Reddit mentions: The best finance books

Some version of this question gets posted at least once a week. Heres a repost of my normal response.

Recommended reading

Here is my suggested reading list for anyone who ever wants to be a small business owner. I like audiobooks but you can get some of these in print also.

Entrepreneur Mindset

There are several books that talk about the entrepreneur mindset. “Rich Dad Poor Dad” was one of the first that I had encountered. “Four Hour Work Week” is a popular one among young adults and lazy millennials now. But I think this one below sums it up in a relatively fast and easy way. To me there is nothing wrong in this book, but in my opinion it’s a little incomplete and inaccurate and won’t work for some people. It doesn’t say how to switch lanes, or say that you can be in two lanes at the same time. Still, it should be required reading for anyone remotely interested in business. It’s at the top of my list because the correct mindset is required before anyone can think about actually doing business.

http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/The-Millionaire-Fastlane-Crack-the-Code-to-Wealth-and-Live-Rich-for-a-Lifetime-Audiobook/B0143BEDUO


Business and Marketing

These two combined are basically an MBA in a box and then some. High level practical information. They are long audiobooks that go over the lessons of an MBA program, and the first one also covers a lot of life hacking and mind hacking theories such as how to stay motivated etc. Some of this stuff is very interesting, some if it is boring to slog through. But knowing what is in here will have you well versed to communicate about business at a high level. I have listened to both several times, I keep coming back because it’s a lot and I can’t learn it all at once.

https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572

http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Critical-Business-Skills-for-Success-Audiobook/B00UY842O8


The E Myth series basically describes how many entrepreneurs fail to implement systems in their business. It has a couple other important business concepts and is geared mainly for beginning entrepreneurs or those who have not yet studied a lot about business at a high level.

http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Audiobook/B002V1LGZE

Mike Michalowicz, Solid principles, Some are regurgitations of Seth Godin and E-Myth, but some are original and insightful. Not very efficient in delivery of material, seems like he stretches it out. But one of the few business authors who gets into nuts and bolts and not just rah rah. I would highly recommend.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Business/The-Toilet-Paper-Entrepreneur-Audiobook/B00FKCI3I4

https://www.audible.com/pd/Business/The-Pumpkin-Plan-Audiobook/B008CHN41K

https://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Profit-First-Audiobook/B06X15WX5B

In the world of marketing, Seth Godin is well known as a forward thinker. He has a new perspective of thinking about marketing in the internet age.
Seth Godin Startup School. This is a series of 15 short podcasts, maybe 15 to 20 minutes long each. It’s a good cliff notes version of a lot of his other books.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/seth-godins-startup-school/id566985370

http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Purple-Cow-Audiobook/B002V0QOJS

http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/All-Marketers-Are-Liars-Audiobook/B002V1NIMI

Gary Vaynerchuk is well known in online entrepreneur forums, especially with a younger audience. He is interesting to listen to and talks at a basic level mostly about social media marketing.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfA33-E9P7FC0AoARnMLvgFgESJe4_Ngs

This is a link about fashion, but it could just as easily be about any other business. As you read it, substitute the product for your product or widgets and it makes sense.

https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-build-a-great-online-fashion-brand-34-things-that-really-amazing-fashion-retailers-do

It’s probably not necessary to read this whole book, but it’s widely referenced and it’s important to understand the theory. This guy basically coined the phrase “Lean Startup” to describe businesses that start small and apply the scientific method to determine which direction to grow. Inspired by LEAN Manufacturing methodology made famous by Toyota, but follows similar principles.

https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898


There are a lot of great posts in reddit. There are a lot of crappy ones too. But worth trolling.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/

https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/

https://www.reddit.com/r/restaurateur/ (yes it’s spelled wrong)

For example, this post basically has a step by step guide to start a small business.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/5lfy6n/4_years_ago_i_wrote_a_case_study_on_reddit_on_my/

Other links
21 Lessons From Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letters To Shareholders

https://www.cbinsights.com/research/bezos-amazon-shareholder-letters/#2000


E Commerce, Design, Online Marketing
This guy has a very interesting perspective on display tactics.

https://www.nickkolenda.com/

A good source for tactics. Also offers one of the better wordpress themes

https://thrivethemes.com/6-brain-hacks/

These guys offer great information and insight in their podcast.

https://ecomcrew.com/episode-1-welcome-to-the-ecom-crew-podcast/

Landing Page Optimization
Important for all businesses even offline, for example with restaurants these principles could help for menu design or digital signage, for other businesses this knowledge can help with advertising layouts etc.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-brand-strategies-uniquely-position-your-ecommerce-above-bhardwaj

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/7-landing-page-design-tips

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/landing-page-design-infographic/

https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-build-a-great-online-fashion-brand-34-things-that-really-amazing-fashion-retailers-do

https://thrivethemes.com/6-brain-hacks/

This book discusses platform or marketplace apps, especially networking apps like Uber for x or dating apps. A must read for anyone thinking about attempting any kind of similar online platform.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Platform-Revolution-Audiobook/B01DDX7MJ2

Also

http://andrewchen.co/marketplace-startups-best-essays/

A good page of links

http://www.themissionmarketer.com/digital-marketing-resources/


For Restaurants

http://www.restaurantowner.com

Very valuable stuff here. Business plan templates, etc. $30 a month for a subscription but well worth it if you are starting or running a restaurant.

https://www.restaurantmastering.com

http://www.typsy.com

Not worth the paid membership yet, but it's growing. And you can get a free trial for like a week and binge watch everything.

Dealing with delivery aggregators

https://www.reddit.com/r/restaurateur/comments/76sd1i/uber_eats_what_percentage_you_paying_em_anyone/

/u/greebly_weeblies nails it EXACTLY.

My wife is a veterinarian. I am a chemical engineer. Never the twain shall meet... though some of her clients are rich people for one of our primary clients. :)

What I am in a downturn, she is likely to NOT be, when she is in a downturn because of say "winter", I am likely okay. We're further protected in that my wife works equine primarily with expensive sports horses. Individuals with THAT kind of money don't see a lot of swings in their need for vet care with the overall economic picture. There is some, but not a lot and it tends to move slower than say vet care for fluffies... which is directly tied to the economic picture of the middle class.

I however, primarily do process design for NEW installations and RETROFITS of semiconductor fabs (I previously did refinery process engineering design work before moving). This, like any kind of capital intensive industry is up and down at various times. Times get lean, times also get EXTREMELY heavy (like now) where I work a lot. I am better protected because I am a salaried engineer, PE in the states we do work, and have years of experience as a lead... but having to drop to 20 hours a week, or taking 1 month off unpaid is always a possibility.

We're very lucky in that we make very similar quantities of money, and will for the foreseeable future until one of us will overtake the other. This means budgets made for "one income" mean that in the event of job loss, the only thing we lose is FI savings.

Note, my flair says 34% SR, but... we pay extra on our mortgage and pay down her student loans with significant extra money. Were we able to drop that towards investment accounts of any form our savings rate would be >50% (haven't done the math, but I would say 60% ish). So, I lose my job or go to zero hours... we can still make our mortgage payment, her student loan, our expenses, a reasonable NORMAL retirement age savings, some reasonable other stuff, we just don't save any money towards FI and RE while I am unemployed.

For a more "middle class" look at the risk of budgets based on two incomes, check out the book "The Two Income Trap" by Elizabeth Warren (yes, the senator), which is a fantastic read. The book explores the role of children in all this... and much of our other bubbles of the time (houses, etc.). GREAT read...

https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907/

There is a 2016 edition too if you want to pay $11 vs $0.01.

Also, /u/greebly_weebies, I appreciated the Enron references. I LOVE LOVE LOVE "The Smartest Guys In the Room" which is a FANTASTIC history of the whole Enron debacle. GREAT book... very informative. There are telling stories in there of joint Enron employees losing EVERYTHING... or secretaries putting 100% of their savings into Enron stock...

YEE HAW... all the way to the TOP boys!

Here are all the books with amazon links, Alphabetical order :)

---

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591396190
  
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh et al. Link: http://amzn.com/160941280X
  
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Link: http://amzn.com/0804137382
  
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston Link: http://amzn.com/1590597141
  
• How Google Works by Eric Schmidt et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1455582344
  
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk Link: http://amzn.com/006227306X
  
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson Link: http://amzn.com/0307720748
  
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1400064287
  
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck Link: http://amzn.com/0345472322
  
• Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0385346654
  
• Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim S. Grover et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1476714207
  
• Rework by Jason Fried et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0307463745
  
• Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin Link: http://amzn.com/1591842948
  
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss Link: http://amzn.com/0307465357
  
• The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth by James Altucher Link: http://amzn.com/150100994X
  
• The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson Link: http://amzn.com/0060008768
  
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Link: http://amzn.com/0062273205
  
• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen Link: http://amzn.com/0062060244
  
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Link: http://amzn.com/0307887898
  
• The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco Link: http://amzn.com/B004BDOUAI
  
• The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday Link: http://amzn.com/1591846358
  
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1885167776
  
• The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0984999302
  
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell Link: http://amzn.com/0316346624
  
• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591848369
  
• Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out by Marc Ecko Link: http://amzn.com/1451685319
  
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0804139296

Hello everyone!

I'm reading through the McKinsey "Valuation" (5th Edition) textbook (https://www.amazon.com/Valuation-Measuring-Managing-Value-Companies/dp/0470424656) and I've had some issues that I was hoping to get answered.

Specifically, in the second chapter, the authors discuss the so called value driver formula: Value =( NOPLAT_i * (1 - g/ROIC) )/WACC-g. Where:

g = constant growth rate of earnings.

ROIC = rate of return on incremental capital invested

NOPLAT_i is the operating profit after tax (before reinvestment) in period 1.

However, then they go on to show this diagram: https://imgur.com/R7umPno, which is a matrix depicting the value of companies for different ROIC, growth rate combination. I understand the *point* of this: when ROIC < WACC, growth destroys value, and vice versa. However, I'm having trouble replicating the specifics of the numbers they get:

In this situation, WACC = 9%, and the initial NOPLAT is $100. They model it for 15 years and then use 3% perpetuity growth formula for the terminal value. I have 2 questions.

1. I don't understand how they can say that the value of the company is $1100 when ROIC and growth are both 9%. The value driver formula would clearly give a value of 0 (I know it's only applicable in constant growth settings, but this assumption is met) because g/ROIC would = 1 when g = ROIC, and thus the numerator goes --> 0. This would also make sense because of the other formula they mention: Investment Rate = growth rate / ROIC. If growth rate = ROIC, then IR = 1 and you reinvest everything in order to get the growth you want.
   
2. Secondly, I've tried to model these scenarios out on my own in Excel not using any plug in formulas but just literally modeling the scenario out for 15 years with a perpetuity terminal value and I don't get anywhere close to the $1100 present value for the time when ROIC = WACC = 9%. The value ($1111.11) is only close for ROIC - 9%, Growth - 3% Anyone want to take a crack at it to help a guy out? Happy to share my spreadsheet
   
   Either way, I feel like I'm missing something really obvious. Help is appreciated :)

Disclaimer: I'm mid20s guy with less invested in shares than I have in my super. The following is what I did to get started in investing which sounds like you're about where I was a year or two ago.

First of all; depending on your circumstances be aware that ING Direct's or ME Bank's savings accounts are currently giving 3.00% interest which might be better than your term deposit if you don't want to go whole hog into shares right away. (ING Direct also does $50 bonus referral codes so expect a flood of PMs now that I've mentioned this)

-----
As for books:
/r/FI's wiki makes some good recommendations from what I've read of them

>Investing

>* The Bogleheads Guide to Investing

• A Random Walk Down Wallstreet
  
• The Four Pillars of Investing
  
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns
  
• Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School -- Suggestion - Ignore Rule 9 regarding individual stock picking.
  
• The Intelligent Investor -- Caution - Embark on individual stock ownership at your own risk.
  
  The lowest barrier to entry would be that "acorns" app but I strongly recommend taking the couple days to make a CMC account or some other online brokerage with low fees and buy ETFS through that instead so that you're actually learning how it all works and not just pressing buttons on an app. Link it up with free Sharesight account for pretty graphs and easy tax reporting and that should teach you more about "having a share portfolio" than the majority of the population.
  
  Obviously this subreddit and /r/fiaustralia in the sidebar are worth keeping an eye on for insight from people with more skin in the game than me.
  
  -------------------
  
  Now, the other option is you want to ACTIVELY trade that $1k. If you've read some of Bogle's explanations on why that's a bad idea, realised you'll be competing against people with much bigger budgets and a full time job anaysing these things and understand that even at CMC's low $13 flat fee you're losing 1.3% of your $1k packet with every trade then you'll need advice from someone other than me.
  
  Personally the best investment I think I have made so far was my $1k of "beer money" that I threw into bitcoin. Not because it made a good return, but because after months of careful analysis, frequent trading and keeping an ear to the ground on new alt coins I turned my 3.5 bitcoin into 1.05. I didn't end up losing a cent thanks to other factors but seeing how badly my "high risk, high gain, actively managed portfolio" went I'm ecstatic that I learned my lesson with $1k and not with my self-managed super fund at 57 y/o like several people I know.
  
  TL;DR: Anything by John Bogle

You're still being quite general, but I'll answer the best I can.

To be honest, as a trader I mainly traded OTC (Over-The-Counter) interest rate products that are not available to trade for retail investors, so you learn most of it on the job, other than pricing and valuing the products themselves, which appears on textbooks, but nothing that can be of much use for a retail investor.

Each financial product is different, so although there are some "transferable" skills, it truly depends on what you are trading, but again, trading is very short-termist so I wouldn't recommend it to a retail investor in spite of all those guru books that sell you that you can be a successful day trader, you can't: you'll just bleed losses, bid-ask spreads, brokerage fees and short-term taxes, plus again there is no way you'll beat full-time pros.

In terms of learning Economics and Finance, I'm afraid I'm of little help because I learned it all during my degree and masters at a very in-depth, specialised level, purely through textbooks. Also, a lot of it is very theoretical and not sure if of much use for an amateur level, or for real life, for that matter.

I did watch quite recently a video by billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, which explains quite well and succintly how the economy works. For those readers that don't speak English very well, if you go into Bridgewater's youtube account, you can find the video in different languages.

If what you refer to is equity investing, but not anything related to the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), I quite sympathise with the value investing approach. In that sense, books I'd recommend are:

• The Snowball by Alice Schroder
  
  
• The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd
  
  
• The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor by Howard Marks
  
  Oh, and you'll have to learn public company accounting and valuation inside out, as well as get used to reading annual and quarterly company accounts (amongst other things) on a regular basis.
  
  The info sidebar of /r/SecurityAnalysis is probably a good starting point.
  
  Anyhow, the real and only way to learn about investing is to get down to it and put some money on the line. Books will only get you so far.

You inspire me.

Fellow Vancouverite here (19). I see a lot of myself in you (which is why I'm replying) but in the opposite situation: we always lived comfortably. Either way, that drove me to the same motivation and has since I was little; I've always been an entrepreneur, and I bet you will be too.

Here are a few principles I've compiled over the past 10-ish years of my passion for business:

• Be great to do great. Put an emphasis on developing yourself and your skills (especially communication and leadership, drive and productivity, and the ability to learn quickly). You can consult all the resources you can, but there's nothing like:
  
• Putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. By that, I mean sign up for and attend things you wouldn't expect yourself to attend; start a project, invest 100% of your time in it, and think big; do the unconventional.
  
• Be fucking audacious. Identify goals, make them visible, and break them. Don't let friends, family, relationships get in the way of what you want and when.
  
• Surround yourself with people that push you and reframe your perspective every month. I review often and ask: "who is the one person in my social circle that lights a fire under my butt?" Then I spend more time with that person and seek similar people, and re-evaluate. you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
  
• A specific one: don't take a bachelor of commerce. That was my mistake. Technically-skilled people are way more valuable because that teaches you how to create; I did 1.5 years in BComm at UBC and discovered that they only teach you how to take instructions.
  
  You asked for actual resources:
  
  
• Know yourself: Take a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test and read up on your type, strengths and weaknesses.
  
• Also, find a mentor. A 1-to-1 connection with someone you can go to and ask these awesome questions without hesitation is so much more valuable than a Reddit thread.
  
• Entrepreneurship: Though I've never had my own startup, Lean Startup changed the way I think about every one of my life endeavours.
  
• Economics: I'm studying Economics @ UBC, and the Economist is one of the best publications - period - regardless of discipline. It gets you thinking about problems. And problems are where entrepreneurs thrive.
  
• Creating, building, and seizing opportunities: Do a little "design thinking." By that I mean go to Chinatown and walk around the homeless population -- even ask them questions ("I'd love to hear your life story"). When you immerse yourself in the real world with real problems, you start to find solutions you can't think of in your bedroom. Then, scale up. If you have an industry you want to hit, do the same thing. Immerse yourself, learn stories, and find problems.
  
  I'm missing so much but I have to go. Hit me up if you ever want to chat and I'd love to help you however I can. People like young, ambitious, driven people. So go start talking to people!

>I think it's because society expects women to be childish and not men ,

No. You are basing your hypothesis on a flawed premise. You can't equate fashion with gaming in the manner you are doing.

For most women historically - and some women today - the only means of advancement was an advantageous marriage. Prior to the industrial age there were many means of making such a match because most households required economic input (work) from two genders to be viable. Our economy was set up to be "complementary" such that neither a man nor a woman alone was an economically viable unit. A simple example would be a shepherd boy who stood to inherit part of a flock. He would need a wife skilled in weaving/dyeing to be economically viable since clothe sells for enough to keep a household afloat while raw wool does not. Likewise the daughter of a shepherd would be trained by her mother in exactly those crafts and need a husband with a herd of sheep.

But we switched with the rise of the industrial age to a non-complementary economic system and for awhile in the last century to a single-earner model where the men still had trades and crafts but the women didn't. For those decades the only way for a woman to make an advantageous match was to be physically/socially attractive. You couldn't buckle down and be an amazing weaver or skilled in the stillroom or an amazing cook and attract a mate interested in a hardworking craftswoman as a wife. Meanwhile the guys no longer needed to evaluate potential wives by any metric other than attractiveness. They didn't need a wife who was also a business partner anymore. Heck, with microwaves they didn't even need good cooks.

So makeup became our mothers' trade. And fashion her craft. Not hobby. Not trivial amusement. People refer to lipstick and mascara as warpaint for a reason. It is/was economic warfare. And as such deadly serious as all the energy and talent that previously went to other forms of work got poured into these things for lack of any other outlet. Thankfully that time is past and the Two Income Normality has returned.

No amount of raiding in WOW will increase your standard of living. In fact, if you do it in excess it will probably stagnate or decrease your standard of living. Its a hobby/diversion. Letting the important things in life slide to do it is indeed childish. Meanwhile, The Miss America Beauty Pageant is the Largest Provider of Scholarships for Women and surveys show that physically attractive women consistently earn more money than less attractive women. It literally pays to accessorize well. And thats without adding the few remaining gold diggers into the equation.

>That's why there is no equivalent for term for women like women-child

Actually there is.

/shrug

You even guessed it. Its literally "woman-child". Its in urban dictionary. The Japanese call them "Parasite Singles". Happy googling.

I was in your position a couple weeks ago as a beginner, and here are some of the resources I found useful to learning the basics:

• Read all of the basics on the r/personalfinance sidebar, it has some pretty good advice.
  
  
• Read all of the sidebar frequently asked questions on the /r/investing sidebar.
  
  
• Read If You Can by William J Bernstein. Its a short pamphlet with some additional assigned reading found inside that will fit what you’re looking for. (I've personally read the first two 'homework' assignments and they were very good.)
  
  
• Read The Richest Man in Babylon by George S Clason.
  
  
• Read The Little Book on Common Sense Investing by John C Bogle. It's a very well written short book highlighting the power of Index Funds. It's very clearly biased (he was the one who basically invented them and also founded Vanguard), but is absolutely worth the read.
  
  
• Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. This can apparently be likened to the Bible of Value Investing. Certainly much longer than all the previous reading, but also worth taking the time to read and learn. I found the additionally commentary chapters by Jason Zweig very helpful.
  
  Im currently reading A Random Walk Down Wallstreet, and it’s definitely very valuable and worth reading. Highly recommend.
  Hopefully this helps and at least gives a starting point.
  
  Good luck!

Not to be too pessimistic, but this is the classic end-scenario for most startups that fail -- we've all done it, it's really just a learning experience.

Product built in a vacuum, followed by a "big bang" launch approach to the roaring sound of crickets everywhere.

Ideally, you would have baked your distribution/growth strategy into the app (viral growth strategies work well for social apps), but since that's not the case, check out the book Traction.

In a nutshell, this book states that you should be getting more users as you build the product so you can test with real users as you go (and shows you 19 different traction channels that you can test in parallel).

This book is exactly what you needed 2 months ago!

You're going to need quite a bit of time to build this into a legitimately successful product at this point, hopefully you have some capital to hold you over while you do this.

