Category: Books
As a huge reader, I love the recent plethora of startup / entrepreneurship books. I’m involved in three new ones – one that I’ve co-authored, one that FG Press has published, and one where I’m part of a Kickstarter campaign. I encourage you to grab each of them.
The first is Startup Opportunities: Know When To Quit Your Day Job. I wrote it with Sean Wise, a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto. It’s aimed at the first time entrepreneur or soon to be entrepreneur who is asking herself the question, “Is this a good idea?” or “Is this an opportunity I should dive all in on?” I’ll be writing a lot more about this on my blog in the coming weeks. For now, go get a copy of Startup Opportunities.
The second is Bend The Curve: Accelerate Your Startup’s Success, written by Andrew Razeghi and part of the Techstars series of books. Andrew is a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and is involved in Techstars. Bend The Curve includes a huge amount of information useful to any existing startup and I’m excited about what Andrew has put together. I’ve got a section in the book on board of directors and you’ll recognize many other contributors to this book.
The last is Eric Ries’ new project, The Leaders Guide, which just launched on Kickstarter. One of the award levels is a day in Boulder with me, time with Techstars, several of my portfolio companies, a night at the St. Julien Hotel, and dinner with me at Kasa Sushi (my favorite sushi place in Boulder.) Oh, and you get a bunch of other stuff, including a ton of Eric’s Lean Startup work, access to the new community he’s creating, and special bonus lean startup content.
When I started my first company in 1987, there was almost no information on being an entrepreneur, starting, or scaling a company. While there were business biographies and lots of ego books, almost everything was about management and leadership of large companies. It’s awesome to see how that has changed and I’m glad to be a tiny part of it.
As my newest book, Startup Opportunities: Know When To Quit Your Day Job, has begun shipping on Kindle (order now and give me feedback, leave a review) I’ve been thinking a lot about writing lately. Startup Opportunities took 18 months to write and most of the slowness was me, not my co-author Sean Wise. It was an interesting struggle to get done which I’ll write about at another time.
I love to write. It’s the way I put my thoughts together. I’ve never really understood the phrase “I’m thinking about it” – I never consciously sit and think, but when I’m writing my brain is often doing the job of thinking.
I also love to read. It’s the way I put my thoughts together and learn new things. I’ve never been an auditory learner. I remember sitting in classes at MIT, listening to the professor lecture, and understanding almost nothing. But then, when I sat down and read the course notes, or whatever reading material was assigned, it all became clear. I’m sure the verbal stuff entered my brain somehow, but it didn’t really turn into something I understood completely until I was able to sit and read.
Fortunately, I’m a fast reader. And after writing millions of words, I’ve become a fast writer. When I’m asked how I read or write so fast, I have a simple answer – practice.
I continuously read essays that talk about the end of books. The end of the publishing industry. How humans are reading less. Crap like that. While it makes for nice self-referential essays in magazines like The Atlantic, or books by authors about how Google is making us stupid, I think it’s all wrong.
I think the fundamental thing that is changing is the distribution of written information. This is nothing new – it’s been going on since the Egyptians created the writing systems 4,500 years ago. And, it is going to get really interesting in the next twenty years as humans become much more integrated with machines, as I’m completely ready to jack in to the Internet full-time.
When I think of the different forms I read and write, it ranges from what I call “the long form” (books) to “the nano-form” (tweets). On a daily basis, I consume books, essays (posts on Medium, magazine articles), blogs, emails, Facebook posts, Tweetstorms, and Tweets. While I don’t use Yo anymore, you can bring it all the way down to the human-nano level.
When I look at the activity in my Goodreads feed, it’s clear to me that the book is not dead. Many of the people I respect, follow, and have relationships with are deep thinkers and love to read – both for learning and recreation. Sure, the book is competing with a lot of other media types, but reading (and writing) seems to persist quite successfully.
Is the book really dead? In 20 years, will we still be calling them books, or will they be something else, in the same way that no one under the age of 10 knows what a record is.
