The Art of Profitability
An extraordinarily new business slant on how companies can generate greater profits. Presented in 23 compact lessons, "The Art of Profitability" features an ongoing tutorial between two fictitious individuals.
Stats for nerds
11recommend
19mentions
16people
2010–2022years
63% recommend37% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Shantaram Power of Now Go Giver Art of Profitability Challenger Sale Sapiens Player of Games Rogue Warrior
- Innovator's dilemma & Innovator's solution- why big companies almost always get beaten by startups and how to overcome this
10x Rule by Grant Cardone - you must take 10x more action than you think to get success
Awaken the Giant Within - you can motivate yourself to do anything via the "Pain Pleasure Principle"
Bold: How to go big, make wealth, and change the world - some strategies from Musk, Bezos, Diamandis/Singularity U
The Art of Profitability - Coca-cola from a 2-Liter costs $.02/oz , Coca-cola from a restaurant costs $.20/oz
my full list here: https://goo.gl/9SD8b6
- I was a software engineer for 10 years (first 10 engs at LinkedIn -> first 10,000 at Google -> first 10 at Factual). After that I was about to start a company but fell into venture capital instead. Here are a few things I've learned about business from the VC side that I didn't appreciate very much when I was an engineer:
1) Customers don't care about the technologies you're using, the elegance of your XYZ algorithm, or the novelty of feature ABC. What they care about is solving some problem they have, making their day easier, becoming more productive, etc. When you're pitching your product, talk about how it helps the customer, not about how it's built. A great 5-minute video on this is "Understanding the Job" by Clayton Christensen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84LymEs67Y
2) Think about monetization early on. Like most engineers, I had dozens of side project and business ideas. For each idea, I had thought about the features I'd build and how I'd build them, but not the business viability: who would I sell to? What would the pricing model be? How much money would that translate to for a typical user? Would users have the work/personal budgets to pay what I wanted to charge? Was the price enough to cover marketing and user acquisition costs? I haven't read it, but have heard that a great book on this topic is Monetizing Innovation (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F4DYY1I). Another good book to think about business models is The Art of Profitability (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FA5TTM, brief notes: https://codingvc.com/the-art-of-profitability)
3) Finally, think about marketing and customer acquisition in parallel with product. After almost 5 years as a VC, I can readily confirm that most products don't sell themselves. Even the really good products need sales, marketing, etc. A great book to get started on marketing is Traction by Gabriel Weinberg (of DuckDuckGo) and Justin Mares (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00TY3ZOMS/)
- - The Growth Hackers book - The books from Steve Blank - The Art of Profitability - The Checklist Manifesto - iCon - The Second Greatest Act in Business - The Narrow Road - A good book on Copywriting - The Mythical Man-Month - Peopleware - No Silver Bullet - Death March by Edward Yourdon - A Random Walk down Wall Street
And a whole bunch more - https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/9837702-hrishikesh-cho...
- It's Jim Collins, IIRC, not Colin.
Interesting, I had read the book a while ago, but don't remember the hedgehog concept from it. Forgot, maybe. But I do remember the same concept from another book I read, maybe by Adrian Slywotzky, I think it was The Art of Profitability. Found it good.
- The Art of Profitability http://www.amazon.com/Art-Profitability-Adrian-Slywotzky/dp/...
Revenue Management http://www.amazon.com/Revenue-Management-Robert-G-Cross/dp/0...
