entrepreneurship

Guest Post: A Busy Entrepreneur’s 3-Step Guide to Reading Business Books

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Andrew Cohen is the Founder and CEO of Brainscape, an adaptive mobile education platform that helps you learn faster.  This article originally appeared at Entrepreneur.  You can follow Andrew on Twitter.

If you regularly read entrepreneurial blogs and Twitter feeds, I’d be willing to bet that barely a day goes by that you don’t see some list of “The 50 must-read books for entrepreneurs.” This is on top of all the Amazon, StumbleUpon and Goodreads recommendations along with other suggestions that you receive on a daily basis.

Such a stream of reading material can get pretty overwhelming for us time-starved founders! With the hundreds of book recommendations that regularly cross our desks, how should we prioritize what books we should read?

I’ve developed my own system to help solve this problem. Effective entrepreneurial book reading, in my opinion, is a combination of three factors: on-demand book sourcing, diligent list-keeping and actionable reading.

1. Source your books on an as-needed basis.
Simply hearing that a book is “great for entrepreneurs” does not necessarily mean that it would be great for you — at least not right now. After all, every industry, product, founder, company and stage is different, so why should you accept a blanket book recommendation from some generic blogger? You will get much more benefit by seeking business books based on specific challenges that you are facing in the short or medium term.

For example, if you have an early-stage startup in the early product development phase, you may need to read books about agile product design iteration. If you are starting to hire employees for the first time, or are having issues with team dynamics, then you should probably read management books. Or maybe you need to raise money from investors, improve your sales process, establish a digital marketing strategy or make your team more metrics driven.

Improving your ability to identify your own weaknesses will allow you to seek more targeted and actionable reading material for your particular needs.

You should also keep in mind that you may not even need to read a full book in the first place. Depending on your existing skills, the area of skills needed and the amount of time you have, you might be able to gain sufficient knowledge from the interwebs, from the Amazon reviews and/or from a business book summary service such as Get Abstract.

Whatever entrepreneurial literature you read, just make sure you are reading it on an on-demand, as-needed basis, not simply because the cool kids seem to be reading it. Your management time and mental bandwidth are the scarcest resource at your company.

2. Keep good lists of books to read
All entrepreneurs hear frequent book recommendations from their friends and from the bloggers that they read. The trick is learning what to do when the recommendations pile up faster than you can read the books.

In the cases where you don’t have time to read a book immediately (and/or where you aren’t quite “ready” for the type of advice that the book entails), it is extremely helpful to keep a backlogged “Books to Read” list somewhere. In fact, the ability to manage many such lists is one of the most important and underrated entrepreneurial skills.

I’ve seen founders keep books-to-read lists in Evernote, Dropbox, Any.do and in the native iPhone “Notes” app (which is where I keep mine). Wherever you keep your list, it’s particularly helpful to record the name of the person who recommended it to you (if it was indeed a person), so you can remember whom to thank once you do get around to reading it. This tactic has given me great excuses to catch up with old friends when I finally read their recommended business books or novels many years after the fact.

3. Read books effectively and actionably.
Once you’ve decided that you’re going to dive into a particular book, you should use your reading time as efficiently and productively as possible. Having good speed-reading skills always helps, but you should also ensure that you are internalizing and acting upon all your key takeaways. Your method of note taking likely depends on the format of book that you are reading and/or your style of organization.

If you’re like me, you scribble notes in the margins (or add notes in iBooks), and then when you finish the book, you flip through the pages and transfer your notes into a digital format or to-do list that you can address later. Other people like to immediately add key takeaways to their to-do lists and/or fire off quick emails to team members each time they encounter an epiphany while reading.

The important thing is that you lock in any new lessons before the book ends up back on your shelf and out of your mind. Discussing your action items with your team — and even re-reading the Amazon reviews after you’ve finished the book — can help solidify your new knowledge by putting it into perspective.

Taken together, these active reading practices can ensure that your valuable reading hours yield the maximum benefit for your business and for your own professional development.

Guest Post: A Busy Entrepreneur’s 3-Step Guide to Reading Business Books

Is venture capital under attack?

Scout Ventures, , , , , , Leave a comment

Cross posted from mayorbrad.com:

I am an early stage technology investor.   It’s what I love and I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

And with the job title of VC comes a few primary functions:

(1) Be great at finding, cultivating, and investing in amazing entreprepreneurs building disruptive companies.

(2) Successfully raise money for our funds from high net worth individuals/angel investors, family offices and institutional investors.

(3) Build profitable companies by providing advice, mentorship and access to our network.

(4) Have exits and distribute money to investors.

While that sounds pretty straightforward, it’s not.  It’s really, really hard and very few firms build enduring brands that survive multiple boom and bust cycles.   At Scout, our goal is to build a great firm that lasts.

Recently, there have been a lot of discussions about what value VCs really bring?   The discussions focus on two key areas: (1) Performance and (2) Access to Deals.

Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, venture capital as an asset class is under attack. Organizations like the Kauffman Foundation are questioning the returns and structure of the industry arguing that most fund managers don’t beat the public markets and still charge management fees and carry.   In Kauffman’s May 2012 report “WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY… AND HE IS US” they state that they believe smaller funds (less than $400M) with partners that consistently beat the public markets and invest 5% of their own money are the right firms to back.

Furthermore, the very closed nature of venture capital is changing drastically with the emergence and expansion of accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces and online platforms.  Historically, VCs differentiated themselves through their “proprietary” access to the best deals.   But in recent years, entrepreneurs are experiencing an unparalleled level of access to potential investors through online platforms like SeedInvest and Angelist.   Additionally, accelerators and incubators have become masters of the overly produced “Demo Day” where I actually saw a pitch with dancers in silver sequenced dresses. Regardless, entrepreneurs and investors have many more ways to more effectively connect in person and online.   Again, another argument that VCs no longer have their unique closed access to deals.

While this might seem like a good thing, I’d argue that the more experienced, smart money is and will always be more valuable than money from some finance guy that thinks he is going to write 5 checks and find the next Google.    Often these investors have no idea how to value a start-up, how to structure a deal (equity or convertible debt) and more importantly they have no experience building early stage companies.  They simply lack the skill set and required experience.

The people with that experience – VCs.

Now, I definitely think there are some amazing entrepreneurs that sell their companies and become valuable early stage investors, but they are the exception.   Most angel investors simply are not that sophisticated and can’t add the same value that Fred Wilson can add.   Fred is one of the most knowledgeable and successful VCs and he spends a ton of time educating entrepreneurs and investors alike.    He can do that because of his years of experience as a VC.

Almost everyone knows that people are the key to making early stage companies great.  A common mistake that kills early stage ventures is hiring the wrong key people.   If you need a CTO, then obviously hire someone with technology and management experience.   If you need a great VP of Sales, then hire someone with a track record of building a sales team and growing revenue.

This seems obvious, right?

Then why wouldn’t the same hold true when entrepreneurs need money and guidance to build their company.   If you are looking for an investor – it has to be more than money.    You want someone with the experience and track record of building successful companies.  VCs have a tremendous amount of experience in building teams, building products, scaling businesses, securing subsequent rounds of financing, access to potential customers, partners and potential acquirers.

I am definitely not saying that I love VCs, because their are plenty of assholes in VC.   But if you are fortunate enough to attract a VC with a good reputation and track record – you should figure out how to get them involved with your company.

We can make a difference.

Is venture capital under attack?