Sean Wise, my co-author for my next book, Startup Opportunities, is a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto. When we first started writing this book in late 2013, we knew that we were going to do both a United States tour and a Canadian book tour. We flipped a coin to see which one we’d do first and Canada won.
The book is comes out in March (pre-order right now to give me some love) and we’re celebrating that with a Central and Eastern Canadian book tour. Sean and I will also be putting the topics in our book directly to work. At each book tour event, a few idea stage companies will be pitching us for an investment prize out of the fund Sean’s involved with, Ryerson Futures.
Canada has always been good to me and I have some fun memories of both work and play from our neighbor in the north. If you’re in the area, join me at one of the tour stops listed below.
March 23rd, 2015: Winnipeg with Innovate Manitoba. Registration here.
March 24th: Waterloo with Communitech. Register here.
March 25th: Ottawa with L-Spark, Algonquin, and Fresh Founders. Register here for the afternoon event.
March 26th: Toronto with Ryerson Digital Media Zone. Register here.
March 27th: Montreal with Real Ventures + portfolio. Register here.
Each of the organizations is an integral part of their startup community. They help out with community engagement, mentorship, and/or capital. In addition to investing a lot of time, energy, and money in their startup communities, they have done a huge amount of work organizing this book tour – thank you, as we couldn’t do this without you.
A number of the most entrepreneurially-minded companies in Canada act as our national sponsors for the Startup Opportunities book tour.
Our Naming Sponsor QuickBooks is dedicated to getting new, high-growth businesses off the ground.
BDC Capital is our National Pitch Tour Sponsor and will be joining Sean and I on the judges’ panel at all the events.
Silicon Valley Bank is a close partner to me and my partners at Foundry Group here in the US and I’m excited to work with them in Canada as well.
Startup Canada has embraced the #GiveFirst mindset which has made Boulder a awesome startup community.
Canadian Business is the center of business and entrepreneurial news and information in Canada.
Wiley Canada, who works with Sean Wise his other books, publishes quality business and instructional content.
For more details about the book tour and all the sponsors, you can take a look at document that the FG Press team put together.
If you’re curious about this pitch competition, you can find more information here, and be sure to reach out to the city partners as they are the ones selecting the companies to pitch their events.
If you are in Boulder and you haven’t heard of Linda Rottenberg, you are in for a treat. She’s the founder / CEO of Endeavor and recently joined the board of Zayo. Dan Caruso, the CEO / co-founder of Zayo is hosting an event tonight at eTown Hall interviewing Linda about her new book Crazy is a Compliment.
I read the book last night. After a long Monday, I realized I had three physical copies on my desk at home (that had come from different friends) and I still hadn’t read it. That didn’t seem right, especially since I’m having dinner with Linda, Dan, and a small group of people tonight. So I gobbled it up last night.
Before I get into the book, there are still a few seats available for the event tonight. If you are into entrepreneurship, I highly recommend you attend the fireside chat between Linda and Dan from 5pm to 7pm (Tuesday, 1/13/15).
I’ve known of Linda for a while through her work at Endeavor and finally met her for the first time in March 2013 in Rio while I was at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress. Among other things, she roped me into giving a Day1 talk, which was extremely fun to do. If you’ve never seen mine, it’s below.
Ok – on to the book. It’s dynamite. Like my upcoming book Startup Opportunities (which you can pre-order now – hint, hint), it’s aimed at first time and aspiring entrepreneurs. Linda is an amazing storyteller and builds the book around stories from her own experience as well as many of the entrepreneurs who have been affiliated with Endeavor programs. Her stories are all in first person and powerful to read – very personal, easily consumed, and full of lessons.
She weaves the stories into three major sections: Get Going, Go Big, and Go Home. Get Going is about getting started. Go Big is about scaling. Go Home is about getting harmony between work and life.
Linda breaks entrepreneurial companies into four categories:
- Gazelles: super high growth (I use the same word in Startup Opportunities)
- Skunks: inside corporations – what is tediously referred to in academia as intrapreneurship
- Dolphins: social entrepreneurship
- Butterflies: small, local businesses
I loved her taxonomy and will use it going forward. Then, on page 90, I did something I rarely do when reading a hardcover book – I dogeared the page so I’d come back to it. On this page Linda defined four types of entrepreneurs using labels I’d never seen before.
