Once you're lucky, twice you're good

What Hacker News says

1. hoagJan 2011
   The books I most highly recommend that I read recently include, in no particular order:

   - Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, by Sarah Lacey.

   - Founders at Work, by YC's own Jessica Livingston

   - The Facebook Effect, by David Kirkpatrick

   I'll list some others as I think of them, but those are my three most favorite recent reads.

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2. bcroeschAug 2010
   These won't necessarily teach you how to do it, but reading them definitely helped motivate me when things got slow. Hearing the experiences and successes of other startups/founders always gets me excited to get to work.

   Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good - Sarah Lacy

   Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston

   The Facebook Effect - David Kirkpatrick

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3. rythieAug 2009
   You could read Sarah Lacy's "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good" (which was called "The Stories of Facebook, Youtube and Myspace" when I bought it in the U.K.)

   It's a light read (suitable for a holiday) and it will inspire you to build your startup when you get back.

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4. snarfDec 2016
   Affirm was initially supposed to be an alternative credit rating system based on social signals, and I believe credit ratings are highly regulated, so they pivoted to money lending, which is not as nice of a business. Levchin seems pretty desperate to be a successful serial entrepreneur and compares himself to other ex-Paypal people who have gone on to do big things[1]. This is despite having made a ton of money via investing in Yelp. He did manage to exit Slide to Google, but I don't know how successful of an acquisition that is considered within Google. There was that Sarah Lacy book called "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good" in which he was pretty prominently profiled, so successful serial entrepreneurship must be a prestige thing for him. I agree with you that retail money lending seems a bit desperate and unseemly, and definitely not on the same level as SpaceX or LinkedIn. It feels a bit like Square getting into payday loans to gin up revenue.

   [1] https://pando.com/2013/08/08/with-another-6m-glow-is-max-lev...

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5. paulrademacherAug 2013
   > Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: Sarah Lacy |Link | The lessons are hidden. Between the lines, it’ it’s THE example of how the Valley press thinks. Read it as an observer, don’t take it at face value, but rather try and learn what Sarah is about.

   This is a great recommendation not just for entrepreneurs, but for anyone wanting to learn what Sarah is about.

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6. gmu3May 2013
   In Once You're Lucky. Twice You're Good by Sarah Lacy, she humorously recounts Max Levchin learning English from TV:

   He’d worked so hard to be perfect—what could he possibly have done wrong? It wasn’t a feeling he was used to.

   “Where did you learn English?” the teacher asked.

   Max responded: “Watchu talkin’ ‘bout, Mr. Harris?”

   Mr. Harris kindly suggested he switch from Different Strokes reruns to the nightly news. Embarrassed but undeterred, Max did, and his near-flawless English steadily improved.

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