December 19, 2011 at 23:16How a startup can quickly find out
After a recent article on startup activities in Russia, we decided not to stop there and make this world even better. To do this, we decided to dig a little deeper and think about why all these events are being held? Of course, in order to raise the overall level of projects. And what is the most important thing in the project? Well of course the team! And how can you raise the team level? Naturally learn!
Therefore, in the next post we decided to make a small guide on what and where a startup should learn. The article is divided into four parts, according to the methods of information consumption. At first, we talk a little about books and blogs, it is the most voluminous, because it talks about specific books. Then a little information about the educational video and podcasts, and at the end a couple of words about trainings and educational courses. Sections are entitled:
Read, Watch, Listen and Walk.
The first, and perhaps the most important for any person. Podcasts and videos can provide a lot of information, but for some reason still if a person wants to share something with others, most often he writes a book or starts a blog.
Let's start with the banality, which no longer only read the lazy. Two books that anyone with anything to do with Internet entrepreneurship should read: Rework from the founders of 37signals and Art of the Startfrom Guy Kawasaki (“Startup” in Russian translation). A lot of everything has already been written about them, separate chapters, synopses and mindmaps of all colors and types walk on the network. So there is nothing to say about them other than "read." 37signals has another book on how to get a job done - “Getting Real”. It is less publicized than Rework, which does not make it less useful. A full Russian translation of the book has long been on the net , although knowledgeable people advise reading in the original.
Another good source that describes the general concept of creating a successful business is the “ Rules for Profitable Startups, ” by Vern Harnish. It’s also a “gallop across Europe”, but such books often turn out to be the most useful, because they build fragmentary knowledge into the system.
Further down the books: "Facts and Misconceptions in Professional Programming. ”- Robert Glass Since it is impossible to make an Internet project without communicating with programmers, this book is also worth reading. It lists and refutes the most common managerial misconceptions regarding programmers. Even if you are a developer yourself, with a high probability you will learn a lot about yourself.
For someone who wants to learn how to write business plans, Paul Barrow’s book “A business plan that works" The book is written very simply and informatively, there are many examples from real business plans that the author had to work with. Its added value is that Barrow is an investor, which means he is talking about those business plans that will be interesting for investors to read. And everyone needs the money, right?
Another must-read book is the study of the American BlackBox business accelerator - “ StartupGenome". According to the authors themselves, they wanted to reveal the genetic code of a successful startup, no more no less. And it seems they even succeeded! I warn you right away, if the previous books are chewed in detail, then reading StartupGen will have to think carefully. There are generally no ready-made recipes, only statistics and generalizations from it. So it is hard to read. This book will be most useful to workers of various incubators, funds and other infrastructure organizations. Startups also need to read, but you can diagonally, the main thing is to grab key patterns.
And the last advice on choosing books is any book from Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", On those topics that you need, of course. These publishers are very meticulous about the quality of the literature they publish, and as a result, the fact that they are all set to publish is definitely worthy of attention.
Now blogs. Something has already been mentioned in the article about the events, we will try not to repeat ourselves.
Firstly, Freshle.com is not only a blog, but also a knowledge base in the wiki format on startup. It is Internet startups, not business in general. There is almost everything there: lean startup, customer development, MVP and much more. If you are not familiar with at least one of these terms, then running on Freshle - study, study and study again.
Next on the list is our favorite Habrahabr. The main plus - all the most significant and interesting appears here, therefore, carefully following Habr, you will not miss anything. Cons - there is a lot of information, it’s just physically impossible to read everything interesting, so you should concentrate on some most important topic.
Geeker is a good blog writing about new projects. As you know, the best ideas come when you discuss other people's ideas. Who said “and you steal” ?! We all know that ideas do not steal and that an idea is worth nothing without implementation, right? ;)
If you still have free time, then you should pay attention to the blogs of consulting companies. For example, PwC constantly publishes detailed reports and studies on various markets and industries.. So, if you are planning to make a project in the field of, for example, book publishing, then you should study the study of the relevant market. Another example is the Kongru company , which produces excellent online marketing newsletters. You may not become a super-marketer, but you can avoid the most common mistakes. Well, it’s worth subscribing to Twitter or Facebook accounts of various start-up contests and business incubators, often they post links to very interesting educational materials.
