After having [written about books for building businesses]((/2013/09/04/rework-and-delivering-happiness) and how to manage people internally and externally today I want to focus on two other books that should not be missing from a founders library. And although they appear as different as two books can be, they have one important thing in common: when you read them the first time, you’ll constantly be asking yourself, when you’ll ever need that. But then, years later – and I promise you the day will come – you’ll be super glad for having read them before and being able to apply them or at least do that after quickly looking stuff up in there. I am talking about Made to Stick and Private Equity.

Made To Stick

{.left} Made To Stick

Chip and Dan Heath put together a compendium of their lives work: the quest of understanding why some ideas and concepts stick with people while others don’t. And they’ve found certain aspect in the way they are communicated and spoken about, which makes them more likely to succeed. This books contains those, grouped and sorted and analysed case by case. And though case studies can be kind of dull, the book is written very vividly and invites you to rethink your past and current communications constantly.

And being written right to the point, it also give helpful hints on how to improve and make things clearer and better by applying certain concepts, ideas and principles. But even if you don’t have a specific case at hand you are interested to be solving right now, years later – for me most recently when launching Hackership – it will help you find your voice, terms, brands and assist you in identifing problems in your communication down the line. “Made to Stick” is available on Amazon (affiliate link).

Private Equity

{.right} Cover of "Private Equity by Oliver Thum" As Lars Hinrichs mentioned in his post of the learnings with HackFWD the other day Private Equity works very different in Germany and Europe than it does in the US. Not only in terms of finding funding but also on the actual paper work: a GmbH simply isn’t a Ltd. They are structured different and there are different things to know and take into account when dealing with equity with them. And sure, you can just hire someone to do that part for you or simply trust the investor you are talking to (DON’T! EVER!), that everything is going to be alright. But the smarter and better thing to do is to get familiar with that topic before hand, even if this sounds boring or dull, ultimately you are the only one responsible for it.

This rather thin book by Oliver Thum provides a great head first entry into that field and unlike many other books in this field talks about the most recent ways of company structuring like we do it for tech companies and not real estate conglomerates. It will help you understand the way funding works on papers, what things like liquidation preference actually mean and gives useful tips on things to look out for by referring to what is common practice and what is for the disadvantage of some party. As this books talks about the German legal system and forms it is only available in German. “Private Equity” by Oliver Thum is available through Amazon (affiliate link).