Best of luck out there!

*
Edit: Tried responding to your reply but something went wrong, so here it is.

> Submitting apps don't work like that.

I've launched mobile apps before - you can definitely test them without submitting them to the store, but that's not the issue here.

> I had to have a fully use-able app on the app store, it can't be half of a product.

Sure, but again the issue isn't that you've submitted to the store it's that you needed to be thinking about how to get users months ago. You can still do it of course, but you'll have to coast for a while hopefully sustaining yourself off capital from somewhere.

> In addition, I had a 30 person beta for the last 4 months, so it's not like I haven't had users using it already.

That's fantastic! I may have jumped the gun on my assumptions there -- sorry. Where did you get these early adopters? Is it more than friends/family?

> Not every app can have distribution/growth strategies baked in, this isn't that kind of application.

That's true, but apps that succeed often do. I took a look at your app (it's very well-designed, did you use Ionic?), just add a simple "Share..." option in the menu in the upper right.

> I appreciate the sentiment but I'm not looking for 19 steps to success.

You absolutely must** to be willing to learn - nobody is going to hold your hand through this. I know the whole "19 steps to success" thing sounds a bit cheesy, but that book has some of the most incredibly-valuable information for startups I've ever read. It's on par with the lean startup IMO.

> Just some marketing advice for someone with a small budget.

That's covered in the book, and it's more comprehensive than anything anyone can tell you here. To give you a quick primer, just test all the cheaper streams like viral social campaigns, low-cost unconventional PR with flyers, etc. Find one that works, then focus on it exclusively.

That's awesome. You have skills that are super relevant in today's age and will prepare you to have a big impact in your career.

What will be most meaningful is if you can create something of value to people in a demonstrable way - in your arena the natural idea is an app. Just creating things by itself is impressive, but even more impressive is if people actually find it useful and you can point to something as proof (eg number of downloads, metrics on usage)

So I would encourage you to think: what can I create that will solve a real problem that people will care about? What do I wish I had that doesn't exist yet? Then you go from there.

One of the best books you can read on how to achieve this is [Lean Startup] (http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/), which will give you incredibly useful advice about how to test whether your idea is viable and push you to prototyping faster.

The most important advice I can give you is, don't be afraid of shipping. As a first time creator you will be so scared about getting a bad reception that you spin your wheels adding features or perfecting the app. Resist this temptation - the app will never be as good as you want it to be. Ship early (what Lean Startup says is the "minimum viable product") and get feedback on how you need to improve as fast as you can.

^(This reply got kinda long, sorry)

> in an ideal world, yeah 50-50 is best, but I thought about it.

50/50 has it's own host of issues. What happens when you need cash? What if one of you wants to make a critical decision but the other objects?

Assuming your bootstrapping the startup, you're going to need money and that likely means one or both of you will need to invest. Do you do it at even levels? Let's say you launch and there's enough interest that you need the dev to start pulling more hours. Does he still need to contribute the same as you?

When it comes to decisions, it's natural to assume that you and your partner could work your way through any disagreement. While that may be true, you'll never really know until it matters. It's easy for a person's priorities to shift after going through the grueling process of launching a startup.

> Where I would come in the picture is at the very end when we launch our project and I would deal with sales/marketing, as these our my strengths and not my friends'.

No. Go read (or re-read) The Lean Startup. If you're wearing the hat as the business guy, then there is so much that you will need to do even before you should consider bothering your friend with this.

Before you approach anyone, you should have already verified your idea through surveys, conversations with potential customers, and any other relevant market research. You should have all of that in an easily digestible document or presentation.

While you're doing the research, you should have, at minimum, a splash page that gives a brief overview of the idea, perhaps an explainer video, and most importantly, a way to capture user interest. Those future leads should be considered metrics on your past tests.

Basically, you want to have everything ready as if you're pitching to a n angel or VC investor. The reason for this is simple: you are pitching to an investor. The only difference is that instead of trading money for capital they're trading sweat, blood, tears, a healthy social life, and a lot of sleep. A fringe benefit of pitching to your potential partners this way is that you'll get great experience pitching in a lot less stressful situation.

Once you get someone to partner up, there's still a lot that you will need to do while your co-founder is coding away. You'll need to continue on with the market research. If you're using the "minimal viable product" approach, you should be the one ultimately responsible for navigating pivots and releases.

You should also be cultivating a pre-release userbase. This means kicking out regular newsletters to anyone that subscribes to your landing page, building rapport with relevant bloggers and reports, and chasing potential leads.

If you're bootstrapped (self-funded) and you wait until you release to do any legwork then you've already put yourself in a situation where you're underwater. You'll have bills, your partner will have spent a fair to insane amount of time building the app/SaaS, and absolutely zero positive cashflow. What's more is you won't know that a market really exists or what price you should charge.

Read these books, in this order:

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
https://www.amazon.com/Buffett-American-Capitalist-Roger-Lowenstein/dp/0812979273/

The Little Book That Still Beats the Market
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Still-Beats-Market/dp/0470624159/

Margin of Safety (only available in free PDF now, out of print)
https://files.leopolds.com/books/Margin.of.Safety.1st.Edition.1991.Klarman.pdf

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
https://www.amazon.com/Common-Stocks-Uncommon-Profits-Writings/dp/0471445509/

The Intelligent Investor
https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

They'll teach you what's called value investing. As a system it was approximately originated by Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's mentor. It's the only system of investing that has been shown to consistently work over an extremely long period of time (nearly a century at this point) and anybody can learn to utilize it.

The first book will give you a close-up walk-through of value investing by following Buffett from his earliest days forward, including how he thought about investing (the most important aspect). That'll prime you to more easily be able to understand and digest the next value investing books. Once you have digested enough about value investing, you'll be able to adapt its ways to the things you're particularly good at (there are various styles or approaches to value investing; the best at it all use slightly different custom techniques in how they find stocks, what kind of levels of value they require before they invest, when they prefer to sell or not, risk tolerance, etc). As a system it's fundamentally built around logic / reason as the primary tools of appraising investments and making decisions, it encourages you to push emotion out of the equation of investing as much as possible (and in doing so, you automatically acquire a dramatic leg up over most investors big and small).

Of critical importance: value investing is not about producing small conservative returns. The best value investors have smashed the market's average returns over extremely long periods of time and they have tended to beat all other types of investors. Value investing is about: 1) not destroying capital, so that you can retain and compound it, taking maximum advantage of the extreme power of compounding returns; 2) picking investments that have an appropriate margin of safety (they've been significantly mispriced by the market), that protects your downside, while exposing you to a very large potential upside.

I have no idea what the startup scene is like in Switzerland, but you should definitely find out! The best thing you can do right now is surround yourself with other entrepreneurs, for sure. Are there any events you can go to? Accelerator programs, incubators, or shared office spaces for startups? Even online communities where these people hang out, anything to get talking. If you can find other entrepreneurs, they'll love to talk with you about your idea. You need to get lots of feedback, and (hopefully) find another passionate soul (or two) to join you!

Pro tip: Don't keep your idea secret! Instead of me explaining it to you, just read this great post by HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah

Spread your idea, get feedback, find a partner or two, read the lean startup, and go for it! Good luck!

1. The first half that you talk about is well known now, but that's because of Ben Graham. Don't forget, the original edition of the intelligent investor was published in 1949 nearly 70 years ago. Those ideas were revolutionary at the time. For someone who hasn't been reading about investing or done a lot of research those are also invaluable lessons to learn which is why the book is recommended so often.
   
2. If you're looking for some more detailed security analysis I think Graham's other book security analysis will cover what you're looking for. I haven't read it personally so I don't know for sure, but from what I've heard secondhand I think it covers it.
   
3. My own personal thought on the Intelligent Investor is that it's a good general book about the market and can teach you a lot. However, Graham is not the most engaging writer and reading through his book is a slog to say the least. I think there are other more recent books that teach the basics without being difficult to read. A Random Walk Down Wallstreet is one I've personally read that's good. I'm currently skimming through Heads I win, Tails I win and so far it covers the psychology of investing pretty well while also quoting from The Intelligent Investor directly. I've heard that The little book that (still) beats the markets is also good but I haven't read it personally.
   
4. One final thought is that some of the ideas presented in the first half aren't necessarily so obvious to most people. If they were, you would never get valuations into the triple digit (or infinite!) P/E ratios like AMZN, NFLX, TSLA, etc.
   
   Edit corrected the years to nearly 70 from nearly 60. Did anyone else know it's 2016 and not 2006?

> How can I become FI?


Figure out how much you need per year to live on, then save up roughly 25x that amount. You will then be fiscally independent. You save more money by spending less and earning more. It's going to take awhile, so invest your savings with a view to the long term, not the short term.


> Should I max out 401k?


Does your company have an employee match for 401k contributions? If they do, then you should contribute enough money each month to get the maximum benefit from the match. That match is like an "automatic" return - say they match you dollar for dollar up to 4%, well, then, if you save 4% you "automatically" make an instant 100% return when you match it. If they don't match it, it gets a little more complicated, so let's keep going and return to this later.


> How much should I put toward loans each month?


This depends a lot on the interest rates of the loans. If you have subsidized federal student loans at some crazy low interest rate like 4% or 5%, it's probably in your best interest to make the minimum payment each month so you can save more. Think of the interest rate on your loans as a "guaranteed return" - if you pay off a loan that has a 4% interest rate, you are getting a "guaranteed return" of 4% on the money you use to pay off the loan. In the long run, you can safely expect to make 7% or 8% on your savings, though, so why would you pay off a 4% loan? If the loans have 9% interest rates or more, though, you should laser focus on paying those debts off fast, because a 9% guaranteed return is way better than any investment you could make (EXCEPT for the employer match on your 401k, if there is one - if they're offering a 50% match, that's an automatic 50% return, so you obviously want to get that first, THEN use what's left to pay off the 9% loans). Where the line is depends a lot on your investment acumen. As a N00B, I would say any loans 7% or higher should be paid off before you start investing (with the exception of the 401k match!). You say you have a particularly strong desire to pay off your loans (I can relate!) so maybe draw the line at 6%. But paying off a 4% loan early is just really bad arithmetic - don't do it.


> What percent should I save to each account? Checking?


Your checking account is for predictable expenses on a 1-2 month type timeframe. You should have enough money in your checking account that it's not hitting zero constantly. You'll need to practice a little to figure out how much that is. Get an account with Mint.com to track your spending habits and set budgets. (I am assuming you don't write paper checks - if you do, you need a "buffer" in your checking account, in addition to the 1-2 month's living expenses, so you don't bounce checks. Bouncing checks is very bad for your credit - don't do it. If possible, avoid paper checks. If you are going to need to write them, CapitalOne's 360 checking accounts have helpful tools for dealing with that. Similarly, if you are going to need to withdraw large amounts of cash from your checking account, you need a bank with physical branches, as ATMs will only give you a couple hundred dollars at a time, so CapitalOne may be the way to go).


One note on checking accounts: since you will be travelling frequently, you're going to need to use random ATM's at gas stations etc, which charge convenience fees of $1-$5 per transaction. If you get a checking account through Ally Bank, they cover those fees, so that's probably a great option for you.


> High Interest savings?


OK, so once you have 1-2 months in your checking account, and you are getting the maximum benefit from your employer match on your 401k, and you are making the MINNIMUM payment on your loans, the next step is to establish an "emergency account" in a low fee, high yield, FDIC insured savings account. Once again I think Ally Bank is the way to go, because they offer 1% a year APR savings accounts with no fees, and no minimum. CapitalOne also has very good online savings accounts. The purpose of the emergency account is to put away enough cash to deal with "emergencies" - spending that happens less frequently then every couple of months. This would include fixing your car or your teeth or getting through a few months of unemployment. The rule of thumb is 6 months of income saved in your savings account BEFORE you start investing (with the exception of 401k savings that come with an employer match). That is a tried and tested rule that many millions of people have found reliable, so violate it at your peril. Once your income gets into the 6 figure range, and/or once you have total savings of at least 3-5 times your annual income, perhaps you can relax it to 3 months of income, but that's years from now. At your stage you really want 6 months, because here's the thing: your teeth ARE going to get fucked up, your car IS going to breakdown, and you WILL end up unemployed for a few months. These might seem like "emergencies" but we know right now they are going to happen so it would be dumb to construct a personal finance plan that isn't robust enough to handle them. Otherwise, when the first "emergency" inevitably comes along, your whole plan is going to fall to shit. The emergency plan is like the "cheat meals" people build into successful diets: we know the fuck up is coming, so we forestall disaster by building it into the plan.


> Retirement?

OK so we now have your priorities established: (1) make the minimum payment on your student loans, (2) get the 401k match, if any, (3) get a couple months of cash in a checking account so you're not hitting zero all the time, (4) establish an emergency account ASAP - say, $500 a month until you have 6 months in there, (5) pay off any student loans with an interest rate 6% or higher.

The NEXT step is explicitly starting to save for retirement. It will probably take you a year before this makes sense to do. Over the course of this year, you are getting your fiscal house in order: figuring out how much you need to spend every month to be a happy healthy person, establishing a bulwark against "emergencies," getting that free money 401k match, and starting to dent at your debt burden. Once all that's set, then you can start tackling retirement directly. If you skip those steps, you will take one step forward, then two steps back: you'll hit overdraft your checking account and have to pay a $35 fee, or your car will break down and you'll have to put the repair bill on a credit card with a stupid high interest rate, or you'll default on student loans and ruin your credit. Etc. That shit will totally hamstring you so deal with it first.


A year from now, you start saving per se for retirement. How much? Well, I say . . . fucking, all of it. I want out of this rat race as soon as possible. Keep your "nut" (monthly expenses) as low as you can, do 1-5, and then put the rest in a low fee broker account where you practice a sensible investment policy. I am a big believer in value investing and the Magic Formula, so if you want my advice, read that book, take it in, and learn to invest. You'll also do fine if you just invest in the S&P 500. DON'T TRADE A LOT, you will shoot yourself in the foot with taxes and fees. Interactive Brokers is an exceptionally low fee and versatile online brokerage account I highly recommend, but it is not user friendly, so be forewarned - you need to RTFM with that site.


I hope that's helpful for you. In case your interested, here's my story with this stuff. I am now 29 and have approximately one year of my current income in savings, which is approximately 4 times what I spend in a year (so I consider it 4 years of savings). When I got out of college, at 22 I made about 1/3 of what I do now, and I spent it ALL. I was lucky enough not to have student debt (rich uncle!) and to have the sense to get my full employee match (100%, up to 4%, so I was effectively saving 8% a year) but beyond that I just enjoyed myself. I am a good worker and got big raises each year, so I was making about 50% more three years later . . . But still basically spending it all. I then somehow got a hold of David Ramsey's book, The Total Money Makeover, which I highly recommend (though it's not the gospel - refinements are ok), and decided to get my shit together. I found that I could cut my spending in half without being any less happy or healthy. I live in a city and ride a bicycle everywhere and workout in a city rec center that costs me $150 a year, I have two sturdy suits 5 pairs of pants and 5 shirts for work and a pair of levis and some button downs for life, a netflix subscription, an $25 aerial on my tv for watching live sports, and a library card. I cook most of my own meals which I enjoy and am getting very good at. I give myself $150 a month for alcohol and bars which is plenty for 3-4 big bar tabs with friends and that's all you friggin' should drink anyway. I get a new phone every 3 years and use the minimum plan. Travel is important to me so I spend $3-4k a year on it - pick your battles. Still, by my estimations, if I make the same amount I do now, I'll be ready to retire before 40, but my goal is to be done with offices by 35 through solid investing and continuing to work my ass off and get raises at work. Incidentally, no, they don't all hate me at work, and none of my friends think I'm cheap, because I'm not - I can buy someone a drink without blowing up my budget. But I am personally content to live frugally and work hard and get out of this fucking rat race ASAP.

As a senior engineer living in Silicon Valley, I get pitched to all the time by people with "an amazing idea" that nobody has thought of that will change the world. Any engineer worth their weight has heard the same thing left and right.

The fundamental problem is that these "idea guys" think a good idea is all that is needed and the only thing getting in their way of a multibillion dollar valuation is some engineer that won't build this one little thing for them.

The problem is this: successful startup are not just about the idea but also the execution. You've probably heard this all the time how idea is worthless, execution is everything. But what I'm talking about is executing on the business and customer development side. Executing on technology is easy, building a successful business is more than just building the app, it's also about building the business side of the company.

If you follow any of the Lean Startup methodologies, the last step of building a startup is building the product. You don't start building anything until you have paying customers. Prior to that, it's all about Minimally Viable Product to prove a concept. A MVP does not need to be an app; there have been very successful startups that started out with paper mocks as MVP and manual processes as MVP. Even Uber's MVP is a fraction of what it ended up being.

So, I won't laugh you out of the room; I am extremely patient with every pitch that I hear. However, if you want me to take you seriously, bring something to the table. Find me 10 customers that have paid or are willing to buy this product that you are going to release. If you cannot find 10 paying customers* to validate your idea, it tells me a number of things:

1. You don't have what it takes to do customer and product development
   
2. You aren't serious about your idea and are just hoping someone does the work and you can gain
   
3. You can't sell
   
4. Your idea sucks
   
   So, my advice if you want to be taken seriously, bring something to the table:
   
   

• money (seed money to pay for the work)
  
• network (large number of people in the target market that can be leveraged to succeed)
  
• product development - the skill of knowing how to validate an idea, customer development, feature prioritization, vision
  
• leadership / experience: proven experience in building and leading a cross functional team tech, sales, product, etc
  
• sales: ability to sell anything to anyone
  
  Honestly, as an engineer, the two groups that are hard to find are good product managers and UX designers. As an engineer, I'm looking for someone to complement my skills. I am looking for someone that can hustle, do customer interviews and market analysis of the target market. Tech is easy, finding the product market fit is hard.
  
  Anyway, I recommend two books if you are serious about building your concept:
  
  
• Lean Startup - the goal of a startup is to identify customers
  
• Founders Dilemma - deep dive into decisions that you should think about in building a startup
  
  
• 10 is arbitrary number, use whatever metric you want. Find me xx users that have this problem that you're trying to solve.

So the two books I read that helped me TREMENDOUSLY understand options are:


https://www.amazon.com/Options-Trading-QuickStart-Simplified-Beginners/dp/B01EZ50QO0/ref=sr_1_19?keywords=options+trading&qid=1568413077&s=gateway&sr=8-19


https://www.amazon.com/Options-as-Strategic-Investment-Fifth/dp/0735204659/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=options+trading&qid=1568413077&s=gateway&sr=8-3


These two books alone should get you comfortable enough to trade profitably or at least to simulate it and make sure first.


McMillans is a HUGE actual textbook used in University. It's not PERFECT but very close. Treat it as your options Bible.


The starter book will get you familiar with all basic concepts, jargon and associated entry level knowledge.


Options trading is the opposite of day trading although they can be day traded successfully in my experience. Options is better performed, however, as a Swing Trade assuming your Technical Analysis plays out.


If you aren't very familiar with Technical Analysis then I'd suggest watching Mitch Ray's instructional videos on youtube for a basic grasp.


Also here is the BIBLE of swing trading Technical Analysis, it is another textbook but well worth the time and cash investment. Bulkowski is basically god.


https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Chart-Patterns-Thomas-Bulkowski/dp/0471668265/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=bulkowski&qid=1568413255&s=audible&sr=8-1


Before making ANY trade I HIGHLY recommend reading Trading In The Zone by Mark Douglas :


https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Zone-Confidence-Discipline-Attitude/dp/0735201447/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=trading+in+the+zone&qid=1568413295&s=gateway&sr=8-1


He also has it in free audio book on Youtube if you can do audio books. I listened at the gym which worked but really just needed to read.


There's many more resources, books, etc. but this should get your rabbit hole started.


For basic market info as a newbie i recommend Investopedia.com


I believe they also have a free simulator. Not sure if options are available on there.

I just stumbled onto this subreddit for the first time now, so apologies if I'm not replying to the request as desired.

Investing isn't really something that you can learn, in the sense that it's not like riding a bike where you practice and then after a little bit you know how to ride a bike and that's it. Think of learning to invest more as a constant journey, where you're always growing and gaining understanding but you can't really ever know enough. Most successful investors, including Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, are voracious readers simply because there is so much out there to absorb.

Here's the start of a reading list to take a look at, listed in order of how I would tackle them in your place (though obviously skip some or jump ahead if one description catches your eye specifically):

• Millionaire Next Door--not an investing book, but you mentioned saving for the future and so I think this is a good place to start. This book, which covers the results of a study of many first generation millionaires, will teach you how you should be thinking about money, saving, and consumption. Dry, but not a difficult read.
  
  
  Indexing:
  
  
• Random Walk Down Wall Street
  
  
• Four Pillars of Investing
  
  
• Unconventional Success--These three I would consider as one big package, because they all address kind of the same philosophy and investing strategy (though in slightly different ways). There's no preferred order for this group, so I've listed them in what I think is from most accessible to least accessible (they all get into some technical details that may be difficult for someone not familiar with the topics, but they are all written for the layman so while it may take some work, you should be able to get through all three).
  
