-books-for-entre...

http://www.quora.com/Business-Books/What-business-books-must...

http://www.quora.com/What-are-3-books-you-would-suggest-any-...

and

http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/