I must say right away that I do not like video content, so my opinion may be somewhat biased. The reason for the dislike is that it is clearly inferior in the convenience of consuming audio and printed content, since it occupies both eyes and ears, and it cannot be read diagonally, skipping boring places. However, what I consider to be shortcomings, most psychologists consider merit, so it's up to you.
The largest collection of videos on various topics related to the Internet and entrepreneurship is collected at seopult.tv. Do not ask me why Seopult needs its own television, apparently for some reason. But, we must give them their due, it turned out pretty well with them. Wide coverage of topics, good directing of programs and quite professional guests in their field make their video podcasts worth watching, even repeatedly.
The Univertv educational project looks a little more boring, on which lectures of university teachers on various topics are laid out. Unfortunately, the manner of presenting the material of our teachers leaves much to be desired, but still you can find something interesting if you dig around. For example, there is a video from the performances of Artemy Lebedev .
The next thing you should pay attention to is the video from conferences, startup gatherings and other events about Internet entrepreneurship. You can determine whether to watch a video in the same way as with a regular master class - spend two minutes and google information about the speaker. If his portfolio is respected, then look, if not, do not waste your time.
Well, at the end of the topic of the video, a few words more about the general, than educational. The reports from the TED conference are an excellent substitute for television, where people from all over the world talk about their ideas and projects in the field of art, fundamental science, new technologies or interesting trends in modern society. Who knows, maybe one of these reports will lead you to a new idea of a brilliant startup.
Still trying to introduce time management into your life? Where did you start? Surely with making lists and setting short-term goals. However, the easiest step you can take in the field of rational use of time is to start listening to podcasts on the way somewhere. Either in the car, or in the player or phone. Even if you didn’t audit according to the type of information assimilation, then at least a tenth of the received information will be assimilated, and this is already good.
The first place you should go for business podcasts is the Finam FM website . A huge number of various programs about entrepreneurship from all possible sides: marketing, success stories, industry programs. There is also a special program about what is happening on the Russian Internet - Runet Today”, In which Maxim Spiridonov, together with several experts, discusses the latest industry news. Interesting thoughts, non-standard opinions and forecasts about where the Runet is moving - all of this is in abundance in the transfer. True, the choice of news is sometimes somewhat surprising, but let us leave this to the conscience of the editors of Finam.
Secondly, the “Business” sectionPodfm.ru terminal podcast. It is especially worth paying attention to the program “Runetology” - the oldest weekly program in Runet (more than 120 issues) about the most interesting Runet top managers. Each issue lasts about an hour, but during which the guest manages to talk about the “kitchen” of his business, how he built his career and give some useful tips. Frankly, not every episode is interesting, but boring programs can be easily eliminated by running a look at the text decoding that is done for each podcast.
We have already covered most of the startup activities in a previous article. Therefore, in this we will pay attention to trainings.
Firstly, banal thematic business trainings. For me, at one time it was a great discovery that there are trainings not only in marketing, sales and leadership, but also on such purely practical things as accounting, logistics or law. So if you feel that you do not have enough knowledge in any field, then with a high probability you will be able to find a seminar where they talk about it. It will be somewhat more expensive than buying books, but save time. Search engines and sites like http://www.msktreningi.ru , http://www.treningoff.ru/ will help in the searchetc ... But you should not go to seminars “for the future”, saying “someday it will come in handy”. Knowledge has the property of being forgotten, and paying money for highly specialized training is worth it if you immediately plan to put the acquired knowledge into practice.
But! This does not apply to specialized educational programs for startups like Enterprisers from InCube or Start in Garage from RIS Ventures.
Enterprisers is a three-day English-language educational program program developed by Cambridge-MIT. The real English professors are brought in, who teach you how to make startups for a purely symbolic amount.
Start in Garage is an intensive short educational program for those who have already started their business or are just going to do it. In a concise form, trainers give the minimum of necessary knowledge that is necessary to prevent the most stupid mistakes. RIS Ventures also conducts Win the Market - a series of diverse educational seminars with specializations in various fields, from project management to building an online marketing system or investing in technology projects.
It’s worth going to such programs, which were compiled by people who often deal with startups, at any stage. If you do not get any well-established practical skills, then at least discover new directions for development. Although it’s better to come all the same with the project preparing for launch in the bosom, then the effect will be threefold.
The RMA educational program has a single higher education program and a master's program in training top managers of Internet companies and managers of their own projects.
PS If all of this is already not enough for you and this knowledge is a passed stage, then start learning. It is noticed that when teaching others, knowledge is acquired best!
