(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best corporate finance books

I'm going to give you the pathway that I read that has me where I am today, its mostly going to steer you towards dollar cost averaging and passive management, but the easing of exposure to alternative strategies was invaluable and eventually brought me to value investing. Dollar cost averaging in low cost index funds is the training wheels of investing and should be the way every novice investor starts IMO.

1. The Wealthy Barber - this is the sesame street book on investing and everyone should read it when they're starting. It'll expose you to the ideas of dollar cost averaging, low fee index funds, and the importance of using TIME as your biggest asset in slow growing your net worth. Its like $6 and 100 pages, you can read it in afternoon. http://www.amazon.com/The-Wealthy-Barber-Updated-Edition/dp/0761513116
   
   
2. The Little Book Of Common Sense Investing - if you want to skip the previous book and go straight to this one that would make sense, they cover much of the same info but this one is written by John Bogle (founder of Vanguard) and very much pushes the idea of low cost indexed mutual funds as the only way the casual investor has a chance. If you read the wealthy barber, you'll be a little bored with this book, so take your pick. http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425572242&sr=1-1&keywords=John+boggle
   
   
3. A Random Walk Down Wall Street - its been recommended several other times in the thread and I recommend it too, but not as a starter book, read one of the two books above first. The ideas presented in Random Walk are a bit more advanced and will begin to expose you to the ideas and methods of identifying risk and diversity in a portfolio, such as alpha, beta, mordern portfolio theory, and discounting. In the end the book is going to push the novice towards low cost passively managed index funds, as it should IMHO. Absolutely worth reading once you have built a small nest egg.
   
   At this point if you've taken a year or two or more to invest using what you learned in the above books you'll have a better idea of what you really want to start doing with you're money. Perhaps its value investing, and now it starts to get more technical.
   
   
4. The Little Book of Valuation - Good intro to valuing companies that begins getting into the technicalities of analyzing balance sheets. If you think this is the route you want to go then give it a read, but not until you've read the books above and cut your teeth for a year or two managing your money and exercising good decision making and patience with dollar cost averaging. http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Valuation-Company-Profit/dp/1118004779/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425572657&sr=1-1&keywords=The+little+book+of+valuation
   
   
5. The Intelligent Investor - now you're really ready to dive into the details of a companies financials to determine its worth in 5-10 years. This book by Benjamin Graham (warren Buffet's mentor) is the go to book on value investing, and I take this review seriously: "“By far the best book on investing ever written.” (Warren Buffett)". Do NOT start here, you'll just be confused, bored and frustrated. http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=la_B000APZXBQ_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425575056&sr=1-1
   
   By this point you'll no longer be an investment padawan and be well on your way to a master of the force. Do not be tempted by the dark side of day trading and penny stocks. Much fear there. There is no need for level 2 quotes with value investing because you're relying on your due dilligence from the previous years and quarters to take your portfolio higher, without worrying about the road bumps in the market today. You'll be able to happily live your life until the next quarter or two when its time to reevaluate and rebalance your portfolio.
   
   Good luck.

Articles from reputable sources are a decent source of knowledge, but some quality business books will get you an infinitely better understanding of concepts. Here is my personal business book list if you want to get a "universal generalist" understanding of business:

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life
  
  I am graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce Honors degree in May and I can easily say that one of these books (average price ~25$) has significantly more content than most individual classes I have taken (~600$). However, keep in mind that business knowledge and business acumen are two entirely different things. Knowledge is easily obtainable through books like these, and acumen is the result of applied experience with decision making. In short, it is one thing to be book smart, but it is another to get out there and actually apply it. No one can give you that in the form of an article or book - you have to do that yourself.
  
  edit: added links to amazon

I have folks read "Wall Street MBA", if they are curious on how to understand basic corporate finance. Now this is an end around solution to your question, but the better you understand what your investing in hypothetically the better your returns. I tend to recommend folks practice whats called "Value Investing" which is buying solid companies with good financials when they are down because of market conditions outside of they control. Basically buying low and holding for an indefinite amount of time. Now from my view I'm suggesting a buy and hold mentality, if you want to do any sort of day trading I don't have a great answer other then don't do it. But if you are looking to build a stock portfolio that is meant for retirement or general capital appreciation this book is a good place to build a foundation of knowledge. Its a pretty hard read through, but treat it as though your taking a class. Its going to give you a very brief albeit comprehensive overview of corporate finance which will allow you to find and build a portfolio with stocks.