  
• Bogle on Mutual Funds--This is the only book I'm recommending here that I haven't actually read. I'm including it only because I realize that you asked for a crash course so to speak, and none of the three books above are 100% easily accessible (though they do cover everything). I've read other books by John Bogle and I know enough about him and his investment philosophy to be able to recommend this confidently enough and to have a good idea what he talks about here. I suggest trying as much of the above three as possible, but if you do find them too difficult try this one out first as it'll undoubtedly be an easier read all the while covering most of the basic points outlined in the above.
  
  
  Value Investing:
  
  
• The Little Book That Beats the Market--Very short, very accessible (all technical details are hidden away in the appendix. I don't recommend following his strategy outlined in the book verbatim, but as an intro to value investing concepts it's not a bad start.
  
  
• The Intelligent Investor--This is basically a summation of Warren Buffett's investing philosophy. It is quite old, and definitely difficult at times, but well worth reading.
  
  
  Those are what I would start with. I recommend reading the books on indexing first not because I think the efficient market hypothesis (one of the topics covered in all three books) is 100% correct (it isn't), but because you need to have a filter in place that makes you skeptical and able to dismiss all the garbage investing advice that's out there (technical strategies promising 10%+ yearly returns guaranteed, etc). The value investing books I include because it is the only chance you have of beating the market over the long run, though I would only recommend the active management route if you have the time and energy to dedicate to it.
  
  Most of what's in these books does boil down to a few basic tenets that could probably be summarized in a few pages, but I would discourage you from looking for quick investing summary information because it won't be of any use to you. It's not enough to understand/know the concepts. You have to believe in them, and live them every day. If you aren't absolutely convinced of the investing strategy you're using you'll wind up capitulating at the worst possible time and losing a lot of money, or at the very least being one of the many people who 'chase winners' only to suffer from consistently mediocre performance. That's why you need to be reading regularly--to keep your conviction and refresh yourself on the fundamentals.
  
  Best of luck.

Ownership of a corporation is through shares of that corporation, where investors (individual or institutional) may own one or more shares of the company.

Owning shares gives investors certain benefits and privileges, including dividends (a portion of the corporation's profits which are distributed to shareholders), and voting rights (one vote per share, which is why you always hear about owning "51% of the company" -- if you own 51%, no one can outvote you).

Many corporations are privately held, where a small group of people own all the shares. They decide, as a group, the rules on when and how shares can be sold or new shares created.

Many other corporations are publicly traded, on stock markets like Wall Street, where the general public can buy and trade shares of the company.

Publicly-traded corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their owners, the shareholders. That generally means that corporations try to maximize their shareholders' returns by maximizing profit. You maximize profit by extracting the most money you can from your customers.

With investment companies, this leads to a conflict, because the investment banks have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, not to their customers. One consequence is that the mutual funds sold by these companies have very high fees and expenses, reflected in the expense ratio, because that is how they maximize their profits for their shareholders.

Vanguard, founded by Jack Bogle, has a unique corporate structure which circumvents this problem. All shares of Vanguard are collectively held by Vanguard's own mutual funds, which Vanguard sells to its customers. That means that when you invest in a Vanguard mutual fund, you are buying part of Vanguard itself.

This also means is that, while Vanguard, like every other corporation, still has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders, its customers are its shareholders. Consequently, maximizing profits for their shareholders requires minimizing their customers' expenses.

It also means that Vanguard's customers have a stake in ensuring Vanguard's success, since they are also the company's owners. Vanguard still needs to recruit talent and pay competitively with other investment companies. Vanguard must make money, through fees and expenses which, again, are reflected in their funds' expense ratios.

These two competing forces help to find a balance, where Vanguard funds have expense ratios which are as low as possible, but not so unreasonably low that Vanguard is unable to do make enough money to be competitive.

Jack Bogle wrote a book about mutual funds, presenting a compelling argument that minimizing expenses is the single most important thing you can do to maximize your return, and the only way to minimize expenses is to avoid the costs associated with active investing, and stick with index funds.

Around here, we like Jack Bogle, and we like his company, because we agree that low cost index funds are the only way to guarantee your fair share of the market return.

Not in way of argument, but it's very important that the ideators of the world understand the difference between ideation and investment.

Bill Gates is well known for giving start-ups the cash

There are investors out there that throw money at ideas purely based on the idea, and nothing else. But these are the exact type of people that are being mocked in this thread - I haven't met one, myself, after many years in the field. In truth, the amount of diligence that goes behind anything beyond simple market investment is tremendous. I would argue doing research on angel investment is a sticky path. If anyone with an idea who has dreams of starting a company really wants to find that dream investor, I recommend starting with one of these books on how acquisitions work. Then work your way to understanding early-class investment. At the end of the day, they're tremendously easier to understand, and give you a better learning curve into the grit that goes into determining which - of thousands of ideas - to invest in, and which not to. There are literally thousands, if not orders of magnitude more, ideas currently being tossed around to earn money. Investors, like Bill Gates, who want to turn their money into more money, do (or pay people to do) the grit work to ensure they pick the right ones.

In this way - developers are an investor. They invest time, not money, but in essence it's exactly the same, because they could easily spend that time working on a better investment.

Books:

• Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies
  
• Mergers and Aquisitions: A Condensed Practitioner's Guide
  
  And maybe my favorite:
  
  
• How to Be an Angel Investor by Paul Graham
  
  Edit/Source: I manage and perform technical due diligence for startup acquisitions for a Fortune-500 company

First Round Review: Great collection of articles that someone working in the world of SaaS could enjoy. I'd particularly pay attention to their Search Portal as well. If you're looking for info on marketing, growth, management or even pricing -- they have you covered.

​

SaaStr: It's more dedicated to the management / sales / operations side of SaaS but there's a lot of value to be found here. Jason Lemkin the founder of SaaStr is quite active on Quora as well. I would spend some time reviewing his posts there. The SaaStr podcast is also filled with value.

​

For pure marketing content - I'd recommend: Andrew Chen's blog, Hiten Shah's newsletter/blog, Ross Simmonds, Everyone hates Marketers Podcast, The Drift Blog, Sujan Patels Blog, Foundation Marketing, Reforge, The BuzzSumo blog and Forget The Funnel.

​

If you're interested in data re: pricing - Check out Tom Tunguz / the folks at Price Intelligently.

​

My personal fav for SaaS marketing books is Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares. It breaks down a ton of different growth channels and is quite good for someone just getting started. The book Predictable Revenue is also quite good.

Your question is very important. Especially for early stage or even first-time founders, who don't have the right support network yet. There are many more resources like Facebook groups, and youtube channels that you can leverage to learn more about entrepreneurship, specific skills, and industries. Let me know if you're looking for something more specific. I'd be more than happy to give you additional pointers.

 

Here is a list of resources that I found very helpful on my journey:

 

Forums
 

Reddit: I was impressed with the quality and depth that you can get by asking meaningful and targeted questions in the right channels such as r/entrepreneur and r/startups.

 

Podcasts
 

All of the podcasts provide a great learning experience through case studies, founder interviews, and startup pitches. Believe me when I say that whatever challenge you're having someone more experience can very likely help you.

 

1. Jason Calacanis: this week in startups
    
   
   
2. Tim Ferriss: The Tim Ferriss Show
    
   
   
3. James Altucher: The James Altucher Show
   
    
   
   Newsletter
    
   
   Launch Ticker News: One of the best newsletters out there that captures the latest tech and business news sent to your inbox several times per day.
   
    
   
   Blogs
    
   
   
4. Andrew Chen
    
   
   
5. Entrepreneurship Unplugged
   
    
   
   Books
    
   
   
6. Roger Fisher: Getting to Yes
    
   
   
7. Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends and Influence People
    
   
   
8. Dan Ariely: Predictably Irrational
   
   
9. Eric Ries: [The Lean Startup] (https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522354359&sr=8-2&keywords=the+lean+startup)
   
   
10. Noam Wasserman: The Founder's Dilemmas

You might find some of these resources helpful to get a sense of some of the moving parts for the "lean" / "customer development" approach:

Steve Blank's free Udemy course: https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245

And his protege Eric Ries' Lean Startup book:
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898

And Blanks'
https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417

A rough, top-level, possible roadmap for a bootstrapped solo product:

1. Talk with a bunch of potential customers to validate whether the problem you will be solving for is in fact an acute problem.
   
   
2. Validate that your solution is a good one to solve that problem. Again, you can start with customer interviews with a prototype of your product. Validation can also be pre-sales, one pager landing page "coming soon" sign ups and other things.
   
   
3. Product development and customer development happening in tandem. Customer feedback informing the product. Yeah minimum viable product: what's the minimum version of your product that proves your assumption that people will find this valuable?
   
   
4. Participating / building an audience / community around folks who value solving this problem can happen during development too. Some like to do this BEFORE building the product -- and having an audience to pitch different variations of products to.
   
   
5. Get early adopters in the door, helping you improve the product. "Doing things that don't scale" while you are still in learning mode.
   
   
6. Try different experiments to improve A) the product and B) different ways/channels to find customers.
   
   
7. McClure's Pirate Metrics: measuring the customer journey of acquisition, activation, retention, referrals, revenue. At this stage retention is probably #1: am I building a product people are finding valuable enough to stick around and continue to use?
   
   
8. "Product/market fit" means your product and the particular type of people you are helping are a happy fit. Time to make those "things that don't scale" more scalable. Time to hit the gas pedal on the marketing side. More experiments to find growth...

Do you have an experienced designer/prototyper/PdM on hand? At this stage, you really shouldn't be putting anything down into code. Validation through testing and quick iterations are key. This parable, if it applies to you, may be a good read. Here's his book on running lean that should be invaluable if you don't have an experienced designer on hand. Much of your business model can be recreated manually (cheaply) for validation purposes. I wouldn't write a line of code until the business plan has been validated via the lean canvas approach.

I would nail down your target consumer a bit more than just 18-50yo women. Start thinking about the women who need and will pay a premium for on-demand personal care products. What do their day jobs look like? Salary? Viewpoints? At what point or scenario would they use this product? What is the user persona? My guess, based on past work experience, only, is that your target market is probably something like 25-35yo professional women who make $90k/yr-$250k in major cities like NYC. They likely already have such services as Amazon Prime, Caviar, Uber Eats, and shop at places like Sephora and Bloomingdales.

Instacart is probably a close competitor since they allow users to buy personal care products through CVS and Costco same day. But you'd have to examine your business model of working with contractors to do the shopping or shipping directly from the source.

Best of luck!

Edit: "IT man" lol are you a pill woman?

Yeah completely understandable, it's not too complicated, but from an outsiders perspective can look daunting. I can't really recommend any specific financial advisors, but if you have the time to do some reading I can recommend a few things that will help you out. A Random Walk down Wall Street and The Intelligent Investor are great, easy to read introductions to value investing, while this post on /r/AusFinance gives some pretty straightforward and practical advice.

While its not the advice you're looking for right now, do consider it as it may help save you thousands of dollars in the long run.

Well shucks, glad it was helpful to someone! Before I moved to the corporate side, I was an equity research analyst. So I was the guy writing these reports. I covered another sector though.


Resources:

• Aswath has a plethora of good (and free) excel models and finance material, which he both teaches from and posts online for free at his Stern page here: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/spreadsh.htm
  
• Detailed modeling courses, including topics applicable to PE, are usually taught by Wall Street Prep or Training The Street. Some of the instructors for those companies also adjunct teach at NY-area business schools, so there's a chance you could always drop in on one of those. Most of the materials from each have leaked various places online.
  
• All the wall st banks either hire WSP or TTS to teach their incoming classes, or have their own structured programs and fly in chosen professors. But they're all teaching toward the same topics covered by the companies above.
  
• There's various popular books like "Valuation" or "Investment Banking" that are crazy detailed and personally, incredibly boring.
  
• I think most people would be better served by talking with folks in the VC or PE space, and dipping their toes into specific areas of interest much the way Aswath, his blog, or the CFA Institute's refresher material does.
  
  If you're smart, and esp if experienced like yourself, most any textbook will be painfully boring. And I mean really, really, painful and uninteresting save for small sections of sparse chapters.
  
  I think Aswath has the most free models, good templates and instructional models can be found from WSP and TTS if you look hard (torrents, wallstreetoasis, etc). There's also some from google "dorking", e.g. narrow a google search by adding these terms after your search string: filetype:xls for excel files only, or site:.edu for results only from schools i.e. those ending in .EDU. You can combine these too, and there's other more specific filters via Advanced Search Options. For example, this search "private equity" model filetype:xls has this LBO model on the 1st page of results: http://mdatraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/LBO-model.xls
  
  Good luck, and hello to a fellow wall street'er on Peloton!

I think it sounds like a great idea - but you need to create a better MVP than just a signup page. Something that explains/shows very simply how it would work and what the value is.

I would recommend checking out resources like The Lean Startup and validate, validate, validate.

Good luck!

I found IOTA and joined this subreddit around Nov 2017. Since then I have been slowly learning about IOTA. I am a student majoring in Computer Science, and although college has not been going very well so far. I spend a lot of my free-time learning about technologies that interest me. I have been teaching myself to program for the past 9 years or so, and over the past year have been studying blockchain and distributed ledgers extensively. The book Mastering Bitcoin, by Andreas M. Antonopoulos Is a good resource I used to first get a good understanding of how blockchain technology works. It goes into as much detail as a programmer might want, but also explains most concepts in a relatively simple manner first before going into more detail about them, allowing most anyone with a slightly tech oriented background to get something from the book.

IOTA is one of my personal interests because it's team is aiming to create something bigger than most others are, the scope of what IOTA could become is huge, and the technology is cutting edge new.

I personally seek to have such a detailed understanding of the technologies I am interested in because I desire to one day help change the world through the contribution of my own innovations.

I am currently trying to teach myself to program with IOTA. My current goal is to build a program that uses MAM to control smart devices in a home. Being alone however, progress in my learning can be slower than if I was collaborating with others, and motivation to put as much time as I would like to in can be difficult. I am currently considering dropping school to pursue working the the crypto-space as a developer. I understand a lot of programs for training new developers are coming and and I hope to be a part of one of those, and then work my way up from there.

I am currently trying to build connections in the crypto space with anyone I can. Working on IOTA software with other developers would currently be the dream for me. Though I imagine if I partake in a training program, it wouldn't be for IOTA specifically. I will continue to try and learn to develop for IOTA in my freetime regardless, as I really believe in this technology's potential.

I know some people who run a coffee shop already in an identical format. Look up "Daily Grind" business in Ontario, Canada. You can probably reach them on their Facebook page and they may be able to give you some info and inside knowledge on what kind of challenges you should prepare for and how to make it.

3 things you can do right now to get it off the ground faster are as follows:

1. scope out the competition - go to your local small coffee shops and big brands (Starbucks and McDonalds especially). Don't only try to understand how they do it but what their offerings are, why do people go there, what sides do they have, etc
   
   
   
2. Prepare a menu that's bigger than just coffee. This is where point 1 will be useful. If you start scoping you'll notice a trend, in all these places they offer more than coffee. cold drinks, smoothies, sandwiches, pastries, etc. When you go to design your menu be sure to add something more than just coffee, be creative and try to make something people want (something to retain your customers and keep them coming back to you). Sandwiches are a good start but don't limit yourself.
   
   
   3: Another thing that might work for you should also start reading up on the 'lean start up methodology". It's how companies in silicon valley grow fast and quickly like apple, facebook, Instagram, and Microsoft. The idea is you generate some ideas, and you keep trying them out until one stick, then put your efforts there. The idea behind this is you keep trying out ideas to find out what is most successful and you drop your least successful ones quickly. This way you'll know what works and doesn't quickly and efficiently. Once you find the idea that works, you scale quickly and that's how you make your mark.
   
   
   Here's the book on Amazon from the man himself. It's a quick read but it'll probably cut your path to success down and make you more competitive.
   
   
   Author: Eric Riles
   
   "The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses"
   
   
   link: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898

I love the crap out of books. One of life's greatest joys is learning and books are such an excellent way to do it.

Business books you should read:

• Zero To One by Peter Thiel - Short, awesome ideas and well written.
  
  
• My Startup Life by Ben Casnocha. Ben's a super sharp guy. Learn from him. He started a company in his teens. He was most recently the personal 'body man' for Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn)
  
  
• The Lean Startup by Eric Reis - Fail fast and fail early. Build something, test, get feedback, and refine.
  
  Non Business Books (That Are Essential To Business
  
  
• Money Master The Game by Tony Robbins - I am a personal finance Nerd Extraordinaire and I thought Tony Robbins was a joke. Boy was I wrong. Hands down the best personal finance book I've ever read. Period.
  
  
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Ever seen Gladiator? This is the REAL Roman Emperor behind Russel Crowe's character. This book was his private diary.
  
  
• Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl - Hands down one of the most profound and moving books ever written. Victor was a psychologist and survived the Nazi training camps
  
  As a way of background I have newsletter where I share proven case studies of successful entrepreneurs. I outline step by step how they made money and got freedom from their day job. If you’re interested let me know and I can PM you the link to the newsletter or if you have any questions.

I have never personally accepted equity funding.

It seems like you are new to learning about VC. i'm not an expert, but I do know a bit. Let me try to help clear some things up.

firstly, if you are interested in learning about venture capital and the terms in VC term sheets (the word we use instead of "contract") you MUST read this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616

which includes a sample term sheet in the appendix, but more importantly, it explains everything on the term sheet in plain english, and then goes into the economics of VC, negotiating, and more.

you can see sample term sheets here.

http://www.google.com/search?q=sample+venture+capital+term+sheet&client=safari&rls=en&oe=UTF-8&oq=&gs_l=


Term sheets do not spell out when and how a founder leaves a company, or any sort of exit strategy as you defined.

Accepting VC is not an agreement to sell your company. Its an agreement for equity and usually some board seats in exchange for money.

Now, the VC can only get paid in a couple of ways. Either a liquidity event, such as an acquisition or an IPO, or depending on their agreement they can sell their equity back to the company or to other people. (i don't know how common the latter is)
So, the VC expects you to exit in some way, and since accelerators take equity as well, they also only get paid in a liquidity event (or the secondary market, as i explained above as selling equity back to the company or other people).

thats as far as it goes for an "agreement to sell the company".

also companies aren't really ever "finished" being built. Is Ford finished? Facebook? IBM?

Hey! Not necessarily a rubric out there but there are certainly best practices to follow. I would recommend the following resources:

"Lean Startup" Eric Ries

"Will it Fly" Pat Flynn

I'd be happy to offer some more details and insights but I believe those are excellent resources starting out. Good luck!

Stocks are not that complicated. Everyone in finance wants you to think its over your head. The basic idea behind any investment is that you believe it will yield some sort of return.

This is the basic idea behind the stock market; companies are divided into shares and sold in public markets regulated by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and independent organizations like FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority).

Basic stock analysis starts with analyzing financial reports that are regularly filed with the SEC. The most important parts of these reports are the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow statement. AKA the holy trinity. You can look at the current state a company is in by determining its market cap. The market cap is essentially what the market values the company at. It is the number of shares outstanding (number of shares currently in the market) multiplied by the current price of the stock (the number displayed is usually just the price that was last paid for it). Its just how much it would cost to buy the entire company.

From that point you would begin to create an analysis of the financial documents you get from the SEC. This analysis will be based on many different factors and the way people analyze stocks varies wildly. This is really where the secret to finance lies. How can you determine somethings actual worth? There are many ways to do it but basic stock analysis can be learned by reading a few books. I'd suggest starting with Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor. He mentored Warren Buffet, who is arguably the greatest investor to ever walk the earth. This book will teach you everything you need to know about basic stock analysis. It was written in 1949 and has been updated periodically.

Once you learn to determine the value of a company, you determine if the company is going to grow or shrink. Then you place a bet saying you believe either the value will go up, or go down. If you believe the value will go up you buy stock. If you believe the value will go down you place a bet against the company by investing in such a way that you benefit from the stocks decrease in price. This is known as a "short".


Form there you'll probably develop onions and strategies of your own. Just consume as much information about it as you can.

(Sorry for the formatting, I'm on mobile)

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Quantitative-Finance-Interviews/dp/1438236662&ved=2ahUKEwiIxLiFsYzaAhXJJMAKHfobAc4QFjAKegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw2FMeyGzdYd7u1o_Ho9qJIf

This book is probably overkill for most of the questions you'll get asked (it's targeted more towards quantitative analyst interviews which generally require a much more in depth knowledge of calculus, linear algebra, algorithms etc.) but the brainteaser and probability chapters will definitely be useful.

Also as others mentioned practice quick mental math, with 2/3 digit numbers and decimals. Rankyourbrain.com isn't bad for this (someone mentioned tradertest.org is down).

