If you don't have your own shit togethor productivity wise: Getting Things Done, David Allen.

This: http://managinghumans.com/ might be what you're after in terms of Engineering/Development management

Read the The E-Myth Revisited (80's classic)

Check out MIT's Bill Aulet's Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup & accompanying workbook.

But I wouldn't recommend just sending someone a book or article to read. You need to approach this situation with more empathy.

I think it is still possible too succeed with coffeehouses, but one shouldn't be romantic about it...

- The e-Myth Revisited
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad

I've found these very useful in terms of how money works and also about the value of passive income

http://www.amazon.com/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses/...

Check out the Amazon reviews, they're telling:
http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...

* “Disciplined Minds” by Jeff Schmidt. A mind-opening book that shows how both academia and business select for conformity.

* “Go It Alone: The Streetwise Secrets of Self Employment” by Geoff Burch. Great read, witty and savvy author.

* “The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael E. Gerber.

* “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” by William Deresiewicz.

    Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers

    Programming TypeScript - Boris Cherny

    Associate Cloud Engineer Study - Dan Sullivan

    Design Patterns - Gang of Four

    Refactoring - Kent Beck, Martin Fowler

    Programming Pearls - Jon Bentley

    Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler

    The Pragmatic Programmer - David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

    CSS: The Definitive Guide - Eric A. Meyer, Estelle Weyl

    Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers

    Head First Design Patterns - Eric Freeman, Bert Bates

    Code Complete - Steve McConnell

    Peopleware - Tim Lister, Tom DeMarco

    Clean Code - Robert C. Martin

    The Clean Coder - Robert C. Martin

    Clean Architecture - Robert C. Martin

    Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug

    Functional Design Patterns for Express.js - Jonathan Lee Martin

    The Surrender Experiment - Michael A. Singer

    Principles - Ray Dalio

    The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

    The Effective Executive - Peter F. Drucker

    Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

    Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

    Influence - Robert B. Cialdini

    The Startup Way - Eric Ries

    The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

    12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson

    Measure What Matters - John Doerr, Larry Page

    The Fish That Ate the Whale - Rich Cohen

    The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber

    The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh

    Management - Peter F. Drucker

    Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows

    Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne

Changed my view on business and reproducible business systems forever. Fun to read, too.

"The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law" --
LLC vs C-corp vs S-Corp? Founder’s vesting? Liquidation Preferences? Equity vs Debt financing? This book will educate you enough to be able to answer these and many other important questions.

"Bootstrapping Your Business" --
From the founder of RightNow. The amazing story of how a geographically-challenged (Montana) entrepreneur built a world class business.

"Purple Cow" --
Dead simple premise, the key to marketing is to build something remarkable.

"The Art of the Start" --
The Art of Pitching, Marketing and Funding your Startup.

"The Innovator’s Dilemma" --
If your startup beats all the odds and becomes hugely successful prepare yourself for the innovator’s dilemma, cannibalize your product before someone else does.

"The E-Myth Revisited" --
How-to create a business not a job.

"Permission Marketing" --
The greatest marketing asset your startup can build is the permission to market to your customers and prospects.

"Growing a Business" --
Sincere advice for creating a company culture that your team and customers will love.

"The Cluetrain Manifesto" --
Successful marketing is a conversation.

"Bottom-up Marketing" --
Pure bottoms-up execution. Marketing tactics to grow your business.

I wish I'd read it two start-ups ago. It's downright scary how well he describes the exact path my companies took.

Small Giants by Bo Burlingham

If you want to read books (level up!), I'd recommend this for early stage entrepreneurs:

- The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber. Some of it is a bit outdated maybe, maybe, but it's still a great perspective for first-time founders, especially working solo.

- The Obstacle Is The Way, by Ryan holiday. It's a rather short and simple introduction to Stoicism. If you know nothing about it (or about Zen) I strongly suggest taking a look. It's a philosophy which correlates strongly with successful entrepreneurs, people who make/build things, athletes, soldiers — those who prevailed when faced hard challenges in every way (especially emotional, spiritual even, things that can really take you down, the storms of life and fires in our minds).

As you can see there's one for your business and one for you. I find that it works like that, you need to grow to grow the business, which in turns makes you grow, rinse and repeat.

Best of luck, or should I say courage!

Joking aside, yes, building a business requires far more work than it may seem to the prospective first-timer. Fortunately there are some excellent book to help you know what to expect and what you need to plan for when starting a business. Michael Gerber's "The E-Myth Revisited" is the one book I would recommend as a starting point (and I would not necessarily recommend an entire library of books -- you want to start a business, not be a full-time reader).

