BlockShelf

BlockShelf

Cliffs Notes for startup books + resources

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Launch tags:Startup BooksTech
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What do you think? …

Alexis Ohanian
Discovered this on r/entrepreneur after someone sent me the TL;DR of my own book and really dug where BlockShelf is going with this.
Honey Raj Varma
@alexisohanian Alexis, great find - what are your thoughts on the fact that these are indeed books people generally pay for?
Marc
@alexisohanian I've wanted somebody to build this for so long.
Tiffany Zhong
@alexisohanian I remember when it used to be called Read Lead Grow :) Such a great site but wish the font was smaller. Also, check out Blinkist (www.blinkist.com)!
Alexis Ohanian
@raj_ventures I went around the country on the Without Their Permission tour and told some 80+ university students that if they couldn't afford my book, there were other ways to procure it... Yarrr.... that's how I feel about that. I'd rather see the ideas spread because I know (and even talk about it in WTP) that piracy is not a loss of revenue bc those people probably never would've paid anyway and are another potential fan to spread the word. Plus it'd be super ironic if the guy with a book called "Without Their Permission" was upset about that sort of thing....
Honey Raj Varma
@alexisohanian Great insight! From a user behavior's perspective in growth hacking - I know people generally tend to go for the easiest and fastest way to obtain specific information and/or are always seeking a faster way, regardless of the source. BlockShelf is very similar to the concept of TL;DR from Reddit, except refined and catered towards startup books. The recent winner of the #producthunthackathon, as you know, @gkoberger - also created shortened summaries of Startup School in a beautiful visually appealing format. Loving the internet :D
Girish Hari
Excellent.. The grid-view theme looks to be a perfect fit for the site. 1) Are you planning to open this site up for submissions from the community? You could monitor the submissions and add this to the site then. 2) Also, if a book (or) video was referred by an investor / entrepreneur, if you can add those references, it will give a lot of weight to the book (i know this is lot of work) 3) When you mention "quotes", are you referring to those video snippets in the interviews (or) are you referring to tweets / lines from blog-posts??
Girish Hari
@tim_finnigan1 Are you planning to introduce "Videos" as a section in your site (or) is this going to be for books alone? For instance, there is tremendous knowledge to be derived out of videos in startupschool (all archived videos) / 'how to start a startup' lessons. The knowledge in these videos may not be available in books :-(
Girish Hari
@tim_finnigan1 thats an excellent compilation.. Would it have helped save your time if you had a product like this -- http://www.producthunt.com/l/06a...
Girish Hari
@tim_finnigan1 we built this "wow moments" product to help solve a similar problem we faced.. :-)
Max Wood
Love the idea. I'd use this to recap books I've already read. Some of the points aren't too meaningful without the books which is fine but perhaps we could get page numbers for each point also?
Nikita Gerts
Love it ! I have a notepad with notes from around half of those books :) now they are online... I would personally recommend reading/adding the following books as well - 'Innovators dilemma', 'Monk and the Riddle' & 'What I wish I knew when I was 20'
Eric Willis
Awesomeness!
@ChuckReynolds
awesome