In my experience interviewing for these places, many of them put a lot of focus on game theory problems. A game will presented to you and you decide whether you want to play and what the best strategy is. Another common question is to market making games where youre asked to estimate some quantity (e.g number of windows in NYC) and then play a market making game with the interviewer, whereby you set bid/ask prices on this quantity and he buys/sells and you adjust your prices accordingly. After a few trades he'll ask you what your position is, what value of the quantity would make you break even etc. They also often ask for confidence intervals of your estimates. It's key that you clarify your thought process for the estimate and make reasonable assumptions.

Finally, due to the nature of the job you will likely be but under an unreasonable amount of time pressure for some questions, just to see how you handle it. They key is not getting flustered if you get a question or two wrong in this situation. Just keep a clear head and take each question as it comes. Good luck!

Valuation is like voodoo. According to the IRS, the fair market value is the most important, but in reality there are lots of factors. For example, what would the business sell for today if the owners agreed to stay on as regular full-time employees - That value might be zero if their cash flow is poor, but clearly the business is worth something (and they are not going to just give away equity based on poor income valuation)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_valuation

This Forbes article does a fair summation of the issues you are dealing with:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/23/small-business-valuation-entrepreneurs-finance-zwilling.html

I would probably start with asset and income valuation and then try to put a number on the existing owner non-asset goodwill defined as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_(accounting)

I would avoid, "valuation based on what the founders have already put in, i.e. a % of their day-job salaries and cash." Those are sunk costs. What I mean by that can be explained by analogy: Would you pay someone $30,000 for a rusted-out, broken down 1988 Ford Ranger because the owner put $22,000 of improvements into it over its lifetime?

The owners may feel it's worth $30,000 because of their efforts, but as I often think when I am browsing Craigslist and run across an extremely overpriced vehicle, "If there's not a couple gold bars that go along with it, I'm not paying that." The reality is that the owners are going to tend to over-value the company because of sunk costs, but you have to come to a valuation based on the current realities (future earning projections can be taken into account as well, but I would be conservative in those estimates.)

There are accountants who specialize in business valuation. I would definitely retain one to work for you and not for the company. Look for someone who is a CPA and a Certified Business Analyst or Certified Valuation Analyst or American Society of Appraisers member.

There is a book that was recommended to me (I haven't read it yet) called Valuation.

http://www.amazon.com/Valuation-Measuring-Managing-Companies-Edition/dp/0470424656/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

There is also a workbook:

http://www.amazon.com/Valuation-Workbook-Step---Step-Exercises/dp/0470424648/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1395756019&sr=8-5&keywords=valuation+measuring+and+managing+the+value+of+companies

Again, I haven't gotten around to these yet. I did notice that the first review of Valuation has a recommendation for a book: Business Valuation which that reviewer says is the best for reviewing small, private companies. The review:

http://www.amazon.com/Valuation-Measuring-Managing-Companies-Edition/product-reviews/0470424656/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

The book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/047037148X/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk

Good Luck!

It actually does use indicators, and those indicators predict trends.

Mathematical models: I have only studied indicators. In the beginning of my project, I tried to create my own indicators using parametric equations, but it wasn't working. I couldn't get the algorithms to produce results better than random backtests. So I moved from that into real indicators.

Books:
The Ultimate Day Trader
It was the most helpful when I was getting started and learning about indicators. It taught me how trading was done, and it introduced the typical algorithmic trading like MACD crossovers, bullish convergence/divergence. It may be too much for beginners. As a warning, reviewers on Amazon don't think highly of the book.

I had to learn a lot on my own through trial and error and the occasional google search, so I The Ultimate Day Trader is the only book that I fully read.

Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems
Gives a lot of good information in getting good backtest results, and the steps an algorithm should have to pass in order to be traded with.

Algorithmic trading: Winning strategies and their rationale.
Currently reading this, and it starts off basic, like most books. It talks about look-ahead biases and that sort of stuff. It also talks about the different backtesting software and programming languages. I'm only on page 40/200, and it looks like it gets more complex.

I also have a few books on options, but those don't have to do with algorithmic trading.

My mentor in San Francisco is always railing me on "LEARN TO CODE." I'm okay at coding, and yeah I guess it would help if I was amazing at it... But there are plenty of start-ups with not coding founders. But they are always tech, or industry specialist founders. Never just a guy with an idea.

I am pretty well connected, so I asked a friend of a friend to connect me with an owner of a huge marketing agency, that decided to invest in the company and partner with me. I would say though, never asking for money is kinda the best way to get money for 2 reasons:

1. It lets them come to you and ask you to invest, rather than you convincing them... so if it's a really good idea, then you know. You can never trust friends and family (also, I really don't encourage family funded companies... most the time it's bad).
   
   
2. No one invests (any decent amount of money) out of pity... especially an angel, and it's really hard to ask for money when you have no product, or no revenue, or no experience. So it's best to give the person you end up meeting, a really solid pitch, and play kinda hard to get. I told my investor "we are raising x amount of dollars for investors." That was it, I didn't ask him, I didn't tell him his stake, nothing. I left it open. He ended the meeting with, "I really want to invest, email me." So I did.
   
   Read, Venture Deals (linked below)... kinda says the same thing, don't sound desperate. But that's my opinion.
   
   I'm more than happy to sign an NDA, or whatever you want, and give you my honest feedback if you PM me. I have no time to steal other peoples ideas ;)
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616

OP,
Calm down. Like you say, it was a learning experience and it seems a good one at that.
To everyone else's defence, when you can drop terms like "profit margin," "overhead" and "markup," it doesn't grant you business expertise. Or at the least, it doesn't impress this subreddit.
Instead it makes it sounds like you took a Business 101 class.
More telling was the new phone and business cards. These are, at best, things you need after a first client (proof you have a "business").
But when you started in on Class A shares and Class B non-voting shares, it made me re-read the first paragraph. I'm thinking "Is this guy doing landscaping, or is prep'ing a visit to a VC?"

You've got drive. That's great. And now you have experience -- from one try. Try again. You'll fail again, and that's cool. Especially cool if you try again.
Best to you and whoever you pair up with next. In the meantime, fill in time with a few books like Lean Startup and Rework.

If you are really interested in learning to code, go checkout onemonth.com or codeschool.org.

That said, the key to becoming a successful entrepreneur in any new market is finding a problem/or pain point that customers are willing to pay you for. Focus on trying to solve a really big pain point!

Once you find a compelling pain point and have customers who are willing to pre-order, sign a letter of intent, or a purchase order. Take your company vision and start selling that vision and your early traction to people who can build your product.

So much of being successful in this game is being able to 1. solve a real problem, 2. inspire others (sell) to join you.

With regards to your major etc. I'd suggest going to work for a startup for a little while. Even for free as an intern. Find a company that you think has great leadership that you can learn from.

Go work there and hustle your face off. Create as much value as you can. This experience will help you learn what you really want to do and you'll find out what skills you need to build your own company and what skills you need in others.

It will also help you find other oportunities outside of the tech field. There are TONS of opportunities outside of "tech".

My favorite example of this is a company in Santa Barbara that came out of UCSB's life science lab called Apeel Sciences. It is science-based and technical but it's not a software company or app and it is going to literally change world.

There are some pretty big problems out there that need to be solved. Find an area you are passionate about, and go solve something really hard.

Books for you to checkout:

Traction By Justin Mares Great book on marketing

The Entrepreneurs Guide To Customer Development This will give you the low down on market validation, how to search for a problem to solve.


Hope this helps:)

I think that a great first step would be to look outside of r/finance. This subreddit is really not advanced at all.

Yorn just recommended you an arbitrary portfolio and some very, very specific (and illiquid) assets. There's a multitude of things wrong with what he said but the biggest ones are:

1. You have $40,000. There is no way to invest in that many assets, so you can't even execute the strategy that he recommended. Not to mention the transaction costs would be ridiculously high.
   
   
2. Commodities are highly mean reverting over the short and long term. There is no guarantee of an increase in price with inflation. Technological advances could cause the price of a commodity to be must cheaper in the future for example. They aren't buy and hold instruments.
   
   
3. The high risk section. Taking a total punt with 20% of your net worth is pretty stupid.
   
   He is right that you need to learn a lot to invest successfully. One of the first things you should learn is that you don't take unfounded investment advice.
   
   Now, for my advice (which you should research heavily):
   
   There are a few strategies that retail investors can implement if they would like to pursue active management of their portfolio.
   
   These are:
   
   Value - buying stocks that that are undervalued based on some fundamental factor (like earnings). Value is conducive to longer term holdings. This book, despite its dumb title, is a good primer.
   
   Low volatility - Buying stocks with a low standard deviation of price returns. www.betaarbitrage.com Also conducive to long term holdings.
   
   Momentum - Buying assets that have recently increased in price. Tougher to implement and requires more frequent trading, but can be done at the sector level (and across asset classes) through ETFs.
   
   Also, be wary of the advice that index investing as your best/only option. The S&P500 has returned basically 0% in the last decade with 2 50% drawdowns. Not the type of characteristics I'd like to see in my portfolio.
   
   Also, diversification means buying assets that are negatively correlated in bad times. Not just buying a lot of things.
   
   EDIT: Just read below that you don't know what a mutual fund is. I like this book for an introduction to financial markets.

I have no real beef with anything you said, but I wanted to harp slightly on the whole idea of

> you are trading risk for returns

I'm currently reading Jack Bogle's Common Sense on Mutual Funds and the way he describes risk-adjusted returns finally made me understand it in a way that I could relate to, so I'm paraphrasing him here (and by all means, go to your local library and pick this behemoth up):

If you can achieve 10% growth with a risk level of 1.00, and 5% growth with a risk factor of 0.25, I always thought you had two choices:

1. Accept an expected 10% growth with a risk level of 1.00.
   
2. Accept an expected 5% growth with a risk level of 0.25.
   
   However, Bogle uses leverage to equate the two in different ways. We'll ignore the cost of that leverage for the sake of the example, but if you were actually implementing this, it would (of course) have to be factored in...
   
   So, if you'd like to get 10% growth, you don't just have to choose investment 1- you can instead borrow money and buy 2x the second investment option, giving you a return of (5% 2 = 10%) with only (0.25 2 = 0.50) risk. In other words, you could get the same growth out of the second investment using leverage with much less risk than by simply choosing the first option.
   
   Or, if you're comfortable with a risk level of 1, he says you'd be better off borrowing money such that you quadruple your investment in the second option, giving you a risk level of (0.25 4 = 1), and an expected return of (5% 4 = 20%).
   
   Therefore, option 2 was the better of the two because when you adjust for risk, the returns on that second investment were superior.

Deeply sorry for your loss. I received some advice as a young man about windfalls that I’ll share with you.

Forget about the money for a year. Open a separate bank account that you won’t see and live like it isn’t there. The lost income from investments for one year will be insignificant compared to the cost of a hurried misstep.

In a year with a clear head and a strong heart educate yourself about different investment philosophies and see which ones resonate with you. Investing is very personal and there isn’t one right answer.

There isn’t a right answer, but be wary of the salesmen. All the money / wealth managers are well compensated for their advice and there are many ways they hide their fees and take advantage of their clients (even fiduciaries). If you’re considering enlisting a professional, a robotic trader like https://www.wealthfront.com/ or https://intelligent.schwab.com/ will serve you just as well with lower fees. If you do decide to enlist an advisor to help formulate a financial plan for you, find a fee-based advisor who you can pay once every few years to update the plan.

Here are a few books that were helpful to me in developing my investment philosophy that allowed me to retire in my early thirties.

Bogleheads / Vanguard Index Funds
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/1119404509

The Richest Man in Babylon (investing philosophy)
https://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-George-Clason/dp/1505339111

Dave Ramsey / Personal Finance
https://www.amazon.com/Total-Money-Makeover-Financial-Fitness/dp/159555078X

Tax-Free Wealth - Tom Wheelwright / How investments affect your taxes
https://www.amazon.com/Tax-Free-Wealth-Permanently-Lowering-Advisors/dp/1937832058

Where are the Customer’s Yachts
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Are-Customers-Yachts-Street/dp/0471770892

I graduated 5 years ago. I have done quite well on the career and finance side so I'll keep my advice to those areas. Here's a 4 section summary of the basics you need to learn to be financially successful

Saving

• For saving, take out a set % of your paycheck and put it aside. Do this before ANY other spending or payments. Because of compounding (aka exponential growth of money) and inflation, saving now is several orders of magnitude more valuable than saving later. I would put aside at least 25% of your take-home pay, probably more. This will force you to be frugal (or budget wisely if you aren't frugal) and is the single most important thing you can do to ensure your financial future.
  
• With the money you put aside, direct it first to savings so you have at least a month of living expenses, then to any debt you're delinquent on. Then contribute to get 401k matching from your company (see below). Then to savings until you have 3-6 months of living expenses saved. Then pay down any debt with an interest rate over 5%. After that, keep paying any debt and begin to save for retirement.
  
• When you save for retirement, first contribute to get all the 401k matching your company offers. Then contribute to an IRA (do a Roth until your tax bracket is over 25%). Finally contribute more to your 401k or a regular brokerage account
  
  Investing
  
  
• What to read to understand Personal Finance A lot of personal finance is common sense once you know a few basic principles. The best book for communicating these is The Richest Man in Babylon. However, it was written in the late 1800s and consequently has phraseology that is very dated. I've been looking for a better book to explain the concepts but haven't found one yet. Once you read this, or something similar, you aren't done but it will give you a framework to understand things, so when you google for information you will know how to read it.
  
• What to read to understand investing For investing, reading The Little Book of Common Sense Investing is probably the best bet out there for a quick understanding of what you should be looking at buying. Bogle doesn't like international stocks, but most financial advisors do, and the standard recommendation is 25-50% of your portfolio should be international. Otherwise its a good book. Unless you want to devote a lot of time to learning to invest, I would avoid picking individual stocks. Even if you plan on going with a financial advisor this is worth a read so you can spot the grossly incompetent ones.
  
• Things are not nearly as simple in the real world as these two books would have you believe, but they are excellent at generalizing suggestions for navigating the real world. If you follow their advice (with the international asset allocation above) you can largely go through life blissfully ignorant of the details and be fine.
  
  Who to get advice from and who to avoid
  
  
• The vast majority of the benefit of financial advisors is convincing their clients not to pull their money out of the market at a bad time when they are scared (ie in a recession). If you can avoid this (be honest with yourself, the vast majority of people can't) and you are willing to research financial topics from time to time, you can skip having a financial planner.
  
• If you do get a financial planner, make sure you get a planner who charges you a fee. The "free" ones are paid through kickbacks on the products you buy. These advisors have a fiduciary responsibility to the products they sell. The fee-only advisors have a fiduciary responsibility to you. Good products sell themselves, bad products need financial advisors to sell them. 1% or less is a reasonable fee. Over that is not worth it in my book.
  
• Avoid anyone who promises you returns higher than you could get elsewhere. Not only is most discussing/advertising of anything suggesting future returns illegal, its a telltale sign of a scam. Not all of them are, but the odds are high enough I'd skip them entirely.
  
  Jobs
  
  
• Your first job out of school is going to be the hardest. Given that you have no full-time real world work experience, your value comes mostly in the form of soft skills, lower pay and a willingness to learn. The best way to showcase the first and last of those is through networking. This is how I got my first job and I would highly recommend it. (for what its worth, I am incredibly introverted and still pulled it off)
  
• Find work that you enjoy but pays well. Having money won't make you happy, but not having it will sure make you sad.

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.

First, I recommend buying and reading this book if you haven't. It's more geared towards raising funding, but the discussion on the term sheet and earnouts alone is worth it:

http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369064433&sr=1-1&keywords=venture+deals

Second, it really sucks that there's almost no cash in the deal. From what I understand, the company will sell for $Z in total, $X in cash and $Y in earn out tied to staying with the company and meeting performance goals. Obviously it's in the buyers best interest to have $Y be the largest it can, and it's in the sellers best interest to have $X be as large as it can. But from what it seems there's almost no cash in the deal, which would make me wary from the start.

Personally I don't know if I would ever entertain an offer of <30% the offer price is in cash. Obviously the terms of the earn out matter, but I'm assuming this is an asset deal, not a stock deal - in which case you're still saddled with the liability of the original business in the future and the acquiring company gets tax breaks on the larger the 'earnout' portion - both reasons to argue for a larger cash portion.

Have you thought about seeing if there are any other large players interested in buying your company? From my chair the quickest way to a favorable offer would be to pit two competing companies against each other for yours.

Where do you plan on working in an ideal world?


VC Law is something you can really teach yourself in terms of understanding Term Sheets, which is primarily what that class covers.

Securities Regulation ties into the most important part of VC Law IMO, and you won't learn a lot of the major stuff in a VC course. IE you may discuss Sarbanes-Oxley and 10b5 in marginal detail, but not much more.



edit: If you're interested in VC Law, I would just check this book out and save a few grand:

Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist

If you really like this stuff and can take both courses, great. If not, Securities FTW

>How do the decisions on business plans actually affect the stock price?

Business plans provide a road map for the future of the company. Since the future of the company is what you're buying it can impact the company's current share price a lot.

>Are you saying the business plan or redevelopment of that plan actually changes revenue and hopefully profit, and that information is reflected in the 10k, which drives up the stock price?

What I'm saying is that the company's business plan will eventually result in revenues and hopefully profit. If the business plan is bad then you should expect bad profits. If the business plan is good then you should expect good profits (note: knowing a good business plan from a bad business plan can be very tough)

>Who is actually determining the stock price?

People/Institutions (like pension plans) determine the stock price via buying and selling. Supply and demand dictates the price,

Is it driven by more people investing or is it valued by appraisers and then set at that point and people can thereafter invest at that price?

Appraisers don't really exist in the market. You have people who are willing to sell at a certain price and people who are willing to buy at a certain price. Once someone is willing sell at $X AND someone is willing to buy at $X you have the "market price". The seller will give the stock to the buyer in return for $X in cash.

If you have a good article for me to read on the subject I would be happy to digest it.

REad this: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Still-Beats-Market/dp/0470624159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510610617&sr=8-1&keywords=the+little+book+that+beats+the+market

I love this part "My principle market are people who don't like the idea of drinking energy drinks, but may feel low on energy on occasion" as I felt identify with you product.
I can see the market is crowded so you need to a differentiation to make your product more attractive.
What ideas do you have to show your product in front of consumers eyes balls?
My advice is to build your marketing strategy before spending time in technology. I'm also a CS with management/strategy skills and after many years on this business I came to realized that marketing is key.
I advice you to read The Lean StartUp: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous/dp/0307887898
Good luck! let me know if u want/need advice, I'll be happy to help ;)

• The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Security Analysis - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• The Interpretation of Financial Statements - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports - Howard Schilit
  
  
• Applied Value Investing - Joseph Calandro
  
  
• Analysis for Financial Management - Robert Higgins
  
  
• Margin of Safety - Seth Klarman
  
  
• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings - Philip Fisher
  
  
• One Up On Wall Street - Peter Lynch
  
  
• Beating The Street - Peter Lynch
  
  
• The Essays of Warren Buffett - Warren Buffett
  
  
• Snowball: Warren Buffett and The Business of Life - Alice Schroeder
  
  
• Buffett Beyond Value - Prem Jain
  
  
• Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond - Bruce Greenwald
  
  
• You Can Be A Stock Market Genius - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• The Little Book That Beats The Market - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• The Big Secret for the Small Investor: A New Route to Long-Term Investment Success - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator - Edwin Leferve
  
  
• Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Taleb
  
  
• The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb
  
  
• Poor Charlie's Almanack - Charlie Munger
  
  
• Rediscovered Benjamin Graham - Janet Lowe
  
  
• The Theory of Investment Value - John Burr Williams
  
  
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger - Peter Bevelin
  
  
• Security Analysis and Business Valuation on Wall Street - Jeffrey Hooke
  
  
• Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment - James Montier
  
  
• Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset - Aswath Damodaran
  
  
• The Dark Side of Valuation - Aswath Damodaran
  
  
• Financial Statements: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports - Thomas Ittelson
  
  
• Buyout - Rick Rickertsen
  
  
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini
  
  
• Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes: Lessons from the New Science of Behavioral Economics - Gary Belsky
  
  
• The Warren Buffett Way - Robert Hagstrom
  
  
• The Most Important Thing - Howard Marks
  
  
• Competition Demystified - Bruce Greenwald
  
  
• Accounting For Value - Stephen Penman
  
  
• Distressed Debt Analysis - Stephen Moyer
  
  
• Bankruptcy Investing - Ben Branch
  
  
• The Vulture Investors - Hilary Rosenberg
  
  
• Creating Value Through Corporate Restructuring - Stuart Gilson
  
  
• Distress Investing - Martin J Whitman
  
  
• The Aggressive Conservative Investor - Martin J Whitman

That's nice to hear... Anyway, what I'd consider a very relevant reading from a Dogecoin perspective is Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

What has happened with Doge is that it has, so far, failed to make the jump from early adopters to mainstream consumers. Which is a bigger problem than with any other coin, as pretty much the mission statement of Doge is to be a friendly crypto, a "crypto of the masses". So Doge has so far failed its primary mission statement.