That's fine if someone wants to start some kind of tech consulting business; but that's not the kind of business that I see promoted on Hacker News.

The "The E-Myth Revisited" describes how to plan a business where labor is low-cost and unskilled. With software, (and hardware, to a degree,) when you write a program, the program is done. Most of your labor goes into R&D that is not repeatable according to what "The E-Myth Revisited" advocates.

At least with hardware, the low-cost unskilled labor can go into manufacturing, but that is now mostly outsourced.

At most, "The E-Myth Revisited" can be applied to the sales and support part of running a tech business, which is what Oracle does very well.

And by technician I mean anyone who can do/make things with their own hands and creative energy. It is probably very dated now, but I highly recommend anyone thinking of starting their own business to read Robert Gerber's "The E-myth Revisited".

In a nutshell, every business owner has to realise that they have to wear three hats - that of Technician, Manager and Entrepreneur. All three require energy and different skills, and it is very rare that one person will have requisite skills in all 3 fields, so outside help, or more learning is needed.

Time is wealth. Spending time how you want is being rich. Money is the tool that allows that.

How we earn money decides how rich, and wealthy we are. There is a better way to earn money than simply, and only working for money in exchange for our time.

Money you earn in exchange for your time will never be as much as what a business you setup can earn with out you.

This book teaches the difference between working "on" your business instead of in a business, whether it's your own, or someone elses. The E-Myth Revisited drives this point home even further.

Learning that there's another way to earn an income without your time is a powerful lesson. One that I think this post misses.

This book speaks to how there is no such thing as job security. While we in tech might be used to it, the majority of folks aren't.

Learning the only real job security is the security we create ourselves via multiple streams of income is often a troubling lesson to face, realize, accept, and adapt to.

These are huge, key, fundamental lessons that you either get, or you don't.

You can't wake up someone who doesn't know they're asleep, and as is evident here, sometimes we need to remember to learn to take the best good from everything.

Living in a world of possibilities is nothing like living in a world of doubts that accrue to seem insurmountable. We shouldn't live blindly faithful, or blindly doubtful, neither are fruitful.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...

Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday

How to Fail at Almost Everything by Scott Adams - great read
Scaling Up By Verne Harnish

Great By Choice by Jim Collins - love the whole series

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes - probably worth a reread

How to Win at the Sport of Business By Mark Cuban - good read

Elon Mush by Ashlee Vance - need I say more

The Hard Thing about Hard Things By Ben Horowitz

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg - probably need to deeply absorb this - a lot of good stuff

Copy This! By Paul Orfalea - another good "small business" entrepreneur book

The E-Myth Revisited By Michael Gerber - 2nd time read. Got more out of it this time.

The People's Tycoon (Ford) by Steven Watts - I love reading about businessmen from this age

Scrum by JJ Sutherland Jeff Sutherland - good read for development teams

To give examples, "The e-myth revisited" is clearly in the category of only really having one point. On the other hand, "Reasons and persons" by Derek Parfit has a multitude of small nuanced points and arguments scattered through the entire text.

I would definitely encourage you to seek out these denser, more serious books. They are harder going, but if you can find good ones then they have a lot to offer.

My elite 10 person team was doing a great job on Device A, while Device B had a team of 200 semi-skilled foreign contractors just barely keeping things on track. Then, somehow, the company decided to reorg my super-skilled team and promoted the leader of the contractor team.

From 3-4 levels up in the company, the Device A team and the Device B team were IDENTICAL. They were both delivering things on time and under budget, even though team A was costing the company 1/5th as much, they were both fine. These products were generating hundreds of millions of dollars or maybe even billions in revenue per year, so the difference $5 million/year and $25 million was irrelevant.

If I'd realized this sooner, I wouldn't have put so much effort into doing a great job at the expense of my own interests, and it would've been just fine

The abilities of a technician can be very valuable to a business, but especially as it begins to scale the owner/operator(s) need to adopt different mindsets in order to succeed. In short, if you don't like the idea of spending most of your time on business or marketing stuff, you should find someone who can handle those, or perhaps be a solo consultant/contractor. (I think this is a large part of why YC encourages cofounders so much.)

Exceptions certainly exist--there was a time when tech was a magical world and you could do magic things just by being an expert engineer--but increasingly I feel they are getting rarer.