- Diamond: Visionary dreamers leading disruptive ventures (Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin / Larry Page, Ted Turner, George Lucas, Elon Musk)
- Star: Charismatic individuals building personality brands (Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Richard Branson, Estee Lauder, Giorgio Armani, Jay-Z)
- Transformer: Change makers reenergizing traditional industries (Howard Schultz, Ray Kroc. Ingvar Kamprad, Anita Roddick, Blake Mycoskie)
- Rocketship: Analytical thinkers making strategic improvements (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Fred Smith, Michael Dell, Mike Bloomberg)
This categorization totally nailed it and she went on to spend a lot of time discussing different entrepreneurial personalities. Throughout, Linda used examples from all over the world, drawing from the broad range that Endeavor has covered over the 17 years it has been around.
As someone who has spent the last six months immersed in writing a book aimed at first time and aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s pretty cool read one from a totally different experience set, with so many different stories, and feel lots of conceptual overlap. If I’m describing you when you see the phrase “first time or aspiring entrepreneur”, grab Crazy is a Compliment and pre-order Startup Opportunities. And, if you are in Boulder tonight, come check out the fireside chat.
Ben Franklin is one of my heroes, along with Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and a few others. As I start my march through reading books about American presidents, I figured I’d start with a famous American who was never a president but was deeply involved in creating the situation where there could be American presidents.
I’m a big fan of Walter Isaacson and his biographies (I’ve read many of them.) Benjamin Franklin: An American Life didn’t disappoint. Isaacson is great at making a biography flow easily so it reads like a cross between a novel and a non-fiction book. The stories aren’t embellished, but they are well written, generally efficient, and extensive. If you are worried about biography as “facts and figures over time”, that’s not the mark of a good biography and definitely not Isaacson’s approach.
Being a fan of Ben Franklin, I’ve read plenty, especially as a teenager, about him. I had a healthy list of “Ben Franklin firsts” and things that Franklin was involved in. But as Amy and I watched the HBO Series John Adams recently, I became curious about how much, or how little, about Ben Franklin I really knew.
It turned out to be “how little”, not because I didn’t know much, but because the list of things Ben Franklin created, did first as a human, or enabled in America, is just remarkable. While everyone knows about his role in the American Revolution, American postmaster, printer, experiments with lightening, and invention of bifocals and the Franklin stove, here are a few that are not commonly known.
Ben Franklin:
- was an amazing swimmer and created swimming fins (well – wooden ones)
- created the first volunteer fire department
- created the odometer
- created the urinary catheter
- loved to travel and was extremely nomadic between America, France, and England
- created the first American musical instrument (the glass armonica)
- created all the electric terminology, such as battery, charged, condense, conductor, plus / minus, positively / negatively, to go along with his experiments
- helped create the first American hospital
and the list goes on and on and on.
The early Franklin was well-known for the virtues he stated and then worked on personally, not all at once, but systematically over time. When I reflect on them, I find them remarkably contemporary.
- “Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”
- “Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”
- “Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”
- “Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”
- “Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”
- “Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
- “Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.”
- “Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”
- “Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”
- “Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.”
- “Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.”
- “Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”
- “Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
His personal life was fascinating, complex, and non-traditional. It evolved over his life time and while it doesn’t parallel mine in any way, Isaacson’s portrayal of it is robust, although there are points in time in the book where I felt Isaacson let Franklin off the hook for things that weren’t “awesome” and could have been dug into further. But, after all, we are all bags of chemicals and have lots of flaws.
His skills as a politician and negotiator were just awesome. His ability to stay calm in intense situations was awe inspiring. I knew plenty of the specific situations, but seeing Franklin’s role in them from the perspective of a biographer of Franklin was mindblowingly interesting and educational.
I’ll leave you with a few famous Franklin quotes that we repeat or hear regularly.
- In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
- Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
- An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
- Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
- Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.
- Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.