Thing with early adopters is that we're forgiving. We use google. We're techies and hackers, and can do hacks. A developer with an early adopter mindset might completely misread the priorities of a mainstream consumer.

I remember asking about the MultiDoge instability here, and an experienced shibe said that MultiDoge shouldn't really be used, and most shibes get by with an online wallet and paper wallets... Well that's nice and all, but that isn't what's written on [dogecoin.com].

And you might say "who cares what is written there", but the fact is, the mainstream consumer cares. The mainstream consumer cares about stuff like missing icons, like being "recommended" a download that doesn't work absolutely seamlessly, like the "About" tab of Core still saying Litecoin (might have been fixed since, been a while since I saw that), etc.

They hear about Doge, think Doge is awesome, go to dogecoin.com, and for reasons such as pointed out above, quickly decide it's either "not ready yet", or "is abandoned", and we lose them for good.

> What's the next step after I've got the idea?

For solopreneurs with very little technical knowledge like you, I highly recommend the following:

1. Distill the problem that you're solving down to the simplest possible level (Hint: Even after you've done this you can likely still distill it further).
   
2. Get a Mailchimp mailing list up and running.
   
3. Head over to a tool like Clickfunnels, LeadPages, or Squarespace, and create a very simple landing page using one of their templates. Also, consider using OptinMonster or something if you really want to aggressively push for emails.
   
4. Build out a really simple landing page for your product that clearly illustrates the value you are offering in very simple words. The CTA should be "sign up for the beta" - you're just looking to get an email address.
   
5. Get this site in front of your ideal target customers (you might need to spend some time figuring out who that is). Here, you can use Reddit, Adwords, Facebook ads, Twitter, LinkedIn ads, whatever makes sense for your business. I highly recommend the book Traction for this part as it's clearly the hardest part.
   
6. Once you have ~50 signups, start with live Q&A sessions, or simple surveys to further understand the painpoints of the community.
   
7. Once you get to the point that people are literally saying "take my money, where is the product!?!?", THEN AND ONLY THEN should you reach out to a developer with a very clear MVP in mind, and have them build it out for you (expect somewhere around $10K for this).
   
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you get bought by Google.
   
   *
   
   This is very hard, but the most important takeaway is this: just do something**. Action is always more important than thinking about action, just don't spend a fortune on developers until you have...
   
   

• A very clear idea of what the problem you're solving is; and
  
• That idea has been validated by real people who would give you real money if you made the product.
  
  That's it. Have fun!
  
  P.S: I'm currently doing this with a mobile app for the rock climbing community, so comment below if you have any more questions on any specific tactics.
  
  P.P.S: I'm in no way affiliated with any of the above tools, I just use them on a regular basis and find them a pleasure to use.

From what ive seen there is no silver bullet. Books like slicing pie helped me learn how to value peoples contributions but a dynamic equity split wasn't the answer.

In my opinion the best book to read is Venture Deals, Be smarter than your lawyer and venture capitalist. Its going to teach you a ton about how to structure your cap table, what terms/concepts you should be aware of, and what investors are looking for.

https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616

Another great thing to read is the founders dilemma. It talks about the trade-off entrepreneurs make. Do you want to be rich or king because you cant be both?

https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma

In the end you're going to have to make a judgement call.

Some of the things I was told:

• "You have a great Idea, but there is just no way to be profitable at it."
  
• "Its never going to work, give up and just get a real job" -dad
  
• "You are too inexperienced to be successful in this field"
  
  What I learned - "There is a reason advice is free: because, it is usually crap" - Micheal Cain
  
  Take yourself seriously. If you are doing things by the hour, charge no less than 50-100.00/hr. If you work for less, the customer is going to think your a joke, because they know what the market rate of professional services cost. You only have to work one hour at 100.00/hr to make the same dollar you would make in 4 hours and 25.00/hr.
  
  Read this book: - The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
  
  It is exactly about what you are doing and will give you some unique business ideas and help you not to be afraid of totally screwing up and starting over.
  
  Lessons Learned the Hard way:
  
  
• Taxes: I went to school and got a BBA, when I started my business the tax issue was huge and I tried to do it on my own for 2 years, only to get audited on the third year, ended up owing 25,000.00 extra dollars. I kept perfect books, but honestly had no idea what tax law for my particular market was. Lesson: Rely on a CPA or other professional consultant that specializes in Tax for your payroll, corporate and sales tax for the first few years. Once you get it down and can understand it, you can hire and train someone in-house to do most of the work.
  
  -Partners: Be careful with partners. It was once said, "you can tell the quality of a man by the company he keeps" Going into business with someone who has had multiple marriages is dangerous proceed with caution, Going into business with someone who has had affairs - no fly. A lot about a persons professional performance can be foretold from the quality of their personal life. Men and women of integrity are the foundation of a new company, if the foundation is sand, the storm will wash it a way. Lesson: Choose good partners. If you share any of the ownership or leadership, make sure they are trustworthy. Not that just you trust them, but they are generally a trustworthy person.
  
  
  For the most part, just get out there, fail, fail, fail, and learn. Keep track of your many failures so when you achieve success you will not get bloated and forget where you came from.

Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg

7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

The Millionaire Next Door - Thomas J. Stanley

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

How to Get Rich - Felix Dennis

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss


The Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason

The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham

*****

You can look at these books if you like. The Millionaire Next Door would probably be the one I would gift him first.

I like the lean canvas and lean start up theories.

Here is lean canvas
http://leanstack.com/

It's a more streamlined model of the traditional business model canvas.

And here is an excellent book about implementing lean startup
http://www.amazon.com/Running-Lean-Iterate-Plan-Works/dp/1449305172/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410501116&sr=8-1&keywords=running+lean

The original book for this is The Lean Startup
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lean+startup&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Alean+startup&ajr=2

If you haven't done a business before, I'd recommend you check out all of these resources. In addition to helping you plan and create your business model, it also gives fantastic advice on starting out. Including how to make sure you are actually creating a product someone wants, finding your customers, getting the product out there sooner than later and other great notes.

Also keep in mind that you can spend weeks and months on a business plan and it will most likely blow up as soon as you implement it. Nothing wrong with that, but the point is to make a plan that's "good enough" and then go out there and test your theory.

Good luck!

I'm in same position as you, and would love to know if you're open to partnering up but to answer the question I've found the following very useful so far.

• Learning to launch
  
  
• Getting Real
  
  
• 90 days to profit
  
  
• 7 day startup
  
  
• lean startup
  
  there are more but these are what i've read so far and liked.
  
  Main points I've learned...
  
  
• Build nothing, or as little as possible. Think of vision, say craigslist, don't build it. Build stairs to it, dig a path to it. Start weekly email letter with website as complementary to save emails. Grow from there.
  
  
• If it's b2b, do selling first, nail down how to approach, who to approach, what to sell, for how much, get 5 people signed up before writing a line of code. Free or not, get people on board.
  
  
• prioritize speed and delivery over all coding standards, security standards, and over everything else.
  
  

I was hoping you'd know! I say we start with the very basics, we can model our course off of what would normally be covered in a financial accounting I class. 2 books were recommended to me.

The first is Financial Statements which gives a nice overview of the 4 financial statements including a brief description of what each line means.

The second was The Accounting Game

I personally learn better from a systematic approach like what is used in "Financial Statements" but I suspect a better approach for reddit would be something like "The Accounting Game." I anticipate that most of our students would be entrepreneurs or other users of accounting information rather than hopeful accountants. In that vein we could go through the process of starting a small business and show how the basic transactions would be recorded. Including how to set up spreadsheets as was ops original request.

What are your thoughts, would you be interested in taking the lead on something like this?

1. Vanguard is a low cost provider, yahoo finance can show you the expense ratio for any fund you are interested in -- I would decide on the 'type' of fund desired first (s&p500, total US stock market, international stocks, sectors, specialty), see what Vanguard has to offer, then compare their ER with other funds.
   
   
2. The only funds I know that all have lower ER's than Vanguard are the funds within the federal governments 401K (the Thrift Savings Program), but you need to be a federal employee to access these.
   
   
3. Withdrawal fees are up to the individual fund, if you withdraw too quickly some funds will charge a fee (ie <1 year or whatever). If a fund has no withdrawal fees at all (ie even after 1 day) then the fund runs the risk of being 'abused' by higher frequency traders and the cost of servicing these individuals will be paid by the fund's other longer term investors, so that is a business decision up to the managers of each fund.
   
   
4. In a mutual fund, you will pay capital gains taxes for each actual withdrawal (and there are mutiple complex ways to calculate how much tax you owe -- you must keep very good records to know if what is being reported to the IRS is accurate), but also each year you may have to pay taxes on imputed capital gains and dividends, even if you reinvest those distributions in the same fund immediately (ie if the mutual fund company reinvests them for you). The fund will send you a 1099 each year listing your imputed capital gains (ie gains the fund generated internally by trading stocks over the year) and dividends -- and you pay the taxes (even if you did not get the money distributed to you but it was kept in the fund). If you own an ETF, generally you should not have to pay capital gains taxes unless you actually sell shares -- but there may be exceptions!). Also some mutual funds (especially index funds) try to be 'tax efficient', meaning they try to not generate imputed capital gains that you will be taxed on each year.
   
   
5. Research has shown that if you have a chunk of money to invest, you will do just as well to invest all of it at once if you spread the money out, as with a market-wide index fund. If this is of concern to you, read about 'dollar cost averaging'. This approach means you decide to invest a fixed amount of cash in the market (ie in the S&P500 or some other broad index fund) each month or quarter, whether the market is up or down -- just buy the same dollar amount of shares. If the market is down that month, you will get more shares for your $$, if the market is up, you will get a smaller number of shares -- but it will average out and it is considered to be a reasonable approach to a lifetime investing program.
   
   
6. The problem with 'timing' investments is you have to be very smart, and have to be right twice -- once when you decide it is time to invest, and a second time when you decide to sell. Most real humans can't be this smart or knowledgeable, so 'dollar cost averaging' makes more sense. Research has shown that humans who invest in mutual funds don't do as well (don't earn as much) as the mutual fund itself -- the people try to outsmart the market and buy and sell at what turn out to be the wrong (or not the best ) times, so the return of real humans who use specific mutual funds tends to lag (be lower than) the reported fund return itself -- we think we are smarter than we are, we watch the news too much and panic. We sell when we should buy and buy when we should sell.
   
   My suggestion: go slow, read some books on investing. I read this book 30+ years ago and it was helpful. There are many others! Advice from /r/personalfinance can also be helpful in a general way.

Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos.

It isn't meant for the average Bitcoin enthusiast, but is more aimed at the technically minded/coders/cryptographically minded user. Many security researchers may well (IMO) have to deal with blockchain related security in the future, so having a decent knowledge of how Bitcoin (the tech) and bitcoin (the currency) works can only be advantageous as this field develops. Even if you don't think that your current role in security won't have to deal with this field, I would still advise you read the book as it is a fascinating read. There is also another version called The Internet of Money that is aimed at those who may not be so technically minded, but still have a genuine interest.

I am a physics PhD student who prepared for a quant transition and got an offer relatively soon after applying.

How much time do you have, where are you going to look, and from which university are your degrees? This book is an easy read, a bit American-centric. There are also books with preparation problems, I liked 1 2 3.

Play on your strengths - if you don't like programming just get a basic idea of how C++ work, and learn a lot of stochastic calculus if that's what you like. Eventually you should identify 1 or 2 areas which you like most and become strong in those. It's better to be so-so in some of the areas of the books above but beyond their level in 1-2 areas than being quite good at all of them but excel in none. Don't completely neglect any topic though - if you have no idea what a call option or a pointer are, you'll be in trouble. Don't neglect brainteasers.

Certain interesting areas are surprisingly ignored by those books, for example econometrics and machine learning. Good luck!

The TLDR of /u/GaryARefuge 's comment is my own personal mantra: "Make something someone will pay for". SOOO many would-be entrepreneurs have a 'fantastic idea' that is neat, but no one needs it, is looking for it, or wants it enough to pay for. So, #1: Build an MVP, even if it's just in powerpoint, and be very blunt and straightforward in contacting your target market and asking them if they would pay for your product. This TLDR came from [Running Lean](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449305172/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1449305172&linkCode=as2&tag=regreddit-20&linkId=KQN6MFRDGHTBSZJH">Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works (Lean Series)</a><img src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=regreddit-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1449305172) , and is a fantastic to cheaply validate a business model. ONLY after you understand the target market, and possibly even iterate on your 'powerpoint' product version, will you know if your idea is really great enough to actually build and sell.

Now, to specifically answer your question, yes, it's common. You might seek out a technical co-founder to help you (after you validate the business model).

Awesome! It is a wonderful wiki :) If you desire even more bitcoin knowledge, I recommend the book "Mastering Bitcoin" by Andreas Antonopoulos You can purchase it on Amazon.

If you can't afford it, or just want to give it a peak, Andreas has been awesome and made it available for free on his github page here: https://github.com/aantonop/bitcoinbook (just start at ch01.asciidoc and keep reading!)

This is true, but what increases exponentially also decreases exponentially. The thing is that when you are trading capitalized assets, prices can swing wildly because things are traded on multiple basises. I made the mistake, for example, diversifying across businesses that do not exist in 2010-2011. In fact, I am famous/infamous for it in some circles I would suppose. Discount what I say accordingly.

Made a million by making roughly 20x my money across a handful of companies that exist. Lost everything early 2011. Took a year off and got started a different way. Haven't made much progress if you mark everything to market right now but I am still making more in stocks than my job, as has always been the depressing case. Meanwhile, I'm interested in some sort of income stream that pays me more along the lines of what I am worth as I have a history of making/saving millions everywhere I go.

I have a book recommendation:
http://www.amazon.com/100-stock-market-distinguished-opportunities/dp/0070497729

Anyway, with what you are doing, you can fairly easily secure your future income stream and open your life up for a lot of alternatives. I work with a few people that are in your neck of the woods, making millions but not really having the capacity to turn those millions around into income producing assets.

Losing everything has given me a perspective that I will never lose. An asset is only an asset to the extent that it pays you to take responsibility for it. I prefer assets that I do not have to monitor and I can let go.

If you want to do a hands off lazy way that will likely annualize 20%+ returns per year I recommend the mutual fund FNSAX. There's a book on that too. The guy that created it is Joel Greenblatt and he annualized 40% for 20 years. I can provide you this one as a pdf but here is the amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Still-Market-Books-Profits/dp/0470624159/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381436121&sr=1-1&keywords=the+little+book+that+beats+the+market

Congratulations on your success. It's not every day that you get to run into someone who has lived out your worst fear, losing everything (that's me!). Haha, well. I'd be glad to take a look at what you are doing and let you know if I think your weaknesses are, but the parting wisdom that I want to leave you with is to really assess the extent of that which you do not know. If you don't know investments, diversification is your protection. Use it. Diversify as much as possible across asset classes.

Again, I don't know anything about you. But this is me: http://bit.ly/1WggNE

• 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.

Double Double by Cameron Herald

This is exactly what you asked for - all about growing your business.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

This is a great framework for starting and growing a business using a scientific metrics-based approach. Love this book.

Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook by Dan Shapiro

This is a great book about founding, growing and exiting from a startup or new business. It's got tons of great advice in here about cofounders, legal setup, taking investments, and running the business in a way that facilitates a successful exit.

I recommend you read Warren's 2004 book, The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke before questioning her longstanding commitment to idealistic and rational solutions to a broken system.

Bernie and Liz are both awesome, and both are bringing rational ideas to the mainstream. However, Bernie didn't invent these ideas. Baron Von Bismarck gave Germany Universal Healthcare in 1848. Free college in the US goes back as far as the Land Grants under Lincoln. Reducing money spent on bombs we blow up and instead on infrastructure that lasts 40 years just makes solid sense, and reminds everyone of The New Deal. Making sure greedy actors don't corrupt the free market and act like cartels is an idea from the late 1800s.

They have similar ideas because anyone with intelligence, critical thinking, the ability to read history, and a deep profound care for the future of their society and humanity at-large, will always land on these solutions. I am thankful that we have both of them in our political system, and as part of our society.

Has this concept worked in any other game? I think you're working with something that is waaay too complex for people to get into. You're making some pretty serious assumptions about what your audience wants to play (or is willing to play). If you move forward I would highly recommend this book specifically because it talks about designing ways to validate all of the assumptions you're making about your target audience. If you're not careful you can spend months and months working on a product that nobody wants. If nobody wants to play then its better for you to figure that our as early in the development cycle as possible. It'll give you a chance to tweak your design or give up and try out your next idea.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous/dp/0307887898/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377410351&sr=8-1&keywords=the+lean+startup

Games that come to mind with similar mix of styles (none as ambitious as yours)

• Natural Selection (RTS + FPS)
  
• Battlefield 2 (Commander plays RTS, everyone else FPS)
  
• Monday Night Combat (MOBA + FPS)
  
• Santcum (Tower defense + FPS)
  
  Good luck, IMO you're gonna need it.

Also broad index funds are unmanaged funds, so you're not paying anyone on Wall Street to pick the stocks. If you buy something like a broad index fund based on the S&P 500 the stocks are picked. You don't pay someone. All you pay is a very tiny amount for keeping track of the money.

There are other mutual funds that are managed, which means Wall Street types try to 'beat the market' by picking the winning stocks and knowing when to buy and sell them. Problem is, you have to pay that person, it's part of the fund management cost. And it's actually pretty rare (forget the numbers in a study I just read but it was like 10% over a 5-year period) for managed funds to beat the market once you take out those fees. So you're still trying to get lucky there.

For anyone interested in reading about broad index funds from an admittedly biased view of a heavy proponent, I suggest reading The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns by John Bogle, he updated it last year and it's a very easy-to-follow explanation of the benefits of index funds and not too horribly long.

One of the best business books I've read about how to methodically test and validate business ideas is "The Lean Startup" by Eric Reis (https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation-ebook/dp/B004J4XGN6?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect). His advice is simple but very powerful if used appropriately. But as far as the idea block you're experiencing... don't worry about it! A truly novel and original idea is exceedingly rare. Most successful companies were not the first to think of something, they just did it better than everyone else. Google wasn't the first search engine. Facebook wasn't the first social network. So don't let the fact someone else is already doing it slow you down! Look at it as validation it's a market worth getting into and then figure out what the incumbents are doing wrong : )

Start With Why [Simon Sinek]

48 Laws of Power [Robert Greene] (33 Strategies of War, Art of Seduction)

The 50th Law [Curtis James Jackson]

Tipping Point:How Little Things Can Make a Difference and Outliers: The story of Succes [Malcolm Gladwell]

The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy [Ryan Holiday] (stoicism)

[Tim Ferris] (actually haven't read any of his books, but seems to know a way to use social media, podcast, youtube)

Get an understanding to finance, economics, marketing, investing [Graham, Buffet], philosophy [Jordan Peterson]

I like to think us/you/business is about personal development, consciousness, observing recognizable patterns in human behavior and historical significance. It's an understanding of vast areas of subjects that connect and intertwine then returns back to the first book you’ve read (Start with Why) and learn what you've read past to present. Business is spectacular, so is golf.



To Add:

Irrationally Predictable:The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions - [Dan Ariely] (marketing)

The Hard Things About Hard Things - [Ben Horowitz] (business management)

Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It - [Charlamagne Tha God] (motivation)

The Lean Startup: Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses - [Eric Ries]

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, How to Build the Future - [Peter Theil]

Have you tried emailing them?
https://tbc.uchicago.edu/contact-us

A lot of those questions will probably be answered first week during info sessions, but my understanding:

1. Not too sure how MC and TBC differ (I’m in neither)—I think Blue Chips does due diligence on individual stocks within a sector and then invests an alumni gift diversified among whichever stock pitches pass a quarterly review. MC I think focuses more on educating members on quantitative finance and trading strategies. I think both would prepare you well for a career in finance (I-Banking, Quant Trading, or anything else)
   
2. MC states on their website that no prior finance experience is required so I can’t imagine it’s too hard (and personally I like the accessibility aspect), but you probably need to be familiar with like what an option is for example. TBC is one of the more selective clubs on campus, and yeah like a poster said it seems exclusive or whatever, but that’s also partially the fault of so many students wanting to do finance/consulting after undergrad. Don’t get caught up in prestige tho—just because a club is more selective doesn’t mean it is better (it might just be smaller) and there are many other clubs & classes besides TBC and MC that also teach finance on campus.
   
3. If you read Rosenbaum and Pearl you’ll be fine for TBC (note that you don’t need to buy the textbook, it’s available free as a PDF all over the internet just google it)—understand the principles and technicals of value investing. Not sure if this would be overkill for MC, but it wouldn’t hurt ofc.
   
   Since you asked for worthwhile info: at info sessions ask current RSO members what they want to do after graduation. The more members who can definitively answer you, the more likely it is that the club has helped them define their goals and to some extent put them on the right track to achieving it. Just my two cents I suppose.