"The dream of running a small cafe has nothing to do with the excitement of entrepreneurship or the joys of being one's own boss—none of us would ever consider opening a Laundromat or a stationery store, and even the most delusional can see that an independent bookshop is a bad idea these days. The small cafe connects to the fantasy of throwing a perpetual dinner party, and it cuts deeper—all the way to Barbie tea sets—than any other capitalist urge. To a couple in the throes of the cafe dream, money is almost an afterthought. Which is good, because they're going to lose a lot of it."

That happens to a lot of good people, sadly. Michael Gerber covers it pretty well in "The E-Myth Revisited", which I consider the Bible for small business owners. I make anyone I work with read it before we work together. Any entrepreneurial-minded person who hasn't read it would do well to check it out. Amazon, no affiliate link:

http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...

But it does make sense to subject those aspects to rigorous testing rather than just spend weeks talking about them, as described in the OP.

INSPIRATION
------
Hari Seldon, hero of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, was deliberately put into a wide variety of situations and experiences to inspire his imagination and fuel his emotional responses. Get out of starbucks, do crazy shit and get uncomfortable - allow it to fuse emotion and desire for change, because that's where motivation comes from. (related: read Think and Grow Rich if you haven't already)

FROM IDEA TO BUSINESS
---------------
Read 'The E-myth revisited' and 'The Lean Startup'

I'm actually trying to cycle off reading business books. I've read so many that I need to spend time implementing what I read, rather than taking in more information. I'm like a chain reader, putting down one book and then picking up another without spending time reflecting on what I learnt.

I noticed this pattern so I've started trying to identify 3 things I learned and/or could implement to my own business upon finishing a book. For me, the reflection on what I learned is more important, I'm not much of a note taker but have the ability to retain vast amounts of information. If something really hits me, Ill put it in Evernote. Without the reflection piece this is probably relegated to my subconscious. I'm actually thinking of going back and trying to think of 3 things from each book I've read previously that I can now record.

This morning I finished the book Focus by Al Ries. It's good.

Here are the 3 things I learnt (recorded upon finishing in Evernote):
1. Focused companies are more profitable.
2. Brand extension is bad.
3. Focus may cause shrinkage in the short term but is far better in the long term.

Hope that helps.

Recommended books:
- How to win friends and influence people (timeless classic)
- How to get Rich by Felix Dennis (spammy title, good read)
- Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrari (networking tips)
- Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (any business that focuses on customer service is going to do better)
- Purple Cow by Seth Godin (classic)
- The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E Gerber (a great mindset to have for your business)
- The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes (slow start but simply awesome)
- All the 37signals books
- Lean Startup (obviously)

These are just of the top of my head.

I don't keep books. I figure I can always buy them again if I need.

I gave up tracking what I read, but Goodreads.com was good of that.

Take a month vacation and transfer the domain knowledge to paper.

Read "Nail It Then Scale It" and "The E-Myth Revisited". You'll save time and money. You might also study business strategy (free courses on Coursera) so you can evaluate your idea from business fundamentals first. The more you can invalidate it (no market, massive incumbents, no demand, too costly, etc.), the less time and money you'll waste building something nobody wants, and the better placed you'll be to spot a truly great opportunity.

As a developer it's natural to focus on your strengths. You need to validate ideas before doing that.

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

This is also the thesis of "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael E. Gerber, which I'd recommend given the above comment. It's an easy read that talks about developing systems not just for profit, but also in a way that is ethically sound to both you and your employees and your customers. The book speaks mostly about small retail franchices (an example of a hotel is also given), but it is easily applicable to other areas.

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.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0887307280

I got over my own negativities when I read the book for the second time three months later. The book is written in such a way that, to me, the message will adapt and be meaningful regardless of the current situation. Kind of like the bookd Who Moved My Cheese is still taught and changes meaning for each reader, each time they read it.

In my opinion it's definitely worth reading - take that for what you will.

Other suggestions? I've got plenty if you want 'em. I read a book or two a week. Here's two more of my fav business-type books.

Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin &
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber - a classic

Here's a short cut to the best reading on business and entrepreneurship - take the following links and cross reference. If a book is on both lists it's usually very good.

http://sivers.org/book

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

I suggest you study your past failures and review what went right and wrong. Take the time to look at it alone and then with someone else to get a more objective view.

Also keep in mind that an idea or product are not a business so I would suggest you learn that part. Grab a copy of "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" to get you started.

