Name: Business adventures
ISBN: 9781497644892

What Hacker News says

ElFitzMay 2025

There’s one business book I’ve actually enjoyed reading and somehow learned more from years after reading it than while reading it: Business Adventures.

It’s a bit silly, doesn’t pretend to be a guide, provide any wise advice of any sort, and certainly not to have the one grandiose radical new idea that will solve all your problems™.

But perhaps that’s why it works so well.

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imdsmNov 2024

I love looking at books in people's photos. Here's what I found in yours. I hope you don't mind!

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Bad Blood by John Carreyrou - A detailed account of the Theranos scandal.

The Founders by Jimmy Soni - Explores the early days of PayPal and its impact on Silicon Valley.

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Memoir by the founder of Nike.

Measure What Matters by John Doerr - A book about OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and organizational success.

Business Adventures by John Brooks - Classic tales of corporate life, highly recommended by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

Becoming by Michelle Obama - The former First Lady's personal memoir.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch - Inspirational reflections on life and achieving dreams.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - A comprehensive biography of Apple's co-founder.

Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez - A look into the wild side of Silicon Valley.

Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy - A deep dive into the social media giant's history and controversies.

Skunk Works by Ben R. Rich - Stories of innovation from Lockheed Martin’s legendary division.

Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke - How to make decisions under uncertainty.

Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock and Dan M. Gardner - Insights into better prediction and decision-making.

Educated by Tara Westover - A memoir about resilience and education.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain - A raw look at the life of a chef.

Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - A biography of the physicist behind the atomic bomb.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Wisdom on wealth and happiness.

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I've read Naval's book, but not the others. Are there any in particular you really enjoyed?

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ElFitzJul 2023

And how it came to be is a fascinating story too [0].

And there’s a fascinating bit about Xerox in John Brooks’ "Business Adventures" [1].

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2023/02/25/how-xe...

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-St...

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prependApr 2023

> I'm very disappointed in Musk for essentially ruining one of the world's great information platforms.

I’m happy with the destruction of Twitter. I think it’s a net negative for the world and we’ll be better off without it. This might be the only tech I’ve ever felt like this about (including atomic bombs). I think it amplifies and even creates hate and division.

It will be funny if ten years from now we find out it was a gawker-style takedown with the intent to purposely destroy something in a lasting and permanent way as described in Ryan Holiday’s book about Thiel’s purposeful execution of strategy to destroy gawker, https://www.grahammann.net/book-notes/conspiracy-ryan-holida...

PS- are there any other business/tech “case study” type books out there. I also liked Clifford Stoll’s Cuckoo’s Egg, John Brooks’ Business Adventures, Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker, Po Bronson’s Nudist on the Late Shift, and David Kaplan’s Silicon Boys. Looking for more of what I suspect is more common than I can find.

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legitsterAug 2022

Marketer for over a decade.

There are absolute swarths of useless dregs that are painful to read. There are also fluffy books that are interesting but don't give a lot of practical advice (Seth Godin, etc). Or classic books that are lightyears behind at this point.

Here's my shortlist of books I actually recommend:

- Duct Tape Marketing - Lots of really good, detailed descriptions of how to do simple things.

- Trust Me, I'm Lying - Weirdly, a good source on how to get PR

- The Mom Test - STRONGLY recommended: https://www.momtestbook.com/ Quick read, too.

Classics that actually hold up:

- How to Win Friends and Influence People - Pretty rote at this point, but still does a good job of getting you into others' mindset.

- Business Adventures - Some of the stories touch on good marketing logic

- Positioning - I'm not sure how much practical advice you can get out of it these days, but it's well written and fun to read

Finally, don't sleep on HBR Case Studies! Most are phenomenally written and give you exposure to a lot of different unique environments and challenges. Chicken Contact Lenses is a great place to start, but there are no shortage of them you can read: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-HBS-Harvard-Business...

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adventuredFeb 2021

I don't generally recommend the Intelligent Investor. I think it's almost always a mistake for ... 99% of new investors to bother with Benjamin Graham. His material is far too dense and often advanced for anyone that isn't quite an experienced investor. I'm sure there are exceptions, however I've found it's a huge turn-off for most new or newish investors, it delays / stunts their learning process, it's an obnoxious book to try digest if you're starting out. It'll make you hate investing or think that value investing is difficult (it's not, it's simultaneously the best approach for generating consistently high returns over time and very easy to learn).

Here is what I point new investors to:

- Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, by Roger Lowenstein.

- Margin of Safety, by Seth Klarman

- The Little Book That Still Beats the Market, by Joel Greenblatt

- Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, by Philip Fisher

- Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street, by John Brooks

- This article from 1984 by Warren Buffett: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/columbia-business/sup...

- Peter Lynch also has a couple of optional books that are decent and very easy to digest for a new investor, very common sense oriented.

- Also optionally, Buffett's various writings are often excellent, however they're all over the place in focus, so it's hard to pick one. His annual letters for example can be acquired on the Kindle or from Berkshire's website and many are worth reading (if somewhat boring for most people I suspect).

The single most important thought in investing, in my opinion, is to always be cognizant of price vs value. What you're paying, what you're getting in return. Then always be aware of, always estimate as best you can, what your moat is for the investment at the price you're paying (what Klarman and others have called a margin of safety). How much can go wrong with your investment before you drown? How much room for error is there in the price that you paid? I like the Buffett book I reference above, because it pounds home that concept while introducing how Buffett came up, how he thinks (I don't particularly like his book, The Snowball, for that).

Also, Margin of Safety is out of print. However, there is a certain Archive site with a time machine, that if you were to put this url into it:

https://files.leopolds.com/books/Margin.of.Safety.1st.Editio...

You'll find an archived copy of the book in PDF format. Alternatively you can put that file name into Google and find some other copies of it floating about still (Klarman refuses to put it back into print and had been having the PDF copies taken down).

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