My suggestions:

1. Check out pro.coinbase.com and learn how to use it. You'll use the same credentials that you do on coinbase, but save a lot on fees.
   
2. Don't bother with all the alt-coins.
   
3. Start purchasing Bitcoin with each paycheck.
   
4. Read "The Bitcoin Standard" (https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Standard-Decentralized-Alternative-Central/dp/1119473861)
   
5. Get a hardware wallet (I recommend Trezor) and start storing your Bitcoin on it.
   
6. Research the benefits of decentralized exchanges, learn how to use one (I recommend Bisq), and if it meets your needs, start using it as soon as possible.
   
7. Read "Mastering Bitcoin" (https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042)
   
8. Develop a long term outlook, don't worry too much about price swings.
   
   From your post, it sounds like you might be interested in just trading. In that case, my suggestions won't help a lot. I think that the majority that try trading end up losing. If you do decide to buy/sell/trade, be sure to spend some time learning about trading, limits, stops, strategies, etc. Start small, win some, lose some, learn some, before going in big.

The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore is a great introduction to investing. It might look silly, but it's not a silly book.

It's intended for "normal people" with no background in economics. It explains the basics of the stock market, funds, ETFs, bonds, etc., as well as the basics of investment — risk management, compound returns, value investing/fundamental analysis, etc. — in simple, understandable terms.

"Boglehead" is a humorous term for people who espouse the investing philosophy of John C. Bogle, founder of Vanguard — the largest and most consumer-friendly provider of mutual funds in the U.S. — and creator of the first commercially available index fund. Bogleheads usually recommend a simple "three-fund portfolio" as a diversification strategy, based on the idea that index funds by design will, over time, give non-professionals the best returns, as opposed to individual stock picking.

Bogle himself wrote a bunch of books. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing is supposed to be great.

There are people that dedicate their lives to this question. But it basically boils down to understanding the business, analyzing financial statements, and coming up with projections of future performance. I encourage you to pick yourself up a copy of this book and use it as a reference to pick through the financial statements (10k's,10Q's) of whatever company it is you're trying to value. The bottom line is that if you really want to get an edge it's probably going to take more than just looking at some easily available statistic like PE. On the other hand, most big companies have hordes of analysts following them already whose sole job it is to estimate the value of the company, so the likelihood of you getting an edge for any large company is slim at best. There are probably more opportunities to be had with smaller companies that get less attention.

Definitely look into bussiness management books as well. if you are going down this road, there is a chance you will want to start doing it on your own and having proper business skills will help tremendously in securing work, and balancing costs, and making money doing it! I am sure some people on this sub can recommend some great books on this topic as well.

Here are a couple books,

https://www.amazon.ca/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=Cj0KCQjw5MLrBRClARIsAPG0WGxuwhyo-18J3-xPOVP8bXeTJ4zbGZHkpO4GqIGKlz-WCRxt3aUroqQaApECEALw_wcB&hvadid=229992601126&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9000745&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=4412519744533501821&hvtargid=aud-748919244907%3Akwd-297504215686&hydadcr=16960_10238137&keywords=business+model+generation&qid=1567691052&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.ca/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3/141-1005106-2495725?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0307887898&pd_rd_r=3ef234c3-168a-4156-bb6b-32f1e4f1ecca&pd_rd_w=PEqJa&pd_rd_wg=P882W&pf_rd_p=a62e2918-d998-4bbb-8337-35aac776e851&pf_rd_r=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H&psc=1&refRID=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H

https://www.amazon.ca/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/0984999302/ref=pd_sbs_14_3/141-1005106-2495725?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0984999302&pd_rd_r=3ef234c3-168a-4156-bb6b-32f1e4f1ecca&pd_rd_w=Oruqz&pd_rd_wg=P882W&pf_rd_p=f7748194-d8e0-4460-84c0-2789668108bc&pf_rd_r=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H&psc=1&refRID=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H

https://www.amazon.ca/Business-Model-You-One-Page-Reinventing/dp/1118156315/ref=pd_sbs_14_4/141-1005106-2495725?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1118156315&pd_rd_r=3ef234c3-168a-4156-bb6b-32f1e4f1ecca&pd_rd_w=Oruqz&pd_rd_wg=P882W&pf_rd_p=f7748194-d8e0-4460-84c0-2789668108bc&pf_rd_r=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H&psc=1&refRID=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H

Had this list together from a blog post I wrote a few months ago. Not sure what exactly you're looking for, but these are my favorite books and I'd recommend everybody read them all. There are other great books out there, but this is a pretty well rounded list that touches everything a company needs.

The Lean Startup https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898

Business Model Generation https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

Talking to Humans https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Humans-Success-understanding-customers-ebook/dp/B00NSUEUL4

Predictable Revenue https://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices-Salesforce-com/dp/0984380213

To Sell is Human https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Human-Surprising-Moving-Others/dp/1594631905

Rework https://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745

Delivering Happiness https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220

Firstly, if you look at income quintile growth in the 1980's, everyone was basically flat or falling behind but the top 20%. If the middle class did better under Reagan, it was because of deficit-financed tax cuts and more women going to work out of economic necessity.

What we have in this country are a corporate conservative party (Democrats) and a radical theocratic conservative party (Republicans). People in this country don't even know what progressivism is anymore, because establishment liberals sabotaged radical leftists. Elizabeth Warren is the closest thing we have to a nationally viable progressive politician in this country, and even she's not talking about things like a guaranteed minimum income, which was last put forth by Richard Nixon. Yes, if Richard Nixon were a politician today, he would be considered too liberal for the Democratic Party.

A deck is a PowerPoint presentation (generally in PDF format) where you present your startup and the problem you are solving. If you're creating someone new and innovative it may be difficult for others to understand. So in a deck you essentially try to explain everything in a clear and concise way. Sometimes you have a short and long version. The short version you attach to emails while the long version is what you present to VCs during in - person meetings. There are many decks from successful startups available online. Just Google "startup decks." Mint's deck is one of the best I've seen. Very clear and concise.

How finished should something be? I don't know but it should be free of typos, clear and straight to the point. On AngelList you can look at other startups, so look there for examples of what to do.

Once a VC decides to invest in your idea or company, they will send you a term sheet. You'll need to know how to understand it. I recommend reading Venture Deals. Very informative.

This was tailing off by the early 1980s for sure, but it was very much the norm in the 1960s and 1970s for families to be single-earning.

As citation, I give you Elizabeth Warren's The Two-Income Trap.

Your experience with "primary breadwinner" and "part-time" is probably a good illustration of this. Such an arrangement allowed families to get that "little extra", like a swimming pool, or a better vacation, but was not necessary to pay the basic bills.

Keep in mind that the "telephone operator" job that your mother had is gone, and the best comparable job might be call-center worker, for minimum wage.

I would argue that some of the "living inflation" has taken place in direct response to the reduction in public service funding that took place in the late 70s/early 80s. The anti-tax movement was targeting local services. Where I live, in Massachusetts, they took aim at the public sector employees in a big way. What ultimately happened was that public services used to be pretty standard between communities before 1980, but after 1980, due to Proposition 2.5 which actually capped property taxes at 2.5% of the assessed property value in a community, many communities (usually larger urban) had to dramatically scale back services. What happened next was economic flight/sorting based on rationing of services - the people who wanted the good services (primarily schools) fled to the towns that were willing to pay for these services. That resulted in massive differences in property values between communities, which resulted in even more economic segregation.

In Massachusetts, that translates into communities which everyone wants to live in but can't afford, and communities which are very affordable but no one wants to live in them. Families wind up stretching themselves to the point where they are buying $500k houses, for which they need $150k in income to support - and they are unwilling to settle for a $150k house because those communities have lousy schools and copious amounts of poor people (plus brown people to boot).

This is a good accounting book for someone with no background, but a regular university text would do the job better. As for as "stock research," here's a list of really good value investing books I'd recommend, after you're comfortable with reading and understanding the statements.

Well you won't become financially literate if you don't keep reading and "the Intelligent Investor" is a pretty good place to start. It's not a particularly hard read in my opinion but there are of course financial vocabulary that is not well known to non-native speakers and not explained in the book. You might want to skip the sections on various bond series and railroads and what not, that part is kind of outdated and not really relevant for non-US investors. You don't need to understand everything to get the message of the book which is very simple: stocks are companies and you should think of and value them as such and ignore the day-to-day movements of the stock market. To do that you need to understand basic accounting. I really liked "Financial Statements" by Thomas Ittelson, it's a very easy to read book with great simplified examples.

Educate yourself first. Don't just throw your hat in the ring. Read some books like:

The Intelligent Investor

Common Sense on Mutual Funds

There are other books out there, but I can't recommend what I haven't read.

I would ask you, what do you wish to accomplish? Do you want to put your money somewhere and forget about it? Do you want to try to make some money?

A guy in your position, I would recommend a Roth IRA. It is a tax free investment (in the US anyway) you can set up for your retirement. If you start contributing now, it will grow over the course of your lifetime.

It is really up to you - but please educate yourself first.

Hello,
I'd start here..
http://www.cboe.com/ the cboe website offers free education detailing essentially everything about options, their properties, how they're priced, simple--> complex strategies.

A good book I liked was Getting started in options. The cboe website, while incredibly encompassing, is a bit a brief in their lessons(IMO). This guy offers an easy to understand intuition behind taking some of the trades. The book ranges from beginner tactics to intricate spreads/condors and such.

Id say to cap it off and give you a well rounded education, you keep this one handy Options as a strategic investment. I say this because I think the way it's setup is more of a handbook, it skimps on the details and cuts right to the schematics of each trade and how to manage.

The order of resources was deliberate, I've found when the material is too hefty from the getco it's a bit discouraging when you first start out. However, as you progress you crave more, you dive deeper and once you demonstrate some proficiency, you want to have something easy to skim through and reference just in case.

Hope that helps!

"problem is getting people to visit the website and sign up"

Not sure if you you are having more of the visit problem or sign up problem, so let's address both.

For visitors/traffic, spend $500 or so and put up some Google Adwords. You'll have to make sure your message is extremely targeted so that you only get clicks from your target market.

That will get you some traffic. Then it's time to test your landing page / sign up page. You can measure your conversion to see how many folks sign up for the free trial, and finally measure how many folks continue with a subscription.

That's your funnel. The benefit of using Google Adwords is you don't have to waste lots of time building up all these free channels that you hope will bring you traffic. Just drive traffic through paid advertising. The purpose isn't to do this forever; the purpose is to validate that your offering has value and/or that your marketing (landing page) is driving the right behavior (sign ups).

If you find after getting 1k clicks that only 3 people signed up, then it's time to tweak the landing/marketing pages and/or change the offer. Are you requiring a credit card for free trial? Maybe stop doing that. You'll have to experiment.

It also might be beneficial to spend a few dollars and get a marketing consultant to help you design the landing page.

As far as resources, the bible right now is: http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898

Do you have access to free printing by any chance? perhaps you can get an electronic copy and just print it?

I'm guessing that you're young, based on your talk about allowance. I don't recommend Intelligent Investor, as there might be some prerequisites that you are missing. The book is pretty accounting heavy terms, and you should have at least a basic knowledge of corporate accounting before reading it. Save this one for when you can look at all 3 financial statements and know what ever item on those statements mean.

You might this one to be more of an easier read: "The Little Book That Beats The Market". This one tries to get you to think about companies as businesses instead of tickers with a fluctuating price. You won't need any knowledge of corporate accounting for this one.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0470624159/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1394658640&sr=8-1&keywords=the+little+book+that+beats+the+market&condition=used

If you want to learn some corporate accounting, I recommend this one as it an easy read and catered to beginners. Also, it's $4 on Amazon so your allowance can go a long way.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1416573186/ref=sr_1_2_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1394658943&sr=8-2&keywords=interpretation+of+financial+statements&condition=used

I don't recommend Random Walk On Wall Street for your level. EMF is basically something that says the average investor cannot do better than the average investor (duh), in the grand scheme.

Hi,
I love books and here are some:
1- A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing
2- The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns
3- MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom


Good luck

Like you I work at a tech startup. When we were just starting, our business/strategy people asked the question you just asked. They opened a dialog with development team, and found good answers. I attribute our success in large part to that dialog being eager and open-minded, just as you are being right now. So, it's good tidings that you are asking.

For us, the answer came from conversation, but it also came from reading the following books together:

• The Soul of a new Machine. Pulitzer Prize Winner, 1981. It will teach you the texture of our work and of our love for it, as well as good role models for how to interact with devs.
  
  
• Coders at Work, reflection on the craft of programming Will give you perspective on the depth of our discipline, so you may know to respect our perspective when we tell you what the technology can or cannot do -- even when it is counter-intuitive, as ModernRonin described.
  
  
• Lean Startup It will teach you the means to deal with the difficult task of providing hyper-detailed requirements when the nature of building new software is always that it's new and we don't really know yet what we're building.
  
  
• Agile Samurai Will teach you agile, which ModernRonin also mentioned.
  
  
• Watch this talk by one of the inventor/popularizer of agile, Ken Schwaber Pay particular attention to the issue of code quality over time. You will soon be surrounded by devs who will be responsible for making highly intricate judgement calls balancing the value of releasing a new feature a tad earlier, versus the potentially crippling long-term impact of bad code. Heed Ken Schwaber's warning: your role as a manager is to be an ally in protecting the long-term viability of the code's quality. If you fail -- usually by imposing arbitrary deadlines that can only be met by sacrificing quality -- your company will die.
  
  
  
  

I'm saying

>knowledge of how Goldman works to begin with would be necessary for evaluating its integrity.

The set of people with the relevant knowledge is a little broader than I first let on, and includes:

• academics who study the finance industry
  
  
• some but probably not most of the people who work or used to work in the finance industry
  
  
• Lawyers who work on either side of legal cases involving firms like Goldman
  
  
• Probably most judges who regularly hear cases involving big banks
  
  
• Probably most of the people who work for the FDIC and some other regulatory bodies
  
  
• Really, anyone with significant knowledge and expertise of both how investment banks work and economics or finance in general. Heck, even this book plus a masters degree in a relevant field (economics, finance, maybe accounting) probably counts.
  
  If your friends who don't like Goldman are actually experts, I apologize. But most of the people I meet, especially online, who have a strong opinion of them and/or "consider them to be most dishonest institution" make it clear when asked to elaborate that they have no idea what they're talking about. And I'll double down on saying that people who have no idea what they're talking about with respect to what Goldman and other investment banks do also necessarily have no idea what they're talking about with respect to whether that's good or not.
  

There's no correct answer, of course.

Over time, my wife and I have used combinations of a nanny, grandparents, and day care since my son was two months old, as we both had to return to work for various reasons. In terms of his health and development, we have no complaints: he is thriving. That doesn't mean much, as I'd probably say the exact same thing if my wife were working at home, or if I was. He is in a full-time day care that he loves. There have been plenty of tears along the way, but your husband's view of day care as something out of Dickens is just wrong. He cherishes his little friends, the teachers, and the lessons he gets each day.

For me, an important factor is the total cost to the parent who stays at home. Some people have mentioned depression, etc., but I would focus on career issues. I'm in my 40s. With one exception, the women I know who stayed at home to raise kids are simply erased from the work place. Whatever their level of achievement before --- these are women I know with PhDs, MBAs, etc. --- they never manage to find a full-time job again. The stories (excuses?) are different, but the results are the same, whether they tried in elementary school or later.

The parental choices you make include what your life will be like after the children have come and left the house. If you have an advanced degree, or work in an area that you love, I would urge you to consider full-time or part-time child care. I don't know you, of course, or your field, but your remarks about part-time projects struck me as probably unrealistic. I'm a hiring manager, and the vast majority of the resume I see with side-projects do not lead me to hireable candidates. Many people fool themselves; don't be one of them.

You also mention living in the SF Bay Area. You two should plan out some realistic budgets that go out to school age for your two kids. As you've noted, many of our public schools are simply awful, in part due to the lingering disaster that is Prop 13. You may well have to move or use a local private school.

Finally, I strongly recommend the book The Two-Income Trap, written by now Senator Elizabeth Warren and her daughter. As you may know, Warren is a bankruptcy specialist, and she came about the topic of the book from an unusual angle: she was looking at why couples got into financial straits. The book is too long to summarize, other than to say that every couple needs to look thoughtfully at their real risks and their actual obligations. Genuine love of children is one element of the two-income trap, as the book explains.

For the business side of things go look at /r/Entreprenuer

I've worked in the Silicon Beach startup scene and I know several startup founders. Some of which who built , launched and sold successful companies. Here's the advice I've always heard:

• Read The Lean Startup. Realize that to be truly profitable you are building a business, not just an app. That's an important distinction. A point emphasized in the book is to not build what you want, but to build what you think people will pay you for. The way to do that is via a series of experiments and building an MVP (minimum viable product), the smallest thing you can do to get feedback.
  
  
• Read the beginners guide to startups
  
  
• If you have an idea, talk to EVERYONE at it. Too many times developers like to hide in a cave and build something thinking if they talk someone will steal it. What you get if you do that is a product only you like without any feedback from the community. Instead talk to people, share the concept, see what they like, what they don't like.
  
  
• Go to as many developer centric events in your area. Including those outside your university. Get to know the local dev scene. Network with people working on startups. Hell go to hackathons and just build something for fun. Being deeply invested in the tech scene in your area will open doors and connections.
  
  Lastly, do realize that all this is hard work. If your goal is to make money easily, it's actually easier to graduate and spend 1-3 years working as a junior and move up with a "normal" job. Most good programmers with a CS degree and a few years of experience have no problem making a 6 figure salary (depending on location, etc).
  
  I'm not trying to dissuade you, building the next big app is exciting and can pay off huge. Just saying it's a lot of work and it's not about building an app, to make money you have to build a business.

What I meant with my HFT comment was that it would probably be beyond the pale for a non-professional because it is mostly about getting edge from really expensive infrastructures. But I could totally be wrong about that, what do I know. And thanks a bunch for all the advice. I will probably be mostly holding long term with my crypto investments but I still want to try my hand at some sort of day trading or swing trading with a smaller investment. How capital intensive is arbitrage really? Your comment on that topic kind of surprised me to be honest, because my impression so far has been that these markets and exchanges are still so young that there are a lot of inefficiencies to be found. I was thinking of like maybe some triangular arbitrage between LTC, BTC, and ETH across multiple exchanges. I'm sure this stuff is all way easier said than done though and that's probably what I will discover. It seems like all the various fees and risks involved can be a real killer if you aren't super careful.

Edit:
I'm also planning on getting this book. If you have any other book recommendations that would be awesome!

I second the book Hooked by Nir Eyal–it has great insight into building sticky products.

Couple of others off the top of my head:

• The Startup Life by Brad and Amy Feld - Great if you're building your company and are in some sort of serious relationship.
  
  
• Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson — One of the best books on how to think about fundraising when you're going through it for the first time. Super entrepreneur focused.
  

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits) - Jack Bogle - Vanguard Founder. No gimmicks. Simple, low-cost, and passive indexing for buy and hold investors.

One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market Peter Lynch was a fund manager of one of the most successful actively managed funds. Active investing. Buy companies that are really successful at getting you to buy their product. Observe the world around you type of investing.

Is there any way you can get a cheaper apartment? You make good money and can afford it, but that's still too much to spend on rent, imo.

Also, yes you should max out your 401k. You can put in 19k per year (not including your employer match). So do that and it's like you now have a 86k/year salary and you're getting the best possible jump start on your retirement savings.

Also, I would buy and ready this book: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/1119404509/

Exactly. That is the idea.

Problem Fit => Solution Fit => Product Fit => Market Fit
Each step teaches us very important details and you engage your early-adopters in the process. When you have the actual product you already have customers, and sometimes paying customers.

And there are books around this that EVERYONE SHOULD READ.

"The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses" (Eric Reis) - 2011
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/

"Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works" (Ash Maurya) - 2010
https://www.amazon.com/Running-Lean-Iterate-Plan-Works/dp/1449305172

"Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days" (Jake Knapp - Google Ventures) - 2016
https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/150112174X/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1550802301&s=gateway&sr=8-1

My advice is just start by making a prototype. Do as much as you can by yourself. Then learn what you don't know. You can go to sites like odesk and elance and hire people to do what you can't learn. With 3d printing and other new technology its surprisingly cheap to create a fairly advanced prototype without the aid of a large factory, engineers, or thousands of dollars. Even if it takes you a year to get a prototype assembled your chance of finding investors will go way up having something to show them beyond sketches and ideas.

While your doing this take some time and learn how entrepreneurship works. There are tons of amazing free information out there in the form of blogs, podcasts and ebooks.

Some books that really helped me out when I started learning were $100 startup and The lean Startup. $100 Startup really helped me see what is possible and expand my view of how you can make money. Lean Startup taught me how to test those ideas.