- They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I am an enormous Ben Mezrich fan – I’ve read almost everything he’s every written. So it’s mind-bendingly exciting to me that he decided to publish his latest work of fiction, titled Q, with our publishing company FG Press.
If you don’t know Ben, his books including Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (the book the movie 21 was based on) and Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History.
But he’s probably most well-known for The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal which was the book that the movie The Social Network was based on.
I first met Ben through my long time friend Niel Robertson, an entrepreneur we’ve backed many times. I met Niel a few months after I made my first angel investment in NetGenesis in 1994 – he was the fifth employee. He went on to fund Service Metrics with Raj Bhargava and Tom Higley, which returned two-thirds of our entire first Mobius fund (I think the technorati are now calling those “Dragons” – this one was a baby Dragon.)
I’m in Boston one day for something and Niel emails me and says, “Hey, do you want to meet Ben Mezrich?” This is after Bringing Down the House but well before The Accidental Billionaire. “Sure, where?” I say. Niel knows me well, so he offers up sushi at some place in the Copley Mall. The next few hours were a really fun intellectual romp.
I haven’t seen Ben since then but our emails have crossed a few times. I love the origin story of Sex on the Moon (hint – Niel and other friends are involved, including Matt Emmi.) And I’ve continued to suck down whatever Ben writes.
Q is a novella that Ben has been working on for a while. It’s only available in Kindle format on Amazon. It took me an hour to read and I thought it was fucking awesome.
Whenever Amy and I talk about the extinction of the human race, she has a very clear point of view on how it will happen. Viruses. That’s it – simple. When the Ebola thing happened a few months ago (hey – why isn’t anyone talking about Ebola anymore – it’s not like it’s solved?) Amy was all over it. As a result, I knew more about what was going on with Ebola than most other things I was exposed to.
Ben appears to have the same fears. AI becoming sentient and evil? Nah – that’s not a big deal. Viruses mutating, having a 75% infection rate, undetermined incubation period, and 75% mortality rate? Now that will mess up the way human society works.
If you are into fiction, what Ben has written, viruses, societal change, stuff that will scare the shit out of you, tragic heroes, slow motion train wrecks, and something that will slow you down and make you think, you’ll love Ben Mezrich’s Q.
And with that, I’ll leave you with a Q&A Ben did with FG Press for the book.
Why and when did you start writing “Q”? Was it because of the Ebola outbreaks? Q is a project I’ve been working on for about a decade, actually. I’ve always been fascinated by quarantine laws—how incredibly fast our world could change if an outbreak of an infectious disease started to truly get out of control. During the SARS epidemic, I started interviewing doctors and specialists and discovered how close we had come to some form of martial law in the United States. The Ebola outbreak just confirmed everything for me, that the response to a disease can sometimes be as terrifying as the disease itself.
How close do you actually think we came to a national quarantine? We were extremely close. For a time, SARS looked like it was going to explode— before it was stopped in Canada. Ebola, as frightening as it is, isn’t SARS. It’s not anywhere near as easy to spread. But with Ebola, the entire world is paying attention in a way it hasn’t before.
Are you a hypochondriac? How much of this do you think is really real? Definitely, I’ve gone through periods in my life where I was extremely crazy about infectious diseases, and I always thought I was coming down with something. At one point, my doctor wouldn’t even see me anymore. I’ve actually calmed down a bit since I’ve had kids, who catch every damn cold that comes around because the reality is, we all get sick, a lot, and it doesn’t do much good panicking about something you can’t control. This is just the world we live in.
There are CDC interviews in the book, but are they real? It looks like you used real names? Are they? I conducted real interviews, but Q is a work of fiction, and none of the names are real, except my own.
Have you put out a digital-only book before? Why do this with FG Press? I’ve never done something like this before. I’ve published fifteen books through traditional means, and have had a great time with them—but I also recognize that there’s this whole, uncharted world, and I wanted to try something new and creative. This is a book about a virus, and I like the idea of putting it out in a way that could go viral. I’m excited to see what FG Press has in store for something that’s a little bit out there, a little bit different.
