Brad Feld

Category: Books

I had a week of "a book a day" where every single one I read was great.  I’m now slogging through an "ok" book (The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism) so I thought I’d take a break and write quick reviews of the excellent ones that I have read lately.

The Last Lecture: Wow.  Randy Pausch is just incredible.  A well known CMU professor with a great zest for life, Randy was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer in September 2006.  He broke into the mainstream with his awesome lecture titled "The Last Lecture" which was the final lecture he gave at CMU.  It’s a riveting 76 minute lecture that the book was subsequently based on.  Both are worth every second you spend on them.  As of today, Randy is still alive, but according to his blog he recently "has also taken a step down and is much sicker than he had been. He’s now enrolled in hospice."  (Added the morning of 7/25: Randy Pausch passed away last night.) I don’t know Randy personally, but after hearing his lecture, reading as much of his as I could find on the web, and then reading The Last Lecture, I feel like a have a real sense for him.  He teaches – and inspires – in a way and at a high level that few other do in this world. 

The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood: I had a wide range of emotions after reading The Last Lecture, but I wasn’t prepared for The Mascot.  This is easily the best book of the year so far.  Mark Kurzem writes a complex story about discovering his father’s childhood as an "adopted Nazi."  Kurzem discovers this as an adult in graduate school when his father, who has suppressed this knowledge from everyone his entire life, finally opens up to Kurzem.  As his father starts telling the parts of his story that he can remember, the two of them explore his father’s past (it turns out he’s a jew), and try to put the many pieces of the puzzle of his father’s childhood back together.  On top of it all, the relationship between father and son is complex and evolves beautifully and unpredictably through the book.  Fabulous, shocking, brutal, mysterious, complicated, sad, depressing, and intriguing at so many levels.

Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!): If you are a happily married couple living in Denver with two youngish daughters and you decided to embark on having sex every day for 100 days, what would it be like?  Yup – that’s what this book is about.  It’s extremely well written – has the appropriate amount of titillation and salacious stuff without being over the top while being an enjoyable romp through the complex life of a modern couple that I expect many people can relate to.  Equal parts brain candy, philosophy, biography, and – well – sex.

The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine: I’m not an oeniphile so I didn’t expect to love this book, but I did (thanks Frank for the recommendation.)  I learned an incredible amount about the history of wine while getting a great look into the mysterious world of high priced "rare" wines – and what appears to be a massive fraud that evolved over a 20 year period surrounding a wide range of "rare" wines.  The cast of characters is extensive and while this is clearly history (going back to Thomas Jefferson) it reads like a thriller.  Yum.

Glasshouse: After that stretch of books I needed some mental floss.  I loved the Charles Stross sci-fi book that I read last week and on a reader’s recommendation went on Amazon and bought all of his books for my Kindle.  This one was even better, and I’ve got another half dozen to go before I run out of things he’s written in the past few years.

The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means: I figured Soros would be a challenge after Glasshouse.  Every other chapter (the philosophy part) was.  I always enjoy reading Soros’s books; I never completely understand them but I enjoy his blunt and cynical view about the markets and how people interact with them.

Now – this incredible stretch of great books couldn’t continue.  It doesn’t.  I read about half of The Pirate’s Dilemma tonight.  It’s ok, but all the commentary between the examples are unnecessary as the examples are the meat (and stand on their own.)  Fortunately, I know how to skim.


Running and Conferences

Jul 21, 2008
Category Books

I’ve got some fun things for you to do this Monday morning (or at least to put on your schedule to do.)

Want to learn how to run?  How to Go From Sedentary to Running in Five Steps.

If you are already running, join the Gyminee Running Challenge or Gyminee Weight Loss Challenge.  Or – join me on Gyminee in my Lifehacker inspired six week program to do One Hundred Pushups.

Developing software for your iPhone?  Check out iPhoneDevCamp Colorado on 8/1 – 8/3.

Like 37 Signals?  Jason Fried is talking at the Oriental Theater in Denver on July 31st.

Defrag is starting to heat up.  Eric has a post up in response to the "tech has gotten boring" meme that is making the rounds.  That that he says "bah" and talks more about his thoughts in Anything but ho-hum.