Ignore /u/flyingfisch, /r/wallstreetbets is a cesspool of information. It gives a great platform for idiots to trot out their poorly formed opinions about bad stocks.

Good luck!

I sort of am on the fence of recommending these books but have you read?

• Phoenix Project link
  
  
• Art of the Start link
  
  
• The hard Truth link
  
  Learning how businesses work definitely improves your tech skills. It helps build logic based around what is best for the business, not what is best for IT, or what is best for you. Learning how IT becomes a finely tuned oiled machine for your business is even better.
  
  I have read some of the books on start ups and business so I can understand where they come from, what they are trying to accomplish as a business.
  
  The soft skills will come as you work with more and more people. Just always try to walk into a situation as a neutral part, listen, observe, learn and don't be a jerk. The soft skills will develop pretty easily that way

i'm not quite a CFO but i do work in tech / at a startup / in finance. i can give a quick list of stuff I'd recommend to someone making the jump:

• Kind of a no brainer (and judging from your analysis on #1, this probably won't be an issue) but you should be familiar with the VC/ funding/legal side of things. You can be the most valuable person in the room if you like slicing through a term sheet. i'd recommend Brad Feld's Venture Deals to get your feet wet. From a more macro/ company building level, Bussgangs Mastering the VC Game is a nice, light read.
  
  
• Again, probably why they're hiring you, but strong financial modeling skills are important. Being able to do the historical accounting/ cash analysis and then quickly turn that into a forecast grounded in some business logic is essential. You're going to be making shit up sometimes, but I think everyone is to some degree in early stage tech.
  
  
• I'm not sure the size of this company, but it's probably small and you'll probably end up dealing with/managing a lot of unsexy stuff. Running payroll, administering benefits, getting a 401k set up is all very painful but part of building yourself into a real company that can hire top notch talent. of course you can hire some/most of this stuff out, but it will probably be your problem at the end of day.
  
  
• again, not sure what kind of team you're leading, but dealing with the accounting side. judging on the 2 year timeline, you'll probably be due for your first Audit and have to lead a few 409a valuations. deal with taxes/whatever else comes up.
  
  i think great CFOs for early stage can run the finance side but also kick in with the Ops stuff and have a good handle on product. You're more of the grease, and your job is to keep things humming and get out of the way to let people build.

• Start with pretty much anything Seth Godin has written. Especially Purple Cow.
  
  
• I'm a big fan of understanding cognitive issues, so Thinking Fast and Slow can help you understand how minds work.
  
  
• to understand what CRM was really intended to be, read The One to One Future
  
  
• Given your interest in digital check out these books on lean methodology: The Lean Startup and Ash Maurya's brilliant compliment, Running Lean
  
  In general, when it comes to things like SEO, SEM, etc you are better off sticking with blogs and content sites like SEOMoz, Marketing Sherpa, and Danny Sullivan/Search Engine World. By the time a book is written it's usually out of date in these fields.

Happy to help :) It is a near lifetime of just being a business junky and just loving to read about this stuff. The best and easiest book I give people when they want to learn business is the Personal MBA.

http://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375464773&sr=1-1&keywords=personal+mba+josh+kaufman

It is a solid, easy to read overview of business. You wount become an expert from it, but it is a 'explain like I am five 'introduction into business.


For innovation and new market development specific (My specialty) I'd go with Crossing the Chasm Quick read

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244

Lastly, take a strategic finance class. No numbers, simply the logic behind what is value. I've been told The Wall Street MBA is a good read but I can't vouch for it.
http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-MBA-Second/dp/007178831X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375464915&sr=1-1&keywords=wall+street+mba

Finance will ultimately change how you think. And not entirely for the better...