What was your writing process for this book? Did you research first and then write, research as you go? Did your process differ because it was fiction? I spent a lot of time researching, obsessing, traveling, and trying to understand where we are heading. I was also very inspired by the book Fahrenheit 451, which I reread about twenty times while writing this; when I actually set out to write Q, I tried to get myself into the head of the people who will be on the front lines of the battle with the next true epidemic—the regular cops who will have to come face to face with people spreading the disease, once it truly hits a big city. It won’t be the scientists or the doctors who have to enforce quarantine laws, it will be police officers and EMTs.
You’ve started to write more pure fiction (e.g., “Q” and “7 Wonders”); is this something we can expect to see more of from you? I love both forms, and will continue to write fiction. Q is something I’ve had on my mind for a very long time, and it’s very different from anything I’ve ever written before. After Q, my next big book is nonfiction, a big true thriller that comes out this summer. It’s a bit of a secret right now. I can only tell you the title: Once Upon a Time in Russia. I’m also working on a second children’s book (I published one last year, the first in an Encyclopedia Brown type series, called Bringing Down The Mouse), the second in the Seven Wonders trilogy, and a TV show based on my book Ugly Americans.
If you’ve read this far and still haven’t bought the book, do a friend a solid and grab a copy of Ben Mezrich’s Q right now.
I was sitting at a Return Path board dinner around a year ago. We were at Frasca having a wonderful dinner when the discussion turned to American history. I sat and mostly listened as Matt Blumberg, Jeff Epstein, and Greg Sands had a vigorous discussion about several US presidents. Within about fifteen minutes, I realized that I knew almost nothing about American history. Sure, I took a class in junior high school (in Texas public schools, you do Texas history in 7th grade, American history in 8th grade, and World History in 9th grade), but I really didn’t remember much.
I got into Lincoln some in 2014 and Amy and I watched the HBO John Adams series while we were in Bora Bora. Each reminded me how little I actually knew about American history, especially the story of American presidents.
During the Return Path dinner, Matt mentioned that he’d been reading at least presidential biography each year. He’d made it through Woodrow Wilson (I couldn’t even tell you the number president Wilson was without the help of the Google.) I asked him to send me the book list, which he did, and then I promptly forgot about. Recently, I asked him to send it again as I’m now starting to march through biographies of Jefferson and Franklin (yes, I know Franklin wasn’t a president but he’s on my biography to read list anyway.)
Matt’s list is below. I’m looking for more great bios – given how I read I expect I’ll do more than one on each president. So if you read something particularly interesting or from a different perspective, toss it in the comments. And, if you have good ones from Harding forward (yes – I used Wikipedia to figure out who was after Wilson), put them in the comments also.
| – Imperfect Presidents (Jim Cullen) |
| – Presidential Ancedotes (Paul Boller) |
| – A Pocket History of the United States (Allan Nevins) |
| – Selling the World Ablaze Washington, Adams, Jefferson and the American Revolution (John Ferling) |
| – Alexander Hamilton (Forest McDonald) |
| – The First American – The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (H.W Brands) |
| – Benjamin Franklin – The Autobiography (Benjamin Franklin) |
| – Patriarch (Richard Norton Smith) |
| – George Washington (Robert F. Jones) |
| – John Adams (David McCullough) |
| – The Portable Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson) |
| – Amercian Sphinx – The Character of Thomas Jefferson (Joseph Ellis) |
| – Rot, Riot and Rebellion: Mr. Jefferson’s Struggle to Save the University That Changed America (Rex Bowman) |
| – Jefferson’s Great Gamble (Charles Cerami) |
| – Burr: A Novel (Gore Vidal) |
| – Undaunted Courage (Stephen E Ambrosse) |
| – James Madison – The American President Series (Gary Willis) |
| – James Monroe – The Quest for National Idenitity (Harry Ammon) |
| – John Quincy Adams (Robert Remini) |
| – John Marshall – Definer of a Nation (Jean Edward Smith) |
| – The Great Triumvirate (Merrill Peterson) |
| – The Missouri Compromise and the Afermath (Robert Pierce Forbes) |
| – American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (Jon Meacham) |
| – Martin Van Buren (Joel H. Sibley) |
