[trapper]

It is very hard. A few warning signs I have noticed over the years:

- Superficial knowledge, but claim they know the field. When you dig deeper you find knowledge lacking. Wikipedia can help uncover this sometimes, amazingly.

- Do not read new business books.

- Haven't heard of "classic" books in the business world, e.g. good to great, crossing the chasm etc

- Business model based on a poor understanding of technology (e.g. "User generated content but restricted access site")

- No track record

- 50 years old and not rich.

- Afraid to execute (give them a hard task to complete which they could fail at and it won't get done).

- I'm always right about stuff I know nothing about syndrome. You want a partner who is complementary; he should be able to recognise what you bring to the table and should defer to you when he doesn't know.

Good luck!

[gabrielroth]

Is reading new business books really a necessity? The few that I've read seem pretty vapid. I'm sure there's some useful advice in some of them, but surely an experienced businessperson would already have the basic knowledge and abilities down.

If a top business guy in a startup spent a meaningful amount of time reading new business books, I'd be a bit suspicious.

Your other 'warning signs' seem right on to me.

[trapper]

I would say yes. Thirst for knowledge is a common trait I have noticed amongst the repeatedly successful, and usually manifests itself by having read most of the literature on ones topic.

Perhaps you are overestimating how long it takes to read a business book. Most can be finished in a few hours due to their padding, and reading 10+ new books per year shouldn't be hard even for the uber-busy. It's not like reading a tome on prolog.

[gabrielroth]

I totally agree re: thirst for knowledge. But I'd be more impressed by a business guy who read widely _outside_ his field.

Tangent: one way in which the internet and e-books will definitely affect book publishing, for the better, is that there will be less need to stretch a single idea to book length. Many nonfiction books should really be ~30,000 words long, and once everyone has a Kindle there's no reason for them not to be.

[trapper]

The field of business is very large:

Sales, marketing, accounting, project management, finance, legal, strategy, intellectual property, human resources, presentations, customer development, branding, writing, business planning and more are all topics that good business guys understand well.

Add into that the market specific knowledge (manufacturing, regulations, distribution channels etc) and you have a pretty broad reading list.

Most do have pretty detailed domain specific knowledge from working in that industry in some capacity.

Tangent: Agreed, though hopefully < 30k.

[davidw]

Most of them are very fluffy. Even the good ones, with a unique idea (say, Innovator's Dilemma) have to pad the good stuff to make a book out of it. And hence, a side project of mine, Squeezed Books.

[rodrigo]

You're rigth, I guess if you apply what PG have said about hackers to business people you have it.