This short, terrific book tells the tale:
In Pursuit of the Common Good: Twenty-Five Years of Improving the World, One Bottle of Salad Dressing at a Time.
It was co-written by A.E. Hotchner, Paul's best friend and co-founder of Newman's Own. Hotchner was also pal with Ernest Hemingway. Needless to say, he is a hell of a writer. I highly recommend it. There is a lot of humor and when they write about opening the Hole in the Wall camps, it's very moving and inspiring. It's a memorable portrait of Paul, too. Great book.

Many individual stocks drastically under-perform the broader market index (e.g. S&P500, Russell3000). Historically, most of the growth in the market index comes from a select minority of "elite" stocks.

Many stocks fail. A minority hit it big. This is a deadly combination for investors whose strategy is to pick individual stocks. In fact, many mutual funds that pick individual stocks will underperform the market index in the long run when net of fees.

As an investor, you should make a choice about your own strategy:

1. If the odds don't scare you and you want to be an elite stock picker like Buffett, then you have to learn the principles of valuing assets. Some people have had tremendous success with this type of strategy. Many have failed. A reasonable introduction is this book
   
2. Instead of individual stocks, you can fill your portfolio with low-fee market indices. If you get a fancy enough broker, you can diversify the portfolio with indices that represent many different types of loosely-related assets (e.g. stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies). That's a lot more exposure than picking a few tech stocks.
   Whatever you decide, best of luck!
   
   For more general financial advice: Don't risk money you can't afford to lose. Buffett's wealth is the result of many years of respectable, constant growth. Large losses are very difficult to recover from and can ruin years of previous growth. To get rich you have to find a reliable strategy that compounds!

Say no more, fam.

You don't need a degree to run a business. Having your own business allows you to experiment with these books first hand instead of taking some professor's word for it. Professor's usually just read what the book says. If they were actually good at running a business they'd probably be doing that.

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
  
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
  
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
  
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
  
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
  
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
  
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
  
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
  
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
  
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
  
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
  
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
  
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
  
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
  
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
  
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
  
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life

In my experience, the only way this would work if you're still in the idea stage is if you have a pre-existing personal relationship with the lawyer in question who is willing to do some pro-bono legwork for you or work on contingency.

Lawyers cost money. Like investors, it is very unlikely that they want to invest their limited time on you unless they can see a clear benefit to themselves. If you have the money, it is better spent elsewhere during the idea phase.

Echoing what I said earlier, and what jashs103 said below, at the very minimum you are going to need a well thought-out business plan, preferably with financial projections... and your first investors will likely be angel investors (family, friends, etc) who are willing to pony up some money while you refine your idea and strategy.

Go to the library and check out some books on writing business plans and raising money. One book that is pretty helpful is Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur.

There is no one book. What you are looking for is perspectives.

My suggestion, first up: Start with The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

It is a great book for people who are currently employed, and are struggling to understand why business owners think the way they think. Also, it introduces some basic lean thinking concepts (Theory of Constraints) that are very useful regardless of whether you are trying to be an entrepreneur or not. If you plan to hire people, this should be required reading for all of them. Remember, the book was written in the last century, some culture shock is expected.

Next: I would highly recommend reading The Lean Startup. It's a bit dated now, and newer refinements are available, but every other book kind of builds upon this book.

Now you should be able to relate to whether your business idea is sound or not. Next you want to understand, how other people became successful, for this, you need to read Nir Eyal's Hooked. The book is an eye opener for how various online businesses keep making us coming back for more.

Now you are close to building your product, but maybe you need to understand if you are onto something worth selling or not? The Lean Startup will tell you to do a Smokescreen MVP or a Concierge MVP. An even better approach is defined in Sprint. This approach allows you to test business assumptions in a highly structured manner.

After all of this, hopefully, you will someday reach a stage, where you will need to go and pitch your idea to investors. Get Backed teaches you to put together a presentation for investors, and how to handle the presentation.