PPS This article was written by Andrei Zheglov in collaboration with me. The author will be very grateful for the invite to vault.mulan@gmail.com
Therefore, in the next post we decided to make a small guide on what and where a startup should learn. The article is divided into four parts, according to the methods of information consumption. At first, we talk a little about books and blogs, it is the most voluminous, because it talks about specific books. Then a little information about the educational video and podcasts, and at the end a couple of words about trainings and educational courses. Sections are entitled:
Read, Watch, Listen and Walk.
1) Read
The first, and perhaps the most important for any person. Podcasts and videos can provide a lot of information, but for some reason still if a person wants to share something with others, most often he writes a book or starts a blog.
Let's start with the banality, which no longer only read the lazy. Two books that anyone with anything to do with Internet entrepreneurship should read: Rework from the founders of 37signals and Art of the Startfrom Guy Kawasaki (“Startup” in Russian translation). A lot of everything has already been written about them, separate chapters, synopses and mindmaps of all colors and types walk on the network. So there is nothing to say about them other than "read." 37signals has another book on how to get a job done - “Getting Real”. It is less publicized than Rework, which does not make it less useful. A full Russian translation of the book has long been on the net , although knowledgeable people advise reading in the original.
Another good source that describes the general concept of creating a successful business is the “ Rules for Profitable Startups, ” by Vern Harnish. It’s also a “gallop across Europe”, but such books often turn out to be the most useful, because they build fragmentary knowledge into the system.
Further down the books: "Facts and Misconceptions in Professional Programming. ”- Robert Glass Since it is impossible to make an Internet project without communicating with programmers, this book is also worth reading. It lists and refutes the most common managerial misconceptions regarding programmers. Even if you are a developer yourself, with a high probability you will learn a lot about yourself.
For someone who wants to learn how to write business plans, Paul Barrow’s book “A business plan that works" The book is written very simply and informatively, there are many examples from real business plans that the author had to work with. Its added value is that Barrow is an investor, which means he is talking about those business plans that will be interesting for investors to read. And everyone needs the money, right?
Another must-read book is the study of the American BlackBox business accelerator - “ StartupGenome". According to the authors themselves, they wanted to reveal the genetic code of a successful startup, no more no less. And it seems they even succeeded! I warn you right away, if the previous books are chewed in detail, then reading StartupGen will have to think carefully. There are generally no ready-made recipes, only statistics and generalizations from it. So it is hard to read. This book will be most useful to workers of various incubators, funds and other infrastructure organizations. Startups also need to read, but you can diagonally, the main thing is to grab key patterns.
And the last advice on choosing books is any book from Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", On those topics that you need, of course. These publishers are very meticulous about the quality of the literature they publish, and as a result, the fact that they are all set to publish is definitely worthy of attention.
Now blogs. Something has already been mentioned in the article about the events, we will try not to repeat ourselves.
Firstly, Freshle.com is not only a blog, but also a knowledge base in the wiki format on startup. It is Internet startups, not business in general. There is almost everything there: lean startup, customer development, MVP and much more. If you are not familiar with at least one of these terms, then running on Freshle - study, study and study again.
Next on the list is our favorite Habrahabr. The main plus - all the most significant and interesting appears here, therefore, carefully following Habr, you will not miss anything. Cons - there is a lot of information, it’s just physically impossible to read everything interesting, so you should concentrate on some most important topic.
Geeker is a good blog writing about new projects. As you know, the best ideas come when you discuss other people's ideas. Who said “and you steal” ?! We all know that ideas do not steal and that an idea is worth nothing without implementation, right? ;)
If you still have free time, then you should pay attention to the blogs of consulting companies. For example, PwC constantly publishes detailed reports and studies on various markets and industries.. So, if you are planning to make a project in the field of, for example, book publishing, then you should study the study of the relevant market. Another example is the Kongru company , which produces excellent online marketing newsletters. You may not become a super-marketer, but you can avoid the most common mistakes. Well, it’s worth subscribing to Twitter or Facebook accounts of various start-up contests and business incubators, often they post links to very interesting educational materials.
2) Watch
I must say right away that I do not like video content, so my opinion may be somewhat biased. The reason for the dislike is that it is clearly inferior in the convenience of consuming audio and printed content, since it occupies both eyes and ears, and it cannot be read diagonally, skipping boring places. However, what I consider to be shortcomings, most psychologists consider merit, so it's up to you.