| – Old Tippecanoe William Henry Harrison and his Time (Freeman Cleaves) |
| – John Tyler (Gary May) |
| – Polk – The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America (Walter K. Borneman) |
| – Zachary Taylor – The American Presidents Series (John S. Eisenhower) |
| – Millard Fillmore: Biography of a Presidnet (Robert J. Rayback) |
| – Frankin Pierce: A Biography (Roy Nichils) |
| – James Buchanan (Philip S. Klein) |
| – Lincoln: A Novel (Gore Vidal) |
| – Mr Lincoln’s T-Mails (Tom Wheeler) |
| – Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Dorris Goodwin) |
| – Lincoln (David Herbert Donald) |
| – Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (James M. McPherson) |
| – Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (James Swanson) |
| – Jefferson Davis, Confederate President (Herman Hattaway) |
| – Bloody Crimes (James Swanson) |
| – Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Seth Grahme Smith) |
| – The Avenger Takes His Place: Andrew Johnson and the 45 Days That Changed the Nation (Howard Means) |
| – Andrew Johnson: The American President Series (Annette Gordon Reed) |
| – A Short History of Reconstruction (Eric Foner) |
| – Assasination! The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents (Brendan Powell Smith) |
| – Grant (William S. McFeely) |
| – Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant Volume 1 (Ulysses S. Grant) |
| – Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant Volume 2 (Ulysses S. Grant) |
| – When General Grant Expelled the Jews (Jonathan S. Sarna) |
| – 1876 (Gore Vidal) |
| – Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President (Ari Hoogenboom) |
| – Garfield: A Biography (Allan Peskin) |
| – Chester A. Arthur: A Quarter-Century of Machine Politics (George Frederick Howe) |
| – An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (H.P. Jeffers) |
| – The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison (Homer Socolofsky) |
| – The Biography of Benjamin Harrison: The American President Series (Charles W. Calhoun) |
| – Grover Clevland (Henry F. Crapp) |
| – Continental Liar from the State of Maine (James G. Blaine) |
| – The Unknown Architects of Civil Rights: Thaddeus Stevens, Ulysses S. Grant, and Charles Sumner (Barry Goldenberg) |
| – Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money In America (Jack Beatty) |
| – William McKinley and His America (H. Wayne Morgan) |
| – The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (Edmund Morris) |
| – Theodore Rex (Edmund Morris) |
| – Colonel Roosevelt (Edmund Morris) |
| – The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (Candice Millard) |
| – The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (Dorris Kearns Goodwin) |
| – The William Howard Taft Presidencty (Lewis Gould) |
| – The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed American (James MacGregor Burns) |
| – That Man: An Insiders Portrait of Frankin D. Roosevelt (Robert H. Jackson) |
| – Woodrow Wilson (John A Thompson) |
I read over 40 books in my month off the grid in Bora Bora recently. I’ve had many requests to blog about my reading list but rather than do one big long post I thought I’d break it up into several “longish” different posts over time. If all you are interested in is my reading list, my Goodreads Brad Feld account has everything I’ve read in reverse chronological order.
This post is about biographies. I’ve always loved to read biography and expect that my 2015 reading diet will include a lot more biography and history than normal as it has caught my interest lately. I’m including company biographies in this post. I didn’t read many, but had a little Google obsession on this trip which you’ll see in a moment.
The order is in the order I read them (even though the Goodreads list is in reverse-chron order).
Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard: I finished this just before we took off. I’m not much of a hockey fan – my childhood team was the Dallas Blackhawks – but I was entranced by this book. I learned a lot about how hockey works, much of it distressing to me. The enforcer role was one I didn’t really understand and Boogaard’s story is a powerfully tragic one. The book is well-written and moves quickly, while painting a powerful picture of how hockey can really damage people.
How Google Works: Eric Schmidt (Google chairman, prior CEO), Jonathan Rosenberg (long time Google exec) wrote the trendy book of the year about Google. I knew many of the approaches and anecdotes of the book – and how Google works – from the many other things I’ve read about Google over the years. But having it in one place, organized conceptually, was worth taking another pass through it all.
