As a huge fan of The Entrepreneur\’s Manual published in 1977, I\’ve been wondering what happened to the author Richard M. White. This morning I received an email from a friend who found a 1995 San Jose Mercury news article that says Rich White passed away from cancer in 1995, five years after being diagnosed. Rich was born in North Carolina, received his business degree from Notre Dame, and spent his life starting companies and then helping others learn how to succeed in business. Chilton Publishing sold more than 300,000 copies of his book.
Category Archives: My Favorite Books
Best Book Ever Written for Entrepreneurs
I have previously blogged about \”The Art of the Start\” (by Guy Kawasaki) being essential reading for all entrepreneurs. In fact, I won\’t mentor anyone who hasn\’t read this book.
The Game of Work
I ordered 5 copies of The Game of Work yesterday for CEOs on my Christmas list this year. It\’s an easy, quick read that shows how every job in every company can be made more productive and more fun by using a \”scorecard\” approach that will help employees measure their own efforts and feel satisfied as they reach goals. Highly Recommended!
Before Meeting with a Venture Capitalist . . .
. . . I recommend reading two books that reveal the inner workings of venture funds:
Reading List for Internet Execs
I\’m halfway done re-reading Permission Marketing by Seth Godin, the classic text (written in 1999) for internet marketers. This time, in good Tim Sanders fashion, I\’m marking the book up like crazy and making it mine. Permission Marketing was very influential at MyFamily.com/Ancestry.com. Problem was, whenever I read a key book, I\’d give my copy away and never see it again.
Art of the Start
Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures has just published a great new book, The Art of the Start, that can help entrepreneurs skip all the time-wasting steps that most people tell you to take (like how many days and weeks do you and your staff need to agonize over getting your mission statement just perfect?) and get right into creating products and selling them to customers.
Why I like “The Game of Work” by Chuck Coonradt
Infobase Ventures\’ web site has a page that lists resources for entrepreneurs, primarily internet entrepreneurs. We have scores of valuable links: to sites that we use regularly, to tools that are valuable, and to books and articles that we have used successfully to build companies in the past. This morning I realized that I haven\’t listed on our Reading List for Entrepreneurs one of the most practical business books that I\’ve ever read.
Jim Cramer Autobiography
I\’m captivated by Jim Cramer\’s autobiography, Confessions of a Street Addict. I\’m just finishing reading about thestreet.com\’s IPO in 1999, a real insiders view of the bubble. I watch Kudlow and Cramer as often as I can. Jim Cramer is a real character, and really smart, and really entertaining. His book has really helped me understand more about Wall Street. I admit to being ignorant of many things–my college degree is in Russian, not business.
How the Internet Will Affect Politics and Government
I finished Joe Trippi\’s book last night, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything. I marked hundreds of passages and dog-eared dozens of pages. This is one man\’s insider view of how the Dean campaign revolutionized political campaigns forever, but more importantly, how \”open source\” politics will finally overthrow the top-down broadcast politics system we\’ve been living with in the age of television.
India Unbound
If you think your company might someday consider outsourcing certain job functions to India, or if you might someday sell products internationally, please read India Unbound. I read it last week and couldn\’t put it down.