1. You don't need a co-founder. Your age doesn't matter for many markets.
   
   
2. Identify a pain point that a group of people have, and think of a way to solve that problem.
   
   
3. Read this: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
   
   
4. From the article above, it mentions to do things manually. Throw up a free landing page on Squarespace or Wordpress or any other free page hoster. Use Google Docs and Zaiper and WooForms, free tools, to glue your service together. Use free tools from here: https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-a-saas-with-0-fed2341078c8 Make it so your idea just barely works, and it delivers value to your target customer. This is your MVP.
   
   
5. Validate your idea. Hit the pavement. Grind. Look for your customers. Tell them about your solution. Ask if it fixes their problem. Will they pay for it? Why? Why not?
   
   
6. Rinse and repeat until you start getting users, making money and are growing. Don't fall in love with an idea. Start delivering value.
   
   You don't need a VC. You don't need co-founders. Just get started and do something. Anything. Bootstrap from the ground up. Failure is the best teacher. Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.
   
   Oh yeah, and read books and blogs on digital marketing while doing all this. Once you get the ball rolling, marketing is what you will want to spend the most time on. This is a classic book on how many startups first successfully marketed their services and got their users: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/1591848369

Couple Suggestions:

1. Shopify https://www.shopify.com/blog/15153597-5-strategies-to-validate-your-product-ideas
   
   I love shopify regardless if you do e-commerce or not. Really great content and tons of value highly recommend. The article i linked is but one of many good ones.
   
   
2. Lean Startup by Eric Ries. http://www.amazon.com/The-Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous/dp/0307887898
   
   He talks a lot about Product Market Fit (PMF) and how to get there asap for entrepreneurs. I'd recommend at least checking out some youtube videos about PMF and other variations of the idea as far as validating your idea/approach.
   
   

I would suggest finding a technical co-founder to partner with. Start with your local community and search for high-tech entrepreneurial events. http://www.meetup.com is a great place to find events.

I would also suggest implementing the lean, minimal viable product (MVP) approach created by Eric Ries. The process is an experimentation in order to test your hypothesis with an MVP.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous/dp/0307887898

Alternatively, you could rent the book from your local library or check out his lean methodology in this interview:

http://www.entrepreneuronfire.com/podcast/eric-ries-interview-of-the-lean-start-up-with-john-lee-dumas-of-entrepreneur-on-fire/

If your idea is as great as you think, it should not be difficult finding a technical co-founder who can envision it! Good luck to you!

1. Reddit is not a substitute for attorney who can prepare shareholder agreement which would cover your unique situation.
   
   
2. Having partners and shareholders is more serious then marriage. You can't take someone's equity away for non-performance. You may enter decision making paralysis because you can't reach consensus etc. LLC might not work for all cases and you might need C-corp which is more complicated, and so on. Consider whether your website has that much potential to cover for all that administrative burden.
   
   
3. If you can avoid having equity partners - do so at that stage. Structure commercial agreement for services and commission, performance based compensation. Make sure IP is always transferred to your LLC. If this is not enough for your friends - make option plan which are conditionally vested based on performance.
   
   Giving away equity is easy. Restructuring later when you understand each one true individual contribution is complicated and is a major stress.
   
   If you believe you're really on to something with your website, spend a weekend reading some book on how corporate law works and find a reasonable corporate attorney to help you structure your shareholder agreement.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616 you may skip all chapters related to VC deals

There's a pretty awesome documentary mini-series [1] that TechCrunch created based on Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper. I ended up picking up the book last week after watching that mini-series. Heard nothing but good things about the book. Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies was pretty good as well... Always enjoyed watching/listening to Andreas M. Antonopoulos who wrote the book.

• [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHRxVckaE8daSH4OEReWshCKWu3iIOIS-
  
• [2] https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042/

Trading and Exchanges

Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives

Option Volatility & Pricing

Option Market Making

Trading Spreads and Seasonals

Algorithmic Trading and DMA

There are more advanced and quantitative resources out there but you will need to wrap your head around these concepts before you go further. I should mention that reading these things won't guarantee to make you a profitable trader but you will "get a better understanding of the field."

Online resources:

Investopedia

Elitetrader (most popular trading forum, lots of posters... mostly bad)

Nuclearphynance (smaller but more advanced community)

Gotcha. That really sucks, and I mean that in the most meaningful way possible haha.

That type of thinking is the complete opposite of "agile" development, where typically there is a budget, but product owners and devs work together, iteration-by-iteration to determine what needs to change. If an "estimate" is carved in stone, then it's not an estimate anymore, but a fixed-bid project--again, the complete opposite of what developing with agility is supposed to be.

Sounds like a good starting place is learning about lean development and building a minimum viable product, since they're so sensitive about estimate granularity. That manager will have to learn to lead building a very minimum viable product, with as minimally necessary a valuable feature set as possible.

I recommend reading:

• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
  
• The Lean Product Playbook
  
• Inspired

How is this:

$1 /u/changetip

...not revolutionary? I just sent you real money through an online message board! I don't know who you are, you don't know who I am, and I didn't have to get permission from anyone.

Mr. Nandkeolyar, I know that bitcoin people can sound like a broken record saying this, but consider doing some more in-depth research into the tech and it's uses beyond just payments (I think bitcoin solving "smart contracts" may eventually be more important than it's ability to act as a seamless international payment method.)

Here's a good book to get started with.

While your overall point is correct, I wouldn't dismiss the commenter so quickly. You are correct that the pricing mechanism they describe is inaccurate, and that the firm's cost structure is hugely important. (Unless the firm had extremely effective price discrimination and a huge degree of market power). However, I believe that the cited comment is actually making (or could potentially make) two different arguments as its core claims:


First, arguing from a general "Keeping up with the Jones" principle. In particular,


> Because the more things people have, the more people expect you to have it.


While the nice things that people have surely provide utility in of themselves, part of the utility that these goods provide is in the signal of social status relative to those around you. Similar to the argument that Krugman puts forth, relative increases in wealth can matter more than absolute increases. In this case, the fact that people around you have nicer things exerts pressure on you to own those same goods. You can't extend this argument to say "people in the 90s aren't any better off than they were in the 50s", but dismissing OP out of hand seems unfair.


Secondly, we may imagine that some goods are zero-sum, or at least close to zero-sum. Elizabeth Warren makes this argument regarding dual-income families in The Two-Income Trap. While OP doesn't reference this specifically, a great example of this phenomenon might be access to high quality public schools. The best-quality public schools have a finite and relatively constant number of seats, such that they are accessible only to people in the top X% of income. If all families excepting yours begin sending both parents to work, and use that supplemental income to purchase property near these upper-tier school, the relative tier of school you attend will fall, even if your actual income remains unchanged. If everyone's income doubles, it may well be that the relative tier of school you attend is unchanged. The absolute quality of every school may increase, but ranking is often seen as more important. (Numerous thinkpieces describe this same phenomenon as being behind the increased competition in college applications, particularly for elite schools).

I agree about the book - http://www.amazon.com/The-Hard-Thing-About-Things/dp/0062273205 - best one I've read about startups.

This one is good as well to improve sales: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/006124189X?pc_redir=1408025460&robot_redir=1

For fun stuff check out http://www.startupvitamins.com - you can get posters, mugs, etc., their "Get Shit Done" mug is the most popular item.

Yeah, the questions been asked before. But here's a summary.

Wish you the best.

Video Tutorials

• Khan Academy
  
• Yale University / Robert Shiller
  
• the rather basic ones at our site
  
  Great Books
  
  
• Peter Lynch: One Up On Wall Street
  
• Joel Greenblatt: The Little Book That Still Beats The Market
  
• James Montier: The Little Book of Behavioural Investing
  
• Richard Oldfield: Simple But Not Easy
  
• Phil Fisher: Common Stocks and UnCommon Profits
  
  Stock prices & news
  
  
• Google Finance
  
• Yahoo Finance
  
• CNNMoney
  
• CNBC
  
• Reuters
  
  Investment commentary & ideas
  
  
• MarketWatch
  
• Seeking Alpha
  
• Business Insider
  
• The Motley Fool
  
• Bloomberg BusinessWeek
  
• Forbes
  
  Stock screeners & stock picking tools
  
  
• FinViz
  
• Google Finance Screener
  
• MarketWatch
  
• Reuters Screener
  
• Stockflare DISCLAIMER: this is our site
  
• Yahoo! Stock Screener
  
• Ycharts
  
  Stock exchanges & useful wikis
  
  
• Nasdaq
  
• Nasdaq's list of all recent IPOs
  
• NYSE
  
• Wikipedia's List of Stock Exchanges
  
• Wikipedia on Value Investing
  
• Wikipedia on Growth Investing
  
  Great investors profiled on Wikipedia
  
  
• Warren Buffett
  
• Ben Graham
  
• Phil Fisher
  
• Shelby Davis
  
• Hetty Green
  
• Peter Lynch
  
• John Neff
  
• Sir John Templeton
  
  Relevant Subreddits
  ================
  
  
• /r/business
  
• /r/economy
  
• /r/finance
  
• /r/invest
  
• /r/investing
  
• /r/InvestmentClub
  
• /r/pennystocks
  
• /r/options
  
• /r/stockmarket
  
• /r/theartofsimpletrading
  
• /r/wallstreetbets
  
• /r/securityanalysis
  
• /r/stocktraders
  
  

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries:
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898
This book offers great insight into agile product development, which is something a lot of companies try to master- but never figure out how to. The author has a lot of experience in product development and gives a ton of insightful, real life experience of working with successful companies like GE and more. I found the book extremely beneficial and it gave me a new perspective on product development.

That's fine, then. My main concern was that you might be putting your money on the line!

I am not sure that an automated momentum system can't work. In fact, many CTAs (commodity trading advisors... a kind of hedge fund) made consistent returns in 2000-2009 by following pretty simple momentum strategies - generally moving averages or moving average crossovers on a 100-300 day window. Note that the timescale is much longer than yours, and also note that most of those CTAs have been in drawdown since about 2010 (ie they've lost money or just about broken even for the last four years).

But I am pretty certain that an intraday trading system based on trashy, discredited technical analysis isn't going to yield consistent profits, especially when applied by someone who is trading for the first time.

One way to tell if a trader knows what they are doing is to listen to their language - if they talk about technical indicators, fibonacci retracement, elliott waves, entry and exit points, MACD etc then they are a quack. If they talk about regression, signal processing, traing and test sets, regularization, bias/variance etc then there's a chance that they know what they're talking about.

There is fifty years of history building mathematical tools for analysing random processes, making time series forecasts, building regression models, and analysing models out of sample, all of which is generally ignored by the quacks who rely on spurious "indicators" and "entry/exit points". A good place to start is this book -

http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/

and this is a good book for when you've progressed beyond the intermediate level

http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/

There are two books by Ernest Chan about quantitative trading that frankly don't tell you anything that will be immediately applicable to creating a strategy (there's no secret sauce) but they do give you a good high level overview of what building a quantitative trading system is all about

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quantitative-Trading-Build-Algorithmic-Business/dp/0470284889/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1406963471&sr=8-2&keywords=ernest+chan
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Algorithmic-Trading-Winning-Strategies-Rationale/dp/1118460146/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406963471&sr=8-1&keywords=ernest+chan

Hope that's helpful.

Kind of unrelated, but I've been around a lot of entrepreneurs and they all swear by this book. Apparently, it's the importance important thing you can read before raising venture capital. No idea. I've never read it since I've never had to raise money. : https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616

​

Also, I really suggest you look at things like Wefunder or Seedinvest. They are basically like Kickstarter but instead most normal people can invest. I think this is a wonderful strategy. Imagine having the collective experiences, word of mouth, and ownership of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who are invested in your success.

I've really enjoyed Financial Fitness Forever by Paul A. Merriman and Richard Buck. Mostly about investing, it's laid out really well, written in a conversational tone and delves into some of the emotional aspects of investing behavior.



Also, The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias ironically contains quite a lot of advice other than just investing and he has a great sense of humor. I haven't read the updated 2016 version - mine is from 2002!

1. Identify how you're going to measure success
   
2. Tune your content by setting up experiments (learn startup principles) and learning from the data you gathered in step 1 by measuring
   
3. Keep that data on hand for future reference
   
4. Track overall metrics while you're doing all this to see what effects your business' bottom line the best
   
5. Push yourself through the experimentation loop as quickly as possible. That will be key to learning more quickly than your competitors. And who doesn't like having an edge that your competitors don't?
   I highly suggest reading The Learning Startup ( http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898) by Eric Ries if you haven't yet. It gives amazing insight on how exactly to measure the effectiveness of basically any business action or venture (as long as you've got the right ideas on how to measure it!)

First, congratulations!

It's different work and while it's still technical it's now about people but it can be learned. Find a mentor who is not your boss. Seriously. It's good to have one or more advocates in the organization because there are limits to what "push" vs "pull" can achieve but it's their advice that you need to reduce your mistakes and effectively review them afterward.

I'll add to the book recommendations already here (The Phoenix Project, Team of Teams, Leaders Eat Last) and suggest:

• Peopleware by DeMarco, et. al.
  
• Drive, by Pink
  
• Influence, by Cialdini
  
• Seeing the Big Picture, by Cope
  
• Getting to Yes, by Fisher
  
• Behind Closed Doors, by Rothman & Derby (efficiently summarizes a dozen other books).
  
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Horowitz. (your boss probably read this, get insight into their thinking)
  
  Good luck!

I can't give any advice for SEA. I don't know how much you've looked into it already, but some assorted resources people seem to like:

Max Dama - On Automated Trading

Jane Street - Probability and Markets

Cliff Asness - A Brief and Biased Survey of Quantitative Investing

Heard On the Street

A practical Guid to Quant Finacne interviews

A summary of quantative trading

[Mark Joshi - On Becoming a quant] (http://www.markjoshi.com/downloads/advice.pdf)

How's your programming and statistics? Those are probably the two things you can improve the most on your own to give you the best chance with interviews.

Technical skill has nothing to do with the success of a startup ^(slight ^exaggeration ^but ^still ^mostly ^true.) 99% of startups aren't going to be the unicorn viral apps you hear about (think Snapchat, Instagram) where it grew organically without funding because the app was something magical. Also, seed funding is shockingly "easy" to get, but you need to put effort into pitches, a lot of them, which requires a lot of legwork. I'm sure your friend had to do pitch after pitch after pitch to win a venture contest.

In order for a product to be successful you need someone with a lot of marketing savvy to make it grow natively, and/or someone with a lot of business savvy to be able to pitch to investors (in order to hire someone with marketing savvy). The technology behind it is actually kind of meaningless (as much as I wish that were false -- I say this as a techy who's been in the industry for 7 years). Read Lean Startup, half of the successful startups the author mentions had no technology behind their product before they were validated and funded, including the ones that were technology based!

>I've been working on multiple applications, hoping to get something to fly and take off.

Have you released any of these, or do you find yourself floating from one idea to the other? If the latter, I'd suggest picking one and running all the way with it. This means marketing, growth hacking, physical pitches to individuals or companies, posting it to forums, getting your mom to download your app, whatever! I would say that if you're putting above 75%, hell maybe even 50%, of your effort into building it in place of some of these other things before calling it quits, it's probably not going to work. Worst case scenario, it still fails, but at least you can learn how to do it differently the next time.

That said, I still would focus on graduating at least, but getting a tech job doesn't mean the game is dead yet. I spent the first 7 years of my career at large tech companies saving a ton of money so that I could quit and work on my own ideas for a while without worrying about money. And I learned a lot about real world tech before actually diving into it, so I'm much more efficient than when I had just graduated. Not the path for everyone, but it worked for me.

Glad you like it. I have one more comment that I feel I need to do.

If you'll end up reconsidering this idea try something else but try something.

There is nothing more valuable than one's own experience. And you never really fail if you learn and evolve from each experience.

The best recommendation that I feel I can give you is to try things and learn as fast as you can. And as we are on that subject check The Lean Startup:.

https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/

Cheers!

I give this book to anyone who is starting a business or has an idea - [The Lean Startup] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous/dp/0307887898)
The book is a must read! It will teach you how to test an idea before you invest a lot of time and money only to learn the idea does not work or there isn't a lot of demand for it.

One idea is to try a Google Adwords campaign for a new idea before it fully exists. Send people to a very simple one-page site where you explain the product. Give them a way to sign up for updates. If no one clicks on your ad then there is either a demand or a targeting problem. If people do click on your ad but don’t sign up for updates then they might not understand what you are going for. This gives you a chance to refine your message too.

The idea is that for less than $100 dollars you can conduct a market test that could save you thousands of dollars and months of your life.

Keep going too! I tried a bunch of stuff before things started to work. Reach out to me if you have any questions. Good luck!

> If its making about 7% year on year, I can see how that could compound over time.

I know we link some examples like this on the compounding returns page of the wiki, but just beware that the sequence-of-returns uncertainty means investment returns are never so predictable.

Risk and returns are inherently linked - you cannot generate returns with this money without exposing it to, at least, market fluctuations. You have to be ok with that.

I found Tim Hale's Smarter Investing remarkably helpful in coming to terms with this, and then The Intelligent Investor quite reassuring.

I'd recommend reading The Effective Manager or maybe start with their podcasts to see if you like the advise. Manger Tools While it wasn't mind blowing for me, it was at least a starting point when I was starting from zero. In the book they do get into giving feedback that will produce results and it's been very helpful for me. Concentrate on positive feedback and use it to lead into things you would like to see changed/improved. Don't just hit them with negative feedback all the time. Avoid the shit sandwich though; positive feedback-negative feedback-positive feedback, people catch on to this quick.

One-on-one meetings with your direct reports are crucial. These meetings are not about you, they are about your direct. They allow you to establish a rapport with your direct.

Good how-to books on management are hard to come by. Sometimes you just need to listen/read other content and pull some useful tidbits from it. I just finished The Hard Thing About Hard Things and was able to pull some useful things out of it.

Last but not least, be a human being.

I don’t know how I knew. Maybe you have a youthful and optimistic writing voice.

I’m 37, and I actually manage money for a living as an RIA (registered investment advisor). If you’re unsure about a career for yourself, I’d highly recommend it. Someone only 20 years old with your expertise would have no trouble getting into the business and be very successful.

Using Bitcoin or any hard currency as opposed to fiat adds immeasurable value to society. Read “The Bitcoin Standard” by Saifedean Ammous and your perspective will be expanded

https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Standard-Decentralized-Alternative-Central/dp/1119473861 and buy

And get a copy of the reference tome: Options as a Strategic Investment

https://www.amazon.com/Options-as-Strategic-Investment-Fifth/dp/0735204659

And your investment game will be better than most advisors by the time you’re 22. That’s the best advice I can give👊

If you're just looking to learn instead of fulfilling a degree requirement then it is a probably more useful to pickup a book and do it yourself.

Some useful subs:

• /r/personalfinancecanada
  
• /r/personalfinance
  
• /r/investing
  
  Some useful books:
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Common-Sense-Mutual-Funds-Anniversary/dp/0470138130
  
• http://www.amazon.com/All-About-Asset-Allocation-Second/dp/0071700781
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393340740
  
• http://www.amazon.com/The-Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising/dp/1589795474
  
  The takeaway is that when it comes to investing there is no secret that will make you rich overnight. Picking random stocks hoping they suddenly shoot up is no different than gambling. Even the most well paid people in finance with all of their years of schooling cannot consistently beat the market.
  
  Investing is a long term commitment.

Since you're under age, see if you can get a custodial Roth IRA opened with your parent(s)' help. I'd strongly encourage investing in a low cost, diversified index fund.

​

If you don't know what an index fund is:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/indexfund.asp

​

A good book - might take some time to get through - that explains index investing:

https://www.amazon.com/Common-Sense-Mutual-Funds-Anniversary/dp/0470138130

​

Also, well done for making investing a priority at your age. Future you is grateful!

Oh lmao my b

I’ve heard McMillan on Options is a good read, though I haven’t read it myself.

A good book on psychology and market behavior is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Options as a Strategic Investment is personally what I read and it’s very easy to understand and has plenty of examples.

https://www.amazon.com/McMillan-Options-Lawrence-G/dp/0471678759

https://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Stock-Operator-Edwin-Lefèvre/dp/0471770884/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=reminiscence+of+a+stock+operator&qid=1565785781&s=gateway&sprefix=reminiscen&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Options-as-Strategic-Investment-Fifth/dp/0735204659/ref=pd_aw_sbs_14_1/132-8096628-1903040?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0735204659&pd_rd_r=311ef362-2080-434e-899b-ea36ca08058a&pd_rd_w=6v6iP&pd_rd_wg=HtwRb&pf_rd_p=3861f3e6-3054-41ac-9570-6a1994716f7e&pf_rd_r=34KSEETK9NV6305R430Q&psc=1&refRID=34KSEETK9NV6305R430Q

• A John Bogle Indexing Book or any book that covers indexing and why its more prudent than active management. I know this isn't what you asked, but the rest of the points on my list will fall apart without a solid foundation.
  