At the end of all of this, you might be feeling very optimistic about life and stuff, but to keep yourself grounded, read up on Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things. It is one of the most humbling books you could ever read, and once in a lifetime kind of a book that is as profound as the Chicken Soup books.

Here are three books that I've read within the past year that I loved:

​

Rand Fishkin's Lost and Founder

April Dunford's Obviously Awesome

Verne Harnish's Scaling Up

​

Of the three, only Dunford's book is marketing specific but they all offer such excellent insights that you need to think about marketing as an element of a company, not a stand-alone function. Fishkin is the founder of SEO firm Moz, and his book is a page-turner.

​

Good luck!

Venture Deals is great and I'd also strongly recommend Mastering the VC Game by Jeff Bussgang. It's a really easy read and brings a lot of clarity to the subject of equity financing.

Amazon link

Firstly, you are right to be paranoid. DO NOT enlist the services of a financial advisor. Their performance almost never justifies their fees in the long run. Also beware of high expense ratio mutual funds. Below are two good options. One requires some study (but perhaps less than you may fear). The second is very easy and hands-off.

Option 1: Sit in cash and learn about investing, then invest intelligently. *see details below

Option 2: If you don't want to take a bit of time to learn how to invest, open a brokerage account (Fidelity and Vanguard are both good). Put 80% of the money in a low expense-ratio S&P ETF (such as IVV or SPY) and 20% in a low expense-ratio short-term bond ETF (BSV). The S&P ETF will simply perform as the overall US economy does over the long term. The bond ETF acts as a sort of 'ballast' for the equities (S&P / stock market) portion of your investment. As opposed to long-term bond funds/ETFs, short-term bonds are less interest-rate sensitive. This will do better than most mutual funds long term. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOS4wAsBnvM

With either option, you should be contributing to an IRA to the maximum allowed amount every year. Whether you use the money yourself or give it away, you will pay less taxes.

*Resources for learning to invest wisely (the much better option!):

https://www.ruleoneinvesting.com/podcast/

https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Warren-Buffett-Lessons-Corporate/dp/1611637589/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1611637589&pd_rd_r=49H5XWEBE322MGN21T9A&pd_rd_w=4BiWA&pd_rd_wg=h8HSo&psc=1&refRID=49H5XWEBE322MGN21T9A

https://www.amazon.com/Dhandho-Investor-Low-Risk-Method-Returns/dp/047004389X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524885124&sr=8-1&keywords=the+dhandho+investor

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524885145&sr=8-1&keywords=the+intelligent+investor+by+benjamin+graham

Hijacking this for a humble plug for the best book I've ever read on presenting / took 4 months of courses with this guy. He's insanely talented and led some of the best presentations the advertising world has ever seen. Five stars on Amazon.

I did. I started with Traction (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer-ebook/dp/B00TY3ZOMS/), been listening to podcasts on e-commerce marketing as of late since I've been commuting a lot.

​

Really, I was just looking to explore the Reddit Ads platform. Making sales would have been great but ultimately I just wanted to learn. Pretty cheap lessons IMO.

​

I haven't read any Robert Greene but I'll take a look. Thanks for the book recommendations!

First off, I completely agree with DarthSaver's comments.

Given that you like to read and that you have a business owner mentality, I would recommend that you read the two books below. These books are more focused on "active" investing (owning individual stocks instead of passively investing in a basket of stocks through an index fund). If you would prefer not to manage your investments, then quite frankly there isn't much for you to learn. Just use passive index funds.

https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Warren-Buffett-Lessons-Corporate/dp/1611637589/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1520640630&sr=8-3&keywords=buffett&dpID=51vwjJJLwqL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

https://www.amazon.com/Common-Stocks-Uncommon-Profits-Writings/dp/0471445509/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0471445509&pd_rd_r=K4WPS6M0ED7AJT7BZ8D3&pd_rd_w=ScNGz&pd_rd_wg=mtfRg&psc=1&refRID=K4WPS6M0ED7AJT7BZ8D3

Wazzup!

I am a huge fan of the Lean Startup methodology.

