What books or other resources do you suggest for bootstrapping a small software company?

Question

I'm looking for books or other resources that would help me bootstrap a small software company.

If you have any recommendations, please post it. If someone else has posted it already, please upvote your favorites.

Answer 1

A great list of reading materials for developers can be found here, at Jeff Atwood's blog.

I think this is a good starting point.

Answer 2

You might look at Eric Sink's "The business of software" and Bob Walsh's "Micro isv".

Answer 3

Here's another list of books, from Joel Spolsky.

Answer 4

The Personal MBA is a pretty good list. I'd also recommend reading Paul Graham and Seth Godin.

Otherwise I'm curious what else people come up with.

Answer 5

I found the E-myth good. The generalisation in this book is that all businesses are broken down into Manager, Sales Person and Technical person. This applies to your dotBusiness just like it does a pie shop. You need all three to succeed, and often small business have one person who is good at one of these areas and maybe two.

Answer 6

Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality has a lot of good information.

Answer 7

Joel's 'On Software' books are excellent 'dip-into' resources to help you keep your mindset in the right place, too.

The 'camels and rubber duckies' essay here is a great example of what I mean - whether you live by his ideas, dip-into them when they suit you, or ignore them completely, it's always insightful to get his take on this kind of thing. He has some great pieces on estimating and developer environments, too.

Because of their 'open at any chapter and read a few pages' style, these are great books to have just kicking around the office, ready to step into when you have a few spare minutes. The articles are on the website too, of course.

Walsh's MicroISV (already mentioned) is similarly in parts both inspiring and useful.

Answer 8

to bootstrap a small software company, you might find customers more useful than any books!