  
• Index Fund Advisors website For an introduction to both indexing and academic investment factors. An absolute ton of videos and articles, and even a Risk Capacity survey (if you fill out the survey, they will email you about wealth management, but there is a ton of free information on the site).
  
  
• Paul Merriman's website for factor based investment strategies and portfolios. He also has a weekly podcast.
  
  
• Larry Swedroe's website and his books for more factor-based investment advice. My favorite book is this one
  
  
• Vanguard video webcasts for coverage on a myriad of investing, economic, and financial planning topics, with CFAs, CFPs, and other professionals.

Do all accountants have as great a personality as yourself?

I'm asking for like 3 mini paragraphs that explains what forms of accounting are used for those career paths. Not a lecture on how I have to "work harder". What's the point of having r/accounting if people from other fields can't ask simple questions?

These are the list of books that just arrived from amazon.com. I should have them read in 2-3 weeks:

http://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Dummies-John-Tracy-CPA/dp/1118482220/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369466046&sr=1-1&keywords=Accounting+for+dummies

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Financial-Reports-For-Dummies/dp/0470376287/ref=pd_sim_b_10

http://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Equity-Credit-Analysts-Morris/dp/0071429697/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369465988&sr=8-1&keywords=Accounting+for+m%26a

http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Statements-Step---Step-Understanding/dp/1601630239/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369466133&sr=1-2&keywords=reading+financial+statements

Are there any canonical texts that I'm missing? Mind you, I have a scarce amount of free time due to upcoming internship and my reading list for corporate finance/valuation. So like don't be a dick and tell me I have to read a 1500 pg encyclopedia.

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Right now the business is going alright. It's been a side hussle and brings in around 3-5k a month, but only leaves me a paycheck of around 750-1,250/month.

Honestly the only thing holding us back is production size and logistics. Thing is I need to buy a bigger local and get it certified, which costs more mullah that I could possibly save in the short term. . .

Here is the book in Amazon for future reference

I would read "a random walk down wall street" for a good understanding of basic theories behind investing (fundamental analysis vs technical, risk and portfolio management etc...).

Then diving into to the different schools of analysis, for fundamental analysis, I super highly recommend reading: McKinseys Book on Valuation ( http://www.amazon.com/Valuation-Measuring-Managing-Companies-Edition/dp/0470424656), you might need a quick primer on accounting and corporate accounting before jumping into that book though. Warren Buffet's Essays and books and the classic "The intelligent investor" are also good resources for insights.

For portfolio management, I would study basic modern portfolio theories
( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory), and read books on portfolio management such as http://www.amazon.com/Pioneering-Portfolio-Management-Unconventional-Institutional/dp/0684864436.

But then to go even further, it will be more robust to read more about risk management and the shortfalls of such portfolio management models highlighted in the recent market crashes. "The Black Swan", "Fooled by Randomness", "Irrational Exuberance" are good books to read to more qualitatively understand risk and learn to protect yourself from it.

As somebody who recently did exactly what you are aspiring to do, there are a few resources I would recommend.

• Macabacus - learn everything on this site. Download the models, use them, learn how they work.
  
• Breaking Into Wallstreet - same with the above.
  
  Learn everything you can about the three financial statements, how they flow into each other, and how to forecast each major line item. Any solid investment banking book will help with a lot of this, I recommend this one.
  
  VBA is nice, but not necessary. I'd much more recommend knowing how to answer:"If I have 100 million in EBITDA and I subtract 10 million from Depreciation and Amortization, how does that impact Net Income, what changes in your balance sheet, and how does that flow through to the cash flow statement?"
  
  But even more importantly in banking is your personality and attitude. You're being interviewed mostly to see if your coworkers can tolerate you for 60+ hours a week, as they're more likely to spend more time with you at work than they are at home with their families.

Many of these answers give you advice on changing various elements of your website, etc.

IMO it boils down to one thing first: customer research. If you do not know your customer BEFORE you attempt to make sales, all of your work, time, money will be wasted.

The 2 sales in one day that you mentioned, find out as much as you can about these customers. What was their referral channel? Where are they most active socially? At what price point did they purchase?

Ultimately, you need to minimize the money you're throwing at "driving traffic". Do some customer research, then double-down on the channel that has the most potential (based on data) to drive purchases like the 2 you received in one day.

I would encourage you to read [Running Lean] (http://www.amazon.com/Running-Lean-Iterate-Works-Series/dp/1449305172) and pay attention to the customer development section. Though it's written with a different product in mind, the same development concepts 100% apply to your problem.

It's hard work, but it can be done in a short period of time if you dedicate yourself to it & it will absolutely be worth the effort!

Good luck.

there are 3-4 books that I keep at least 2 copies on-hand of, because they are informative and I like giving them to people with no expectation of giving them back.

Ok this sounds like I am talking about religious texts - they aren't. They are:

- Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies

- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

- The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing

- The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits)

​

The first two are must-reads for engineers working in any kind of system, be it computers, electronics, mechanical, or people systems (project management, etc)

​

The last 2 I tend to recommend to people who think that reasonable investment awareness and decisions requires a lot of specialized knowledge and attention

Great decision.

Leverage off the shelf products as much as possible. Rough it out, then refine it through iteration. Don't be afraid to hack other commercial products if it saves on development time, and is able to demonstrate functionality.

Shapeways is really good for things like enclosures and prototype parts. It's expensive if you need to print large items, but they print in a variety of materials, and it will result in a professional looking prototype. If ergonomics or mechanical parts are important to the design, buying your own 3D printer might be a worthwhile investment.

While you're working on the prototype, start considering what business strategy you're going to use. I found books like The lean startup helped, and it might change the way you approach the prototyping phase.

Hey, you may not have the capital to do serious investing, but don't say you're too young! It's awesome that you are learning about this stuff at a young age, and it will serve you well when you do have the money to invest.

This isn't the easiest book to read (it's over 1,000 pages), but Options as a Strategic Investment by Lawrence McMillan is considered the bible of options trading, and it will give you a deep understanding of all the basics. You'll still need something else to show you how to put it all together when you're ready to begin trading, but reading this book will build a solid foundation.

The programming languages really depend a lot. If you're looking to work in low-latency, more than likely, you'll want to have pretty much expert knowledge in C++. Many other firms use Java, Python, or Matlab to develop their strategies.

What I've found is knowing either Python or R is really useful as well for those really quick calculations/ideas.

As for math, knowing linear algebra and probability (extends to stochastic calculus) is a must in any case at all. Having a reasonable knowledge in Calculus is also really helpful. Most of the intense math lie in the derivative markets. If you're working with pure equities, you can usually get away with a lesser knowledge of math in favor of better technical skills (i.e. market microstructure).

There's a lot you can read, but to start off, I would say Dan Stephanica's financial engineering book is a must if you're going into derivatives:
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Financial-Engineering-Advanced-Background

If you're looking into DMA, I highly recommend Algorithmic Trading and DMA:
http://www.amazon.com/Algorithmic-Trading-DMA-introduction-strategies/dp/0956399207

What you'll notice going into the field is that you can't be just an expert in one thing: you need to be well-rounded and an expert in several topics.

Surely if thats the going rate for CEO's and Whitbread wants to maximise their profits then why not pay him 6.4m?

Sure they may work as hard as a person who gets paid 100x less than them, but since when did hard work equal pay. The reason they get paid so much is due to their wealth of experience coupled with great leadership skills. Go read 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things' and you will quickly realise how hard it is to be a CEO of a large company.

As others have said in this thread, wage is linked with the ease of replacement, CEO's are not easy to replace.

Edit: Link to book http://www.amazon.com/The-Hard-Thing-About-Things/dp/0062273205

> He says it's not really enough money to quit working permanently

That rather depends on a lot of other factors.

> I may not be able to get back to work above being a walmart greeter if I leave now.

Hyperbole, but not by much. The plain truth is that any time off will have major impacts on your career path. A few months is okay; a few years and your experience will no longer be relevant, your references will be useless, your contacts will have moved on. You'll be starting over from scratch, more or less.

> He said the money really belongs to our family, not just to me,

Depends where you live, but legally that's almost certainly incorrect. Morally, it's a bit trickier, but I'm not sure it matters hugely, because....

> we should make a decision about how to spend it as a unit.

You should make all major decisions (and deciding how to spend nearly a million dollars is certainly major) as a unit; otherwise you're not really married in any meaningful sense.

> My kids are the most important thing in the world to me and I can't think of a better way to use this money than to get more time with them.

How about saving for retirement? How about using it to buy a house in a nicer school district? How about a cushion to pay for unexpected medical bills? How about putting it in a college fund? (Your assertion that you and your husband paid your own way though and your kids can too is charming, but sort of ignores the reality of how college tuition has changed over the past 10-15 years.) How about spending it on a vacation with your husband?

That being said, I see in your comments you reckon your take home after tax and daycare is $8,400/year. That's absurdly low. You might want to look at the book The Two Income Trap, by Elizabeth Warren. If you are disciplined and frugal, it's very possible that you could save money in the short term, by staying at home, with or without the inheritance; don't forget the added costs for transport, professional clothes, cleaning, prepared meals, etc. that also come along with working outside the home.

Then again, remember that spending all day every day with kids will quite possibly drive you mad, and that once they're off living their own lives your career will be completely derailed. Throwing away a career to provide daycare to your kids may seem very sensible while they're in daycare. What will you do when they're in high school, or college, or have left home entirely? In 20 years you'll probably be making a fair bit more money, but your daycare costs will be 0. Taking off now impacts the money you'll make for the rest of your life.

Anyhow, don't think of this as "I can invest the money, live off the interest, and stop working for 'free'". If you quite working, it'll cost the $8,400/year you're giving up in salary; if you increase your consumption any more due to the inheritance, that's an additional cost. (If that doesn't make sense, look up the concept of "opportunity cost" and "sunk costs". If you go from making $8,400/year to spending $8,400/year of your inheritence, the total cost is not $0/year, not is it $8,400/year, it's $16,800 a year.)

Still, at the end of the day, you don't have a money problem, you have a communication problem. The fact that you got crosswise with your husband over how to spend this suggests to me that you need to really step back and work on your relationship. Draw up sample budgets with different options, and talk to him about what he thinks you guys should do, and what his concerns are. If you approach this as "it's my money, and I can do with it what I want", then your marriage is fucked.

Forget Shkreli. The usual sources (besides in-house proprietary models) are:

(1) Macabacus. (see http://macabacus.com/learn).

(2) Rosenbaum and Pearl, Investment Banking - book and excel models

A bit more academic, but more in-depth:

(3) Penman's Financial Statement Analysis and Security Valuation (excellent book and he has a running example that guides you to create your own valuation spreadsheet)

(4) Dan Gode and Jim Ohlson models These guys are genuine experts from the academic side.

(5) Damodaran, as others have mentioned.

(6) McKinsey, Valuation. Some people like this one.

(7) Fernandez, Company Valuation Methods and Common Errors. Something of an acquired taste, but might be worth the read since he provides a list of the most common valuation errors. Gives analysts an awareness of how they can f**k up which can be useful.

For social media you should check out different company blogs. Those are really helpful. I like the Buffer and Hootsuite blogs a lot.

But books are way better than online websites

For marketing you should read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg

Ryan Holiday's Growth Hacker Marketing and Trust Me, I'm Lying are insanely informative and fun to read.

wow so much circlejerk over quant ITT. remember, OP is already getting the interviews

OP there are very good guides out there, analogous to the "elements of programming interviews" for DS&A interviews

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Quantitative-Finance-Interviews/dp/1438236662 will get you very far. learn more about the topics covered as you go, rather than look at a vast sea of random math stuff and get stressed out. also theres a good chance some of these questions will be asked verbatim

ive heard good things about the Joshi book too. also first chapter of Heard on the Streets. the later chapters delve into really specific finance stuff, so it depends on what role you're going for if you need to know that stuff (vs a general math test, where they will train you on finance later)

Actions speak louder than words.

One of the rules of games and markets is that what people say they want and what they actually choose to do are very different.

Whenever possible, try to design experiments that let you observe player behavior directly instead of asking them what they thought. There's a lot of options available to you if you start collecting good metrics. Things like:

• Are some events/actions correlated with players opening the menu and quitting the game?
  
• Are some events/actions correlated with the game losing window focus (probably a confused player googling something)?
  
• When you introduce a new mechanic, how does it impact the duration of play sessions?
  
  And then you can get real fancy if your alpha testers are willing to cooperate. Things like recording their gameplay footage and a webcam of their face at the same time, then running it through sentiment analysis to find moments that made them happy/frustrated/confused.
  
  That said, experimental design is hard and you might not have the time/money to run high-quality experiments. If you must rely on survey data, be sure to read up on survey design so that you can correct for the various psychological effects at play when humans take surveys.
  
  Edit: a lot of the above philosophy comes from Eric Ries' The Lean Startup. I highly recommend that book.

There is an ever-growing mountain of evidence that investing in passive, low-cost index funds is far superior to using actively managed funds or choosing stocks on your own.

Spend a few bucks and a few hours on a book like this and it could literally save you a million dollars over your lifetime.

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/1119404509/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521049131&sr=8-1&keywords=index+investing&dpID=51D4omHI-gL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

I find the original Steve Blank and Eric Reis books tough to recommend these days as they tend to ramble and have since spawned much more approachable work since being published. The two below are part of Blank and Reis's official "Lean" series and much better (and easier to implement) than the original works.

https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Customer-Development-Building-Customers/dp/1492023744/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=3HD1KWE1NUKRB

https://www.amazon.com/Running-Lean-Iterate-Plan-Works/dp/1449305172/ref=sr_1_2?crid=30ZKXBRBIBAZO

The best bet is to look into/dump money into a mutual fund--e.g. Vanguard, which holds the most shares of AMD at the moment. John Bogle (who founded Vanguard and pioneered the idea of mutual funds), wrote a nice little book about how to invest that I highly recommend.

> Can you recommend any books on coding quant strategies?

http://www.quantstart.com/articles/quantitative-finance-reading-list

Favorites I've read so far:

• Inside the Black Box (if you're totally new to the concept)
  
  
• Quantitative Trading (the second book, Algorithmic trading goes deeper into implementing strategies, also good)
  
  
• Trading Systems (a GREAT book on implementation and the process of testing a strategy)
  
  
• Active Portfolio Management (Kind of a classic, more theory than implementation, requires some fundamental understanding of MPT, CAPM and related concepts. Good chapter on multi-factor risk models)
  
  Also
  
  
• Algorithmic Trading and DMA (Still on my bookshelf, haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but it's supposed to be the book on market microstructure, so if you'er interested in HFT or level-2 algos, this is a good starting point)
  
  Edit: Be prepared to spend about 3 months just randomly browsing Investopedia to crack through all the jargon :)
  
  Also, these guys have some pretty rockin' videos on on everything finance, from "WTF is an ETF?" to "WTF is a European Call Option?" to "How do I manage my pension?", especially useful if you're in the UK. The videos helped me a lot when I was getting started at my current job.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/user/MoneyWeekVideos/videos

Followed!

I am 1 year into my journey and am revenue positive. It is the 3rd time I have done this journey. I firmly believe a solid programmer does not need a "business" co-founder. The marketing skills are straightforward to learn and practice.

Check out the book Traction -- it is a great primer on how to build your business.

Well done--- I look forward to updates!

Here are a few I liked.

On the easy side but very thorough, good for starting:

Options as a strategic investment, Lawrence McMillan
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735204659/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_i_0IfLDbZYQ3Z67

Focusing on market making:

Option market making, Allen Baird
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471578320/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_i_WPfLDbTZ0C15B

Harder but good stuff:

Volatility Trading, Euan Sinclair
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118347137/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_i_zKfLDbQ0KSEPG

> Alright thanks alot man. How much does the average start up cost? Millions? Billions?

It's not a cost, it's an investment!

There's no average of course in the Life Sciences the barrier of entry is high, since... knowledge is expensive, so are labs etc... DO NOT LET ANYTHING DISCOURAGE YOU not even me, it's not my intent.

A couple of good reads for you:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898
  
  BONUS: https://steveblank.com/2011/03/08/a-new-way-to-teach-entrepreneurship-the-lean-launchpad-at-stanford-class-1/

What you are asking for is a complete lecture on how bitcoin works essentially . This is a good place to start-

https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#block-versions

or this

https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042

segwit details are found here -
https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_wallet_dev/

>I assume you need the reverted tx to be byte for byte the same as the old SegWit tx in order for the Signature to be valid,

The signatures can all be recreated and made valid with them selves in the new history and don't need to match the old history that just so happens to have the "same txs." with the properties that "matter" like tx amount , ect...

Here is a good read about the startup environment and the challenges they face. Author is a former exec. Best of luck in the interview!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004J4XGN6/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1569879228&sr=8-3

I am just now reading The Lean Startup. Reading your blog post about the technical stack powering Ginger, I wonder if you aren't making some of the same mistakes the author made when he first got into startups (at least, what the author now feels are mistakes). Namely, putting a lot of quality effort into an entire implementation (plus features) prior to truly gaging customer interest (making sure the product meets a specific need).

If you haven't read the book, do so! Serious respect on all the effort you have clearly put into this so far, best of luck.

• The Lean Startup
  
• Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
  
• Lean Analytics
  
• The Lean Entrepreneur: How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets
  
  If you want to get started sooner:
  
  
• The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company
  
• Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works

Here is the post for archival purposes:

Author: _blue_Tshirt

Content:

>I'd like to learn more about the technical side of how the blockchain works, how it is implemented and what standard design choices / decisions were made and why.

>2 books look interesting:

> Mastering Bitcoin by A. Antonopoulos

> Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by A. Narayanan et. al

>Both have good reviews. Has anyone read both? How do they compare?

>I've got a few years programming under my belt, although don't have a background in cryptography.

>Thanks :)

If you like to read I have read a few books that have quickly made me realize that most people do not need a financial adviser.

Here are my top 3:

A simple path to wealth: https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Path-Wealth-financial-independence/dp/1533667926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511905350&sr=8-1&keywords=the+simple+path+to+wealth

I will teach you to be Rich: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511905370&sr=1-1&keywords=I+will+teach+you+to+be+rich

The little book to common sense investing: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/1119404509/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511905385&sr=1-1&keywords=the+little+book+to+common+sense+investing

First you buy:

Options Made Simple: A Beginner's Guide to Trading Options for Success

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0730376370/

Options as a Strategic Investment 5th Edition

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0735204659/

Then you join /r/options. Then you paper trade. Then you trade options.

If you're asking here if you're going to profit or not on a trade, do not start trading yet.

EDIT: I also found these options threads to be helpful:

https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/5pekf6/interested_in_becoming_an_options_trader/

https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/3zwx40/500_to_1000_bucks_initial_deposit_what_next/cypp8td/

Resources:

• Paul Graham essays: http://paulgraham.com/articles.html
  
• Lean Startup: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous/dp/0307887898
  
• Tim Ferriss's Blog has great tips: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/
  
• Andrew Chen's blog: http://andrewchen.co/
  
• In a previous article, I put together 49 blogs I read that have helped understanding various aspects of internet marketing: http://www.crowdcrux.com/blogs-to-read-before-starting-a-kickstarter-or-indiegogo-campaign/
  
  For me, the best way to learn was to read biographies and stories of successful entrepreneurs. It gives you an idea of how big companies actually start and the founder's approach.
  
  
  Examples: Losing your virginity (richard branson), Steve Jobs' Biography, Andrew Carnegie's Biography, Rockefeller's Biography, Bill gates, etc.
  
  I would also highly recommend start watching the pandomonthly interviews on youtube. Here's Airbnb's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yPfxcqEXhE
  
  

My recommendation is to start by reading The Lean Startup. Then try to validate the idea with preorders. Getting people to pay you before you start developing it is the safest way to validate your idea. The next best thing is to build a list of emails.

There is a book investing for dummies. Actually a series of dummies books for investors that are reasonably good. If you read them, you would probably know enough to stay away from FB. A book I would recommend to anyone looking to invest is Warren Buffet / Benjamin Graham's book The Intelligent Investor, and if you read that, you would definitely stay away from FB.

That's not to say there is not money to be made from FB, just that it's not investing - it's gambling.

Learn as much as you can about FIX.

There are some books that might be worth checking out, as well.

All that being said, focus on being a good programmer first and foremost. If you can show that you have researched stuff like FIX, exchange connectivity etc, that shows passion, and that's what gets you the job.

Definitely not.

Have you heard of a minimum viable product (MVP)? The idea is that you be as brutal as you can to put off every feature that isn't absolutely 100% necessary. You don't work on any non-necessary feature until after launch. This achieves two things:

1. You start collecting users as soon as possible.
   
2. You will find that the features you thought were important are different from what the users want.
   
   If you haven't read The Lean Startup, I highly recommend it. The person who wrote it created the chat program IMVU. He spent months coding the ability to log on from other chat programs because he thought users would demand it. It turned out that users were perfectly happy to log on to a new chat program and he wasted months coding an unnecessary feature.