The Minimalist Entrepreneur
by Sahil Lavingia · first published 2021
78% recommend22% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A practical guide to building a small business by finding customers and validating ideas before scaling. Readers find it useful for founders and anyone wanting a grounded, low-overhead approach to entrepreneurship.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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- The Network State, by Balaji S. Srinivasan - The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 - The Minimalist Entrepreneur, by Sahil Lavingia - Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?” ↗…breaking point, at some point invoking teams in facebook, etc. The term basically gets redefined as "individuals, teams or orgs that the author likes". A more descriptive title would be something like "the minimalist entrepreneur", which is actually a title of another book on the same theme by Sahil Lavingia of Gumroad. The book is full of interesting stories and presents a counterpoint to the "default" VC-backed growth-at-all-cost…
on “Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business” ↗…- only to realize later we either didn't understand the product, or our stakeholder didn't and now wants changes once they've seen what it does. (Deeper dives here: "Escaping the Build Trap"[1], "The Minimalist Entrepreneur"[2] - Understanding negotiation is extremely helpful as you are often operating under constraints, and need to get those across to your stakeholders such that you can both move forward together. Negotiation…
on “Getting things “done” in large tech companies” ↗…business work each week in a subscription newsletter using GitHub Sponsors (another side project, if you like) Books I could recommend: Monetizing innovation, Obviously Awesome, 1-Page Marketing Plan & Minimalist Entrepreneur. I'm not affiliated with any of these titles, but consider them core reading for indie devs and for side gigs.
on “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell” ↗My favorite entrepreneur read this past year was Minimalist Entrepreneur from Sahil.
on “Books recommended by profitable founders” ↗And the failures as well to avoid survivorship bias. Sahil wrote a great book called "The Minimalist Entrepreneur" that goes into a lot of depth about finding customers. Also, Stripe Press has a book called Get Together that covers how to create community as well. I would recommend both books.
on “Ask HN: I spent months building an app and now I don't know how to get users” ↗…Clayton Christensen stuff * Spin Selling * Challenger Sale * Guerrilla marketing (for the mental muscle) * Jeffrey Gitomer (basic but useful) * Lean Startup (for positioning) * Charisma Myth * Minimalist Entrepreneur (bits and pieces) * The presentation secrets of steve jobs (just a good book on presentations, framed around Steve Jobs to sell more) For what its worth this question comes up fairly often. It seems…
on “Ask HN: Resources to get better at outbound sales?” ↗It’s very much what Sahil Lavingia recommends doing in The Minimalist Entrepreneur
on “Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business” ↗A few weeks ago, Sahil posted a tweet demonstrating a webapp based on Chat-GPT3 trained on his book, The Minimalist Entrepreneur. He has now open sourced the code for the same.
on “Sahil has open sourced askmybook” ↗