Entrepreneurial Bloggers: 10 Writers Every Entrepreneur Should Read
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This Week: Top 10 Bloggers Every Entrepreneur Should Follow
The entrepreneur: The DIY hero of business. This rugged individual strikes out on their own to build a successful business out of nothing, with their own two hands.
Well, not exactly.
Any good entrepreneur will tell you that the couldn’t have done it themselves – that they had plenty of help along the way. One critical source of such help is other entrepreneurs, who share their expertise and guide newcomers toward success.
Today, we’d like to highlight ten bloggers/entrepreneurs who have written widely on the subject of entrepreneurship. Some of the people on this list are major players, whereas others deserve a little more attention than they get, but all of their blogs should be on every entrepreneur’s radar.
Where you can read him: Instigator Blog
Why you should read him: Yoskovitz has been a Web-based entrepreneur for just about two decades now. Along the way, he cofounded and sold Standout Jobs, cowrote Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster, and, more recently, helped start the accelerator Year One Labs.
In other words: Yoskovitz has been through it all, and that’s reflected in the 10-year archive of Instigator Blog. If you’re an entrepreneur interested in lean startups, then Yoskovitz’s blog will be especially useful for you.
Where you can read him: Bothsides of the Table
Why you should read him: Suster founded and sold two companies, meaning he’s successfully done the entrepreneur dance twice over. After selling his second company, Suster joined Upfront Ventures, where he is now a seasoned venture capitalist. This dual life as an entrepreneur and a VC has given Suster a unique perspective, one that he shares readily over on his blog.
Another reason why Suster should have your attention: He’s a tireless advocate for new technologies. In a world of constant technological innovation, Suster has the advice you need to keep abreast of the continuous upheavals.
Where you can read him: GuyKawasaki.com
Why you should read him: We’re talking about Guy Kawasaki here. Either you’ve already read one of his seminal books on starting a company and are keeping tabs on his blog, or you’re seriously messing up. There’s not really an in between.
Where you can read him: AVC.com
Why you should read him: Veteran VC Fred Wilson has been writing a post once a day, every day on AVC since 2003. Over the course of his blogging career, he’s touched on everything from podcasts, to encryption, to parental leave – and that’s just the past two weeks.
Wilson describes his blog as “my diary, my sandbox, my therapist, and more than anything it is my bar where I get to be the bartender. AVC is a place where everyone is welcome and the conversation is civil and lively.” There’s no more accurate picture of Wilson’s blog than this, a hodgepodge of posts that are by turns enlightening, funny, meditative, and insightful.
Where you can read him: Blog Maverick
Why you should read him: Thanks to his time on Shark Tank, Cuban has become a household name these days, but he’s been a successful entrepreneur and investor since long before joining the show in 2012. If you’ve watched Cuban on Shark Tank at all, then you know what to expect from his blog: His tone is smart, blunt, and funny, and he’s always proposing new ideas and new angles from which to view existing conditions.
My favorite thing about Cuban’s blog is that it always contextualizes the issues faced by entrepreneurs and business leaders. You won’t find advice in a vacuum on Cuban’s site. Instead, you’ll find Cuban exploring entrepreneurship in light of things like Apple’s standoff with the FBI and primary season in the U.S. Business happens in the real world, and Cuban’s eye is always on that world.
Where you can read her: Pando
Why you should read her: We always call on our readers and our networks to nominate people for our Top 10 lists, and sifting through the nominations this time around, I was disheartened to find so few female writers in my inbox. One name that did pop up a few times, however, was that of Sarah Lacy, the founder and editor-in-chief of digital content startup Pando.
That’s not to say that Lacy was some sort of token pick. No, she absolutely deserves to be on every entrepreneur’s reading list because her articles are excellent, no qualifiers necessary.
Holly Ojalvo, the founder and editor-in-chief at Kicker, was one of the people who nominated Lacy for this list, and we think her description of Lacy’s work says it all: “Sarah Lacy … does an excellent job of covering not only the world of entrepreneurship, startups, and funding, but also gender issues in that world, mixing solid reporting with probing commentary.”
To get a good taste of Lacy’s take-no-prisoners approach to business journalism and commentary, look no further than her March 8th article, “As markets possibly stabilize, entrepreneurs’ asinine promises remain the biggest risk in tech.” Lacy’s not afraid to call people out – something we need more of in a blogosphere riddled with empty pleasantries and vague statements masquerading as “insights.”
Where you can read him: Feld Thoughts
Why you should read him: Entrepreneurs are humans, and venture capitalist Brad Feld does a damn good job of exploring the human side of entrepreneurship on his blog. Sure, Feld dedicates a lot of website real estate to the sort of nuts-and-bolts topics you’d expect a VC to write about, but he also discusses powerful issues like the intersection of entrepreneurship and depression, the difference between empathy and sympathy, and the importance of truthfulness in mentor-mentee relationships.
It should come as no surprise, then, that Feld and his wife Amy Batchelor are the authors of Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship With an Entrepreneur.
Where you can read him: Mixergy
Why you should read him: You don’t read Warner so much as you watch him: Mixergy contains more than 1,300 video interviews and counting with entrepreneurs and thought leaders.
A lot of people nominated Warner for this list, and we think the best description of why entrepreneurs should follow Mixergy comes from Greg Archbald, founder and CEO of the oil and gas tech company GreaseBook: “[Warner] separates himself from other bloggers by catering to a crowd of true entrepreneurs. How do I know this? Because the amount of detail he dives into with any of his guests would bore the average listener. However, this is exactly the type of info for which most upstarts and business owners are looking.”
Where you can read him: GaryVanerchuk.com
Why you should read him: Vaynerchuk builds businesses. That’s his job description. That’s what his life is dedicated to. That, in a nutshell, is why you should read him – because if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re trying to build a business, too.
Of course, there’s more to it than that. We don’t have enough space to give a full rundown of what the eternally active
Vaynerchuk is up to, but we do want to mention that he’s a content marketing mastermind and that his YouTube channel is not only packed to the gills with great information, but also wildly entertaining.(Credit to K.B. Lee, founder and CEO of Ever Bamboo, for putting Vaynerchuk on our radar.)
Where you can read her: ChooseWhat.com
Why you should read her: Harrington spent years as a business journalist before she decided to become an entrepreneur herself as the founder of Thumbtack Communications. She hasn’t stopped writing, though: You can find her regularly contributing to ChooseWhat’s startup guide articles.
As you might expect from a longtime journalist, Harrington’s specialty is reportage. Even potentially baffling topics like overtime legislation and employer identification numbers (EINs) become crystal clear in Harrington’s hands. If you’re looking for someone to help guide you through the complexities of the startup life, Harrington is your best choice.