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This is an email I posted on the newsletter for The CEO Library, as part of a Startup Founder Reading plan. Here’s the entire 16 books list

10 years ago, I was really into SEO. I’ve made the first real money online using SEO in 2006-2007. And one of the people that rose through the ranks during that time was a guy named Rand, from a company called SEOmoz.

10 years later, the company he started then is now generating $45 million in yearly revenues, but he is no longer involved operationally. He was the CEO, then he left the position for someone else, then, in 2017, he left the company for good.

While he started a new company in 2018, he spent some time after he left Moz to write a book. The book, called Lost and Founder, is the story of Moz. It’s a raw story of what he felt during the life of the company, what he felt when he was changed as CEO, what he felt when he left the company he created.

One of the things I found really interesting was the fact that, even if the company he created is worth around $100 million, he’s not a millionaire. And I’m not talking about paper money (which he has, obviously), but about cash or assets that could become cash in a small amount of time. He also tells the story of a moment when he didn’t sell the company for about $25 million, an amount of money that would’ve made him a millionaire, with about $10-15 million in the bank.

I think the story I just told you shows how different the startup path really is from what we think it is. How, sometimes, not building the biggest company we can and not taking investor money in large amounts is, actually, a better choice for the entrepreneur.

Of course, the book also talks about how to hire people in your company, how to create revenues and growth and how to spend the money you make and the money you raise.

I see this book as a kind of continuation for the first book I ever wrote about in this reading plan: The Hard Thing about Hard Things. Ben Horowitz wrote about the “romantic” part of internet businesses, the 2001 dotcom boom and crash and the recovery from that. He also wrote about a company going the IPO route. Lost and Founder is a similar one for the “startup generation”. With a crisis of its own (2008) and with less success, in financial terms. But I think this is the most common startup entrepreneur experience, not the Facebook one.

The book isn’t difficult to read, so you have no excuse not to read it. Here’s the book’s link on The CEO Library: Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World

Bobby

P.S.: If you already read Lost and Founder, I want to recommend another book and the one that was initially part of this reading plan: Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson. I think most of you know about the “Virginity” series, but Business Stripped Bare is the better book, in my opinion. It explains step by step the decisions Richard Branson took during the launch and the life of a low-cost airline in Australia.

This is an email I posted on the newsletter for The CEO Library, as part of a Startup Founder Reading plan. Here’s the entire 16 books list

So you kinda know what to expect from your entrepreneurial adventure. You also have a product, a team and you know how to pitch. You maybe got a small angel investment, as well.

Still, how do you get users? How do you tell people where to find you and why to use your product?

Well, this is what Ca$hvertising is for. Or its complete name, CA$HVERTISING: How to Use More than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone by Drew Eric Whitman. Please, ignore the clickbaity title, which is actually not bad, once you think about it, and read the book anyway.

Reasons to read the book:

• It gives you guiding principles around creating and improving your ads
• It pushes you to see ads as a tool to be used, not as a creativity contest
• Gives you suggestions on influencing the potential users.

Look, I’m not telling you to lie about your product or anything like that. But you can say one thing in different ways, one way being the one that gets you the users.

Story time: when we started MavenHut, the best way to get users to your app, fast and effective, was to use Facebook Ads. Of course, that meant spending money, money we didn’t have. Well, we had about $5/day, but it certainly wasn’t enough to make an impact on our business. Or so I thought. I mean, it cost me around $1-$2/user, it really wasn’t enough.

Then someone recommended “Ca$hvertising” to me. And once I understood what I can do, I got to the point where I would bring 3 users in the app for every 2 cents I spent (yes, 2 users/$0.03). Yes, they were users from “cheaper” countries when it came to ads, like Argentina, Mexico or Colombia, but they were real users, that could give us feedback on our apps. This is how we got the first 15,000 users in Solitaire Arena. Then Facebook’s “virality” brought more. Eventually, we got users from the more “expensive” countries, as well, by reusing the ads that worked in the ones we targeted initially. By the time we sold Solitaire Arena we had more than 30 million installs across platforms. And it all began with Ca$hvertising and $5/day.

Of course, not everybody wants to buy ads. But the same principles that make good ads also make good copywriting and good content. So read the book anyway :)

If you want to see some of the processes we used to bring the first users (when we only bought ads for US users), here’s an article I wrote on my blog several years ago: MavenHut’s First Step, A Click and A Form: A Case Study on Starting Your Startup with Less than $200

Bobby

P.S.: Ah, you’re right, I almost forgot the book recommendation in case you already got through Ca$hvertising. Or if you read fast. How about Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins. While it’s a bit too early to apply most of the principles in the book, I think it’s a good read to give you a blueprint for how you should run your company and how the company should be built.

P.P.S: One more thing: if you read any of the books, let me know through the contact page on the site or at getintouch@theceolibrary.com. Or reply to this email. I want to hear from you, to better understand what you want to read and if the books are interesting for you.

I’ve added a Plex server on a Raspberry Pi 4.

Here are the links to all the resources I used (in case I need them later and for anybody else that is interested):

How to Install Plex on Raspberry Pi 4
Plex not seeing the files on the external SSD
How to Install Subzero plugin (for subtitles). Where is the plugin folder located.

In case you want to know what’s new in iOS 15. I didn’t follow too much this year’s release, so this short article is quite good: it gets me up to date without the need to read a lot :)

This year’s update is also a bit different because you don’t have to update to iOS 15. If you’re fine with iOS 14, Apple won’t force you to make the jump to iOS 15. You’ll still receive security patches. Some people will simply dismiss iOS 15 altogether.

It seems like a small change, but it actually says a lot about the current state of iOS. Apple considers iOS as a mature platform. Just like you don’t have to update your Mac to the latest version of macOS if you don’t want to, you can now update at your own pace.

From here: iOS 15 adds all the little features that were missing | TechCrunch.

Here’s a look at the changes on iPadOS as well.

I really, really, really want this. I tried to get in earlier, but Q1 2022 was the earlier I could get in, after 30 minutes of trying.

Anyway, I love the idea of playing anywhere, anytime, almost all my Steam games. I have the Switch, as well, but I don’t really like most of the games they have on offer (I own Witcher 3, Zelda, Assassin’s Creed, Skyrim, Mario Odyssey, among others). I love the handheld form, I would really love to be able to play the PC games I want (especially older ones, since for the new ones I kinda have the PS5).

Here’s a video of Linus from Linus Tech Tips using the Deck, as well:

I didn’t know this existed, but it’s so true: bullshit asymmetry principle.

Brandolini’s law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.”

Brandolini’s law on Wikipedia

I have some people that I “talk” to a lot via Whatsapp, iMessage, Messenger and the likes.

And it kinda annoys me when they say “hi!” every f’in time we restart the discussion.

I think the reason for this is that I see it as a continuous discussion, with bigger breaks, while they see it as different chats/discussions every time.

Well… it’s not like a phone call, ok? :)