The tip is to draw up a company organisational chart, as if you were a 20 or 30 person company. Starting from the top, a box for CEO, then break down the other managerial roles, such as Operations Manager, Finance Manager, Technical Manager etc., then under those, further boxes for the sub-roles.

E.g. for 'Finance Manager', you might have Debtors Controller, Creditors Controller, Payroll Manager etc. Under 'Technical Manager' you might have 'Lead Programmer', 'Graphic Designer', 'Database Administrator' etc. as you see fit.

Then, it is a case of filling in the boxes with the name of the co-founder who will be responsible for each of those areas. Sure you may get one name placed more than others, but the idea is to work out the exact separation of duties and who will be responsible for what.

It is also a great technique for working out each others weaknesses - for instance I personally hate accounting related tasks, so I could never be the finance manager, but I am content doing some rote work like invoicing or bank reconciliations from time to time, so I would put my name lower in the order, but be supervised by someone with more knowledge.

In the business startups where I have done that, things have worked out well while we continually referred to it and used it as we grew. As we hired, we removed our own names in the boxes and replaced them with the employee names.

The point is, that this whole concept helps with the communications angle that we are talking about in this thread. Knowing what each person is responsible for, and knowing who is accountable for what really helps with the reduction in animosity between the founders.

But as with most things - constant vigilance is due. Things started to fall apart when we deviated from these simple principles. Human nature I know, but I hope the lessons learned here will help others.

There is a BIG difference between doing something part time because you love doing it, and doing it all day every day (including weekends) because you HAVE to. The excitement of 'being your own boss' is quickly ripped away when you realise that you have a thousand bosses - EVERY SINGLE customer of yours is essentially your boss for a short time.

Not that it isn't rewarding, but as others have pointed out in here, you have to go into it with the right expectations. I highly recommend that anyone looking to start a business reads Michael Gerber's "The E-Myth Revisited". It will outline a different way of looking at your business at the outset.

Back to the coffee shop though - unfortunately, a lot of lay people still see the romantic notions around owning a coffee shop, and they all assume that business owners are raking cash in and are out to rip off the poor workers. Here in Australia there was a big backlash recently when conditions around weekend overtime rates were changed, affecting a lot of people in the hospitality industry. Coffee shop, cafe and restaurant owners were castigated by the media and the public for not deigning to pay staff time and a half or double time on weekends etc.

Nothing against paying workers fairly, but I know many friends who run such establishments. For many of them, opening on a Sunday or a Public Holiday is mandated by the mall or premises they are in (written into their lease), and for most of them, weekend trade actually COSTS them money, rather than makes them anything. Unless of course they reduce staff and work weekends themselves, but staff calling in sick or not turning up for shifts mid week usually means they work 7 days a week.

Nearly every cafe in my town closes at around 2 or 3 pm, after the lunch rush because demand is so low after that that it is economic suicide to try and keep the doors open and pay wages etc. for a handful of customers. Bad luck that I tend to try and arrange meetings and do work outside my home office in the late afternoon...

Next, if you (as developers naturally do) struggle with the idea of management, structure and order, read "The E-Myth Revisited".

Peopleware TL;DR: Good teams are united by a strongly defined purpose (eg. get X defined and tests written by date X), and that is almost NEVER the same as the goals of the business (which is to make money). Don't create internal competition; overtime kills productivity; physical/mental space allows creativity; interruptions are deadly.

The E-Myth TL;DR: Aimed at small business owners, but as a team lead you're effectively running a business, and the rest of the company is your customer. It's a mere 5 hour read... JFDI :)

And if you're feeling really bookish, "The Mythical Man Month" - if you're under 50 this will shock you, because you'll realise that software in 1970 had the exact same problems that we do in 2015.

Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited should be required reading for anyone thinking about starting a business or for those who have already taken that fateful step. The title refers to the author's belief that entrepreneurs--typically brimming with good but distracting ideas--make poor businesspeople. He establishes an incredibly organised and regimented plan, so that daily details are scripted, freeing the entrepreneur's mind to build the long-term success or failure of the business.

> owning a business where you control your time is the only end game I can see.

I will encourage you to read first 4-5 chapters of "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" by Michael E. Gerber.

“The problem is that everybody who goes into business is actually three-people-in-one: The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician.

And the problem is compounded by the fact that while each of these personalities wants to be the boss, none of them wants to have a boss.

So they start a business together in order to get rid of the boss. And the conflict begins.”

Excerpt From: Michael E. Gerber. “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It.” iBooks.