Basically, create the most basic version of your idea possible and then try to sell it to people. If they buy it, then iterate and make your product better.

That's how I started Fringe.

I thought- "I bet I could sell CrossFit equipment to people over the internet."

Then I thought, "What is the cheapest way I could test if people would buy gear from me online?"

Answer: throw up a Shopify store with one product and see if people buy.

So I bought some gymnastics rings, started a store on Shopify, and sold them.

Then I thought, "These people bought rings from me, would they buy kettlebells too?"

So I sourced kettlebells and sure enough, people bought.

In other words, I think your heart is in the right place, but I would advise a different approach.

I always tell people to be real hard nosed about whether they want to start a business or they just need an expensive hobby.

But, to answer your specific questions.

• I literally draw up a shitty approximation of a design on graph paper (might I recommend these)
  
  
• Send the design to my engineer (you can't use mine, but here is a place to start)
  
  
• Find someone to proto for me (currently I use our partners), but for you I would look at welders or maker spaces in your area
  
  As for communities that can help, check out the Tropical MBA podcast- that can be a great jumping off point into the world of crazy ass entrepreneurs.

[What Works on Wall Street: The Classic Guide to the Best-Performing Investment Strategies of All Time by James O'Shaughnessy] (http://www.amazon.com/What-Works-Wall-Street-Fourth-ebook/dp/B005NASI8S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425566662&sr=8-1&keywords=what+works+on+wall+st)

Shaughnessy manages over $6B but he simplifies his philosophy in this book, and makes it suitable for beginners. Here, he takes an empirical approach to investing strategies by backtesting each over a huge database of the major markets running over 100 years. If you want an introduction to the strategies that have worked over time, and want to see the proof/make some calculations yourself, this is a great book. There's so many good books listed here already, but for practical advice and as an introduction, this has to be my all-time favourite. Buffett and Graham are equally (if not more) valuable sources of knowledge, but are always mentioned. Don't skip them, but I'd strongly advise giving this a look too.

This is all good advice. In terms of structuring the deal, I'd agree that a 5 year buy-out makes sense.

Take a look at the HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business (http://amzn.to/2qoPMhn) for some good ideas on how to do this. It spends a lot of time talking about the sourcing process, but the second half of the book covers your situation nicely.

Some of the work I do is related to educating entrepreneurs and managers on the financial side of business - many never learn this material and get by relying on others, which is in my opinion a big mistake. Here's what I think is the best book to get started for this purpose: https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Intelligence-Revised-Managers-Knowing/dp/1422144119/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TR2X0K5RC6Q9J5FWZEHG
There is a version for entrepreneurs and managers, both are good.
Also available as an audiobook on Audible - which is what I recommend to people who "don't have time" to read books.

First, many people are here just looking at 1M+ reach thinking financial independence means Retirement.

Retirement is a plan on its own, a kind of fulfillment in life. Being FI makes them towards that fulfillment.

People must read these two books, and plan for FIRE.

Retire Happy: What You Can Do Now to Guarantee a Great Retirement

[The Charles Schwab Guide to Finances After Fifty]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804137366/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

That's my value investing theme song from now on! Whenever the bad news makes me afraid I'll sing it to calm myself.

I don't put much stock in forward earnings estimates, though, after reading books like What Works On Wall Street and Quantitative Value. How are they on other value metrics, like EBID/EV?

Aswath Damodaran is a great starting place for any new investor interesting in valuation methods.

His blog

One of this books, Investment Valutation

The DDM chapter from the above book

Basic .xls

📅 2018-04-23 ⏰ 15:25:19 (UTC)

>I'm doing an AMA on Reddit tomorrow for the launch of https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Painfully-Honest-Startup/dp/0735213321. Hope to see lots of you there, asking tough Qs 😅

>— Rand Fishkin ✅ (@randfish)

>🔁️ 17 💟 111



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^(I'm a bot and this action was done automatically)

this podcast talks about exactly the topic you mentioned. Interview with two Harvard Business School profs, who even wrote a book on the topic.