Memos from the Chairman: I had high hopes for Ace Greenberg’s compendium of memos from his time as chairman of Bear Stearns, which coincided with massive growth and success for the company. While there was some cuteness in here along with a few things to reflect on, I was disappointed in how dull the majority of the book was. Maybe it was awesome in 1996 when it came out, but it felt slow and dated in 2015.
Einstein: His Life and Universe: Einstein is one of my heroic figures and Walter Isaacson just nails it. If you are an Einstein fan or just want to really learn the full story, this is the book for you.
The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution: If I hadn’t read the Einstein book, I probably wouldn’t have read The Innovators, but Isaacson had pleased me so much that I devoured this one also. This is Isaacson’s 2014 tome an a follow-up to his Steve Jobs book. It was good, but not epic.
Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn’t Tell You About the Civil War: I originally saw this at my partner Ryan McIntyre’s house a few months ago when we were over for dinner. I Kindled it and dove in. I loved it – super easy to consume and a very playful way to learn, or relearn, some history. I’m planning at least one serious Lincoln biography in 2015 so this was a good way to get a taste of it.
The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership: Everyone knows that Richard Branson is cool, and iconoclast, a massive risk taker, and amazing successful. But he’s also extremely introspective and articulate. I’ve never met him or been to Necker Island, but plenty of my colleagues have. When I started reading this one, I felt like I was doing something obligatory to read the autobiography of one of our contemporary business legends, but I really enjoyed it and by the end was glad Branson had put the energy into writing this.
In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives: As with Walter Isaacson, I eventually get around to reading all of Steven Levy’s books (I read his epic Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution in 1984 as a freshman at MIT and it has stayed with me ever since.) His Google book was awesome – much better than How Google Works. I learned a ton I didn’t know, especially about history that had either been ignored, glossed over, or repurposed. If you have any interest, relationship with, or curiosity about Google, this is the book for you.
Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age: I’ve read lots of articles on Ada Lovelace, but I’ve never read a comprehensive biography. The story was fascinating, especially when pondering what life much have been like in Victorian-era England and how much of any uphill cultural battle Ada Lovelace had. While we’ve got lots of challenges around gender still in our society, we’ve definitely made read progress in the last 150 years. This linkages to Lord Byron, Lady Byron, and Charles Babbage were fascinating and, in many ways, disheartening. Ada Lovelace was clearly a genius – I can’t even begin to imagine the amazing stuff she could have done if she was born in 1990 instead of 1815.
As a bonus, Amy and I have been watching the HBO Series John Adams and I’ve decided to start tackling biographies of American presidents and other American heroes of mine, like Ben Franklin. Look for some of this in 2015.
Happy reading.
Suddenly, there’s a lot of constructive conversation about women in technology and entrepreneurship. I’m glad, as there is a continuous mess of sexism, misogyny, hatred, anger, specious assertions, and general weirdness. This mess is from men to women, from women to women, from men to men, and from women to men. Basically, there’s gender equality in the awful parts of this.
As chair of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, I’ve seen all sides of this, including plenty aimed at me. I’m an enormous believer in the power of being a male advocate so I’ll continue to be outspoken, supportive, and thoughtful on the issues and engagement of women in technology.
I was very excited to get a chance to read the book Innovating Women by Vivek Wadhwa and Farai Chideya. It’s an excellent combination of stories from powerful female innovators, along with analysis and research supporting the context. I enjoyed the book a lot, heard some new stories, and got a few new ideas.
As I read through some of the Amazon reviews and threads that spiraled out from them, I once again saw a continuous mess of sexism, misogyny, hatred, anger, specious assertions, and general weirdness. This mess is from men to women, from women to women, from men to men, and from women to men. Basically, there’s gender equality in the awful parts of this.
In my fantasy, humans would learn how to be constructive participants in a conversation. I recognize this is a fantasy, but I’ll keep trying, especially around this issue.