The largest collection of videos on various topics related to the Internet and entrepreneurship is collected at seopult.tv. Do not ask me why Seopult needs its own television, apparently for some reason. But, we must give them their due, it turned out pretty well with them. Wide coverage of topics, good directing of programs and quite professional guests in their field make their video podcasts worth watching, even repeatedly.
The Univertv educational project looks a little more boring, on which lectures of university teachers on various topics are laid out. Unfortunately, the manner of presenting the material of our teachers leaves much to be desired, but still you can find something interesting if you dig around. For example, there is a video from the performances of Artemy Lebedev .
The next thing you should pay attention to is the video from conferences, startup gatherings and other events about Internet entrepreneurship. You can determine whether to watch a video in the same way as with a regular master class - spend two minutes and google information about the speaker. If his portfolio is respected, then look, if not, do not waste your time.
Well, at the end of the topic of the video, a few words more about the general, than educational. The reports from the TED conference are an excellent substitute for television, where people from all over the world talk about their ideas and projects in the field of art, fundamental science, new technologies or interesting trends in modern society. Who knows, maybe one of these reports will lead you to a new idea of a brilliant startup.
3) Listen
Still trying to introduce time management into your life? Where did you start? Surely with making lists and setting short-term goals. However, the easiest step you can take in the field of rational use of time is to start listening to podcasts on the way somewhere. Either in the car, or in the player or phone. Even if you didn’t audit according to the type of information assimilation, then at least a tenth of the received information will be assimilated, and this is already good.
The first place you should go for business podcasts is the Finam FM website . A huge number of various programs about entrepreneurship from all possible sides: marketing, success stories, industry programs. There is also a special program about what is happening on the Russian Internet - Runet Today”, In which Maxim Spiridonov, together with several experts, discusses the latest industry news. Interesting thoughts, non-standard opinions and forecasts about where the Runet is moving - all of this is in abundance in the transfer. True, the choice of news is sometimes somewhat surprising, but let us leave this to the conscience of the editors of Finam.
Secondly, the “Business” sectionPodfm.ru terminal podcast. It is especially worth paying attention to the program “Runetology” - the oldest weekly program in Runet (more than 120 issues) about the most interesting Runet top managers. Each issue lasts about an hour, but during which the guest manages to talk about the “kitchen” of his business, how he built his career and give some useful tips. Frankly, not every episode is interesting, but boring programs can be easily eliminated by running a look at the text decoding that is done for each podcast.
4) walk
We have already covered most of the startup activities in a previous article. Therefore, in this we will pay attention to trainings.
Firstly, banal thematic business trainings. For me, at one time it was a great discovery that there are trainings not only in marketing, sales and leadership, but also on such purely practical things as accounting, logistics or law. So if you feel that you do not have enough knowledge in any field, then with a high probability you will be able to find a seminar where they talk about it. It will be somewhat more expensive than buying books, but save time. Search engines and sites like http://www.msktreningi.ru , http://www.treningoff.ru/ will help in the searchetc ... But you should not go to seminars “for the future”, saying “someday it will come in handy”. Knowledge has the property of being forgotten, and paying money for highly specialized training is worth it if you immediately plan to put the acquired knowledge into practice.
But! This does not apply to specialized educational programs for startups like Enterprisers from InCube or Start in Garage from RIS Ventures.
Enterprisers is a three-day English-language educational program program developed by Cambridge-MIT. The real English professors are brought in, who teach you how to make startups for a purely symbolic amount.
Start in Garage is an intensive short educational program for those who have already started their business or are just going to do it. In a concise form, trainers give the minimum of necessary knowledge that is necessary to prevent the most stupid mistakes. RIS Ventures also conducts Win the Market - a series of diverse educational seminars with specializations in various fields, from project management to building an online marketing system or investing in technology projects.
It’s worth going to such programs, which were compiled by people who often deal with startups, at any stage. If you do not get any well-established practical skills, then at least discover new directions for development. Although it’s better to come all the same with the project preparing for launch in the bosom, then the effect will be threefold.
The RMA educational program has a single higher education program and a master's program in training top managers of Internet companies and managers of their own projects.
PS If all of this is already not enough for you and this knowledge is a passed stage, then start learning. It is noticed that when teaching others, knowledge is acquired best!
PPS This article was written by Andrei Zheglov in collaboration with me. The author will be very grateful for the invite to vault.mulan@gmail.com