REALLY Private Equity, with Royce Yudkoff and Rick Ruback – Invest Like the Best, EP.33


HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business

Here's a book you might find interesting.

It seems that most of the disagreement stems from this: Libertarians see the government and big business as natural allies, while pro-government people see government and business as natural enemies.

It might be worth considering why libertarians think this way. Also, try and consider the economics of politics: Do politicians have more to gain by supporting big business or by opposing it?

Congrats & thanks for doing this.

Did you read the hard thing about hard things ? What was the hardest decision you had to make?

Git gud. Learn to speak his language. Read a couple books to learn financial concepts and then you might be able to find some common ground and interact with each other effectively. Personally I found this book to be useful when I was in this exact scenario a couple years back,

https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Intelligence-Revised-Managers-Knowing/dp/1422144119/ref=pd_cp_14_1?pd_rd_w=eSxOL&pf_rd_p=ef4dc990-a9ca-4945-ae0b-f8d549198ed6&pf_rd_r=PJSRYREQ9ZE7C3328JP8&pd_rd_r=55b1bad0-e574-4bce-ac21-917b7ebdcc72&pd_rd_wg=5JvDM&pd_rd_i=1422144119&psc=1&refRID=PJSRYREQ9ZE7C3328JP8

There is plenty of rent seeking regulation that helps big business that libertarians, liberals, and conservatives can all oppose. IP laws, ethanol mandates, the sugar tarriff, drug prohibition, occupational licensing laws, coal scrubber mandates, historic preservation laws, laws that separate commercial from residential buildings, and other zoning laws come to mind.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Ripoff-Business-Government/dp/0471789070

http://www.amazon.com/Unwarranted-Intrusions-Government-Intervention-Marketplace/dp/0471687138/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395588852&sr=1-1&keywords=unwarranted+intrusions


http://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Nanny-State-Wealthy-Government/dp/1411693957/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395588883&sr=1-1&keywords=the+conservative+nanny+state

Good books on how the government redistributes income upward.

• Lost and Founder by Reid Fishkin (a startup CEO’s candid reflections on building a company)
  
• Powerful by Patty McCord (the Netflix’s HR person who brought you the infamous culture deck)
  
• Work Rules by Laszlo Bock (the book by the pioneer of HR at Google)
  
• Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (really good advice on company management)
  
• The Essential HR Handbook by Sharon Armstrong and Barbara Mitchell (nice primer)
  
• HR from Now to Next by Jason Averbook (also a good thought leader)
  
• Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux (incredibly progressive, but I like the thinking)

You have done everything nicely. Before going to planner or other web sites, just read these two used books which will help you.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/141330835X (first few chapters)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804137366 (chapter 1 enough)

These two saves you lot of time instead of going here and there in web.

Read this by one of my old professors. Why? Because maybe 1% of the time a great idea will sell itself. The other 99% of the time YOU will need to sell it. Learn how.

The Art of the Pitch

Read HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business

It's very thorough and covers everything from valuation, to raising equity, how to split profits, etc.

In general, investors want to see a 25% return on their money for this kind of deal, maybe a little more in your case due to the turnaround nature of the deal.

Also, I echo the advice to draft pro formas-- what do the financials look like after your improvements and assuming everything goes as planned. Do the improvements yield a meaningful enough change?

Finally, the owner should be willing to finance a significant portion of the deal. It's very common in small business, but especially since you're looking at a much higher risk situation.

https://www.amazon.com/HBR-Guide-Buying-Small-Business/dp/1633692507/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487885144&sr=8-1&keywords=buying+a+small+business

Read this book, Art of the Pitch. It's amazing when it comes to this stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Pitch-Persuasion-Presentation/dp/0230120512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371748354&sr=8-1&keywords=art+of+the+pitch

This should do the trick: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Book-Valuation-Company-Profits/dp/1118004779/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1478977766&sr=8-2&keywords=damodaran

You value the company and then you compare your value to the price.

Hi Jawilson2, here's a few books I've read in the past that helped prime me. I guess at the minimum these books helped me understand who was a bullshitter and who wasn't when they claimed they "knew the business side."

Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur - Fund raising basics. Key if you ever plan to raise money. You'd be stupid to try without reading this first.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071496025/

Business Model Generation - This book helps you think through the business model issues most "hacker" type entrepreneurs skip. Makes you think more holistically.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470876417/

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law - Basics about legal issues you should be aware exist. I haven't read through it all at once, but it's a good guide when I run up against areas I'm murky on.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Business-Law/dp/0324204930/

You might want to check out this book, Mastering the VC Game. http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VC-Game-Venture-Start-up/dp/1591843251

It talks about Angels and VC's. It is also pretty timely. There is a bit in there about term sheets, what to watch out for, how to valuate, what angels and vc's are looking for, etc.

How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? Buffett himself would recommend you index. But, if you must, start with Ben Graham and move on to learning accounting and then start with Buffett's annual letters.

The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Start-2-0-Battle-Hardened/dp/1591847842)

I like how candid he is. He covers so many aspects of startups and entrepreneurship. Examples include top 10 lies entrepreneurs tell investors, how to set up your pitch deck, and how to attract team members early on.

I learn a ton from reading books by people much smarter than I am. There are some stellar books I start with.

Starting a business
Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

Start a business
Lean Startup

Investing and Stock Market
Gone Fishing Portfolio

Life Hacks and Lifestyle Business
4 Hour Work Week

I highly recommend this book called Traction. It outlines every possible approach to acquiring users.

If you have time I would highly recommend you to read ["Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg & James Mares.] (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer-ebook/dp/B00TY3ZOMS)

I was inspired by this, but can't make salad dressing. And White Man's Burden is breadpig required reading ;)

If this is basically a video version of this book, it's nothing more than an intro to finance course. Nothing here for anyone other than a newbie.

His text, however, is quite a bit more detailed and thus worth going through, although as I've said before, his infatuation with DCF is sometimes hard to overlook. But his section on calculating "fundamental" multiples is something I've only found in 2 other investment books/texts, so definitely worth it.

Yes, the PEG ratio is useless as are P/E, P/B, etc. if one does not know the implicit assumptions these quick-and-dirty valuation methods make. I recommend reading chapter four of this book by Damodaran.

Note: if you build a DCF model, it will imply a specific P/E, PEG, etc.

Ben Horowitz's book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" addresses lots of these problems and is definitely a great book to read when you are in a leadership position. His comment on firing people is make them understand why they underperformed and refer it to the expectations. Lead the conversation in a way so that they would actually fire themselves. And absolutely do it in a one-on-one meeting. In your case I would build on empathy and discuss everything with him and depart on good terms so he would of course also bring back the company equipment since it's not his (hopefully managed in your contract).

As for monopolies, the government is the greatest boon to monopolistic behavior, see the economic concept of rent-seeking and the lobby industry in Washington and state capitols.

Consumers vote with their pocket books which is impossible with government.

See Timothy Carney's book The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal your Money:

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Ripoff-Business-Government-Steal/dp/0471789070/

The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki

Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur - Dermot Berkery

Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-up to IPO on Your Terms - Jeffrey Bussgang

And not specifically about the "money part," but an absolutely invaluable book:

Four Steps to the Epiphany- Steve Blank

And don't neglect reading Paul Graham's Essays, Fred Wilson's Blog, Ask The VC, and Feld Thoughts.

For a general Damodaran text, consider Investment Valuation

https://www.amazon.com/Investment-Valuation-Tools-Techniques-Determining/dp/111801152X

read more from Aswath Damodaran, he's one of the most highly regarded equity valuations experts. In addition, read the news from a reputable source (WSJ, FTs...) multiple times every day.

Be patient.

I'm not an entrepreneur, but I plan on reading:

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, by Ben Horowitz, of venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz.
  
  
• Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed, by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian

Ben Horowitz actually just published a book too - The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

The book is full of stories about all the stuff that went wrong and lessons learned while he built his companies.

edit: Misspelled Horowitz