It’s time for another quick list of interesting things I found this morning on the web along with my occasionally witty commentary.

Harmonix Party: Rock Band owns LA with Who concertI love everything about Harmonix and Rock Band.  Er, um, The Who just played at a Harmonix / MTV party at the Orpheum Theater in LA.  The Who.  The Who!  One of my best friends – Warren Katz – who was also an angel investor in Harmonix had the following to say about the party:

"My jaw is on the floor and I am speechless. Not because I semi-randomly got hooked up with a game that’s turning out to be one of the greatest hits of all time. Not because that game is actually fundamentally changing how a great hunk of the world interacts with music. Not because this game hosted a party featuring my favorite rock band of all time, The Who (and I would have hurt myself to get on a plane for this party). I am stunned mute because, in my opinion, one of the three best songs in Rock and Roll history, "Won’t Get Fooled Again" (the other two being "Paradise By the DashBoard Lights" and "Bohemian Rhapsody"), was referred to throughout this article as "the theme from CSI". We cannot possibly be that old, and the youth of today cannot possibly be that out of touch. It actually took me a minute to realize what song they were talking about."

Alex, Eran, and all the rest of the people at Harmonix.  You are the coolest nerds ever.  Ian – you have real competition here in the cool nerd category!

Latest shocker: June prices go up, up, up: "Consumer prices rose 1.1 percent in June from the month before, far faster than the expected rate of 0.7 percent and almost double the reading from May, the Labor Department said Wednesday."  Hmmm – an annualized rate of 13.2% – that would be "inflation."

SAP, Oracle Boost Software Prices: "Unlike price increase for food, fuel and many other commodities, the changes in software don’t stem from a shortage of supply or a rise in demand. They are attempts by software makers to increase their bottom lines, said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities Inc."  Well – yes – but it’s also called an "oligopoly."  SAP annual maintenance, which has been at 17% for a while, will now be at 22%.  Oracle simply implemented a 15% – 20% across the board price increase for US customers.

Blogging’s Dead, Long Live Blogging: While this particular meme goes round and round and round, especially among the A-list bloggers talking about blogging (or not blogging), Fred nails why he – and I – blog in this post.  Whenever someone asks me "why do I blog" I now have a new link to send them to.

Chill out – it’s just a normal cool summer: My part time meteorologist Josh Larson emailed me this link.  Apparently it’s just been a normal summer in Alaska with endless clouds, cool weather, and for the last 24 hours non-stop rain.  ""We were in a warm phase of the Pacific decadal oscillation in the ’80s and ’90s. (Some forecasters) believe we may have entered into the cold phase."  Where is that damn global warming when you really want it?


While Amy assures me there is no correlation between "books" and "sun appearance", I have been reading a book each day and there has been no sun since we arrived in Homer 12 days ago.  I was just using the same argument that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster uses to explain global warming.

As is typical of my time in Homer, I’ve covered a lot of ground.  This time I’m reading exclusively on my Kindle which I love; I haven’t cracked open a physical book yet.  That said, some of the books have been great and a few have been clunkers.

Inside Steve’s Brain: In preparation for the launch of the iPhone 3G, I decided to try to get into Inside Steve’s Brain.  This recently became one of the trendy technology books, presumably due to everyone’s desire to be as innovative as Steve Jobs (or at least learn some of his special tricks.)  I had low expectations for the book (I generally dislike books like this); it surprised me by being pretty good.  There were plenty of instructive Steve Jobs stories and interesting Apple history that I hadn’t read in other places.  The summaries / lessons at the end of the chapters were tedious and there were a few "extra" chapters that could have been edited out if the book industry could handle a business book less than 200 pages.  But – overall – it’s good, especially if you are an Apple fanboy.

The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company: In my "read all about Steve Jobs" theme, I consumed The Pixar Touch.  If you are choosing between Inside Steve’s Brain and The Pixar Touch, choose this one.  It’s an excellent history of Pixar.  The first half is extraordinarily interesting as it details all the early people and research that formed the computer animation industry.  This book also felt more balanced (e.g. "less sensational") in its coverage of all the twists and turns that Pixar went through along the way to success.

Halting State: Excellent "slightly in the future" science fiction incorporating all kinds of funky technology, a complex plot around virtual worlds virtual money, plenty of good guys, bad guys, a male nerd / female cop protagonist romantic plot twist, some irrational bad guys, and a few things you had to go back and read a second time to make sure you understood what had just happened.  All of it is set in Scotland resulting in some entertaining dialog for this American boy.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies: Boring, but then I had already knew of many of the examples in the book.  If you are a corporate dude looking for examples of the use of "social technologies" in the enterprise, there are lots of useful stories here.  If you like to read Forrester Research stuff, you are the target audience.  Probably in the same category as Scoble and Israel’s Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers – a skimmer if you are in the tech business but important and useful if you are in a large corporation and are trying to figure out what all this social networking stuff means.

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life: Perfect.  I love Steve Martin.  I was in junior high school when he reached the pinnacle of his stand up fame.  I remember being a wild and crazy guy, strutting around while singing King Tut, and shouting out EXCUSE ME at the top of my lungs, much to my mother’s annoyance.  This is a great autobiography – I even learned that he was born in Waco, Texas.

American Nerd: The Story of My People: So so.  I had high expectations for this book since it’s about me.  About 25% of it was great, 25% of it was boring, and 50% was filler.  I think I’m going to start a book imprint called "Books in Under 100 pages", hire a few merciless editors, and make good books great by getting rid of 25% to 75% of them.  While I didn’t get any new and exciting insights into nerds (although you might, especially if you are not a nerd), I learned some interesting things about ethnicity and racism that hadn’t previously cro
ssed my mind.  I’m glad I read this book and think it provides some useful insights into our culture, but damnit it didn’t need to be over 200 pages.

Final Theory: A Novel: Loved it.  A+ mental floss.  I can’t remember who recommended it to me, but thank you.  Physics, murder, sexy smart women, a professor hero, explosions, fast cards, evil mad scientists disguised as pacifists, evil people, complex scientific theories that actually almost work, gratuitous almost sex, a really scary mean bad guy, and some hillbillies.  What more could you want?

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time: Boring.  This could have been called "the biography of Keith Ferrazzi" with a bunch of anecdotes tossed in about how to treat people.  I think I would have liked it better if it was called "the biography of Keith Ferrazzi" and I was interested in reading the biography of Keith Ferrazzi.  Note to self – don’t write an autobiography and position it as a self-help business book.

Wall Street Stories: Awesome.  Clever, entertaining short stories about Wall Street.  Written in 1901.  All equally relevant today.  While fiction, these could have easily been true stories (and I imagine they were based on real events.)  I don’t play the market and this book clearly explains the reason why.

If you are feeling depressed about your public stock portfolio, pick up a copy of Wall Street Stories – it’ll at least make you laugh.  If you need a real laugh, grab a copy of Born Standing Up.  If you want to understand why you love your new iPhone so much, try out Inside Steve’s Brain.  If you get tired of reading, you can always watch the latest installment of David Cohen and I explaining TechStars on ColoradoBizTV. 

Oh – and please send some sun to Homer, Alaska.


If you follow my tweets you know that I am starting to get desperate for some sun.  I could never live in Seattle.  There’s a rumor that we’ll see the sun in Homer again later today – if it comes out to play I’ll post a picture of it (did you hear that Mr. Sun – that’s called a blibe ("blog bribe").  Here are some interesting things I’ve collected over the past few days of my cloud induced web reading.

Boulder Olympians weigh politics, pollution as they prep for Beijing: I’m really glad I didn’t quality for the 2008 Olympic Marathon.  If I had, I’d currently be struggling with whether or not to compete.  I sure hope no one dies.

Frontier going under the knife: It looks like there might be more to the Frontier bankruptcy than Frontier getting shafted by First Data.  Unlike Southwest, apparently Frontier didn’t hedge oil prices (nor – apparently – did any of the other major airlines.)  Oops.  My prediction – Southwest cleans up in the Denver market and United goes bankrupt again.

Thank you, Adobe Reader 9: Here’s a scathing review of everyone’s favorite bloatware, Adobe Reader. Oh – it’s also sort of a virus if you’ve ever gotten stuck in the "update – oops – didn’t work – try again" infinite loop. I’ve switched to Foxit Reader – much nicer.

You Just Dont Get It: Outstanding short post from Mark Cuban. If you tell me that "I don’t get it", you are either (a) being lazy or (b) being lazy.  You are also indirectly calling me an idiot, which isn’t necessarily a good way to get someone’s attention for your idea. 

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis: I put this one in the "well duh" category.  The real irony is that the World Bank – through a confidential report – suggests that global food prices are up by 75% due to biofuels, while the US claims the number is only 3%.  Who knows what the real truth is – like most "economic indicators", we will only know what really is going on sometime in the future when we look at back and study the past.  Regardless, don’t believe everything you read and hear in the media or from our world leaders.  "Well duh!"

Dispatches: A Post-Wimbledon Dialogue: I love tennis.  I used to be really good (as a junior) – I’m now able to occasionally torture – but not beat – someone that is a 4.5.  Watching Federer and Nadal play is a joy that harkens back to my childhood watching Borg and McEnroe play (I loved Borg because my game was like his but rooted for McEnroe because I was an angry and volatile tennis player.)  This is a brilliant recap of some genius tennis.

Electronic Papyrus: The Digital Book, Unfurled: I love my Kindle (I haven’t read a physical books since I left for Alaska last week.)  I’m not sure that I love the Readius, but I’m definitely game to try it.

Time for a run.  The sun is still not out.


The Latest Pile of Books

Jun 30, 2008
Category Books

It’s summer time and I’ve once again been powering through a bunch of books.  Amy and I are heading to our place in Homer, Alaska tomorrow where I’ll likely continue my pace of at least a book a day.  Look for regularly updates and quick reviews here.  In the meantime, here’s the latest set from the last week.

The Turnaround Kid: What I Learned Rescuing America’s Most Troubled Companies: This is the autobiography of Steve Miller, a well known turnaround executive.  He started his career at GM and progressed to be part of Lee Iacocca’s turnaround team at Chrysler (he was the CFO).  After Chrysler, he has been involved in a number of turnarounds including Federal-Mogul, Morrisson-Knudson, Bethlehem Steel, Waste Management, and Delphi.  Miller is a guy that’s not afraid of a Chapter 11 filing and appears to have skin as thick as the steel that Bethlehem Steel produced.  Good business history, especially if you enjoy reading about difficult situations.

Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide: This is an update of Hal Higdon’s classic.  I picked it up at the Grandma’s Marathon Expo and wolfed it down.  I got a few new ideas from it – if you are a marathoner – especially a beginning, or aspiring, one – it’s definitely worth reading.

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto: I read this one on a trip last week to Raleigh Durham (started on the flight out; finished on the flight back).  As I ate my Balance Bar on the plane, I realized that everything that Michael Pollan was saying rang gigantic bells in my head.  The first half of the book describes the devolution of "food" from "food" to "nutrients" and has a scathing analysis of how the food industry and our government have completely screwed the American diet.  The second half of the book tells you what you can do about it.  Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  That’s what I’m going to do for all of July – let’s see what happens when I combine that strategy with > 40 miles / week of running.

My Life on the Run: The Wit, Wisdom, and Insights of a Road Racing Icon: A few weeks ago Dan Gannon at Newmerix told me to start running Yasso 800’s to get my marathon times down.  At Grandma’s as I was wandering around the Expo (apparently buying books) I ran into Bart Yasso.  I mumbled in a semi-star struck way something about Yasso 800’s and bought his book.  I also bought a copy for Dan that he should have by now.  Yasso is a fucking running maniac / hero / star.  I have a new running idol.  The book is a great story for anyone that likes to run.

Masters Running: A Guide to Running and Staying Fit After 40: Yeah – I picked this up at the Grandma’s Expo also.  I’m 42 so the subtitle (something about running over the age of 40) appealed to me.  This book was a no-op – Higdon seems to have slapped this one together and didn’t really do anything substantive.  I got nothing from it.  Oh well – two out of three ain’t bad.

Fear & Greed: After all the running books, I needed some mental floss.  I can’t remember when / why I bought this book (or maybe someone sent it to me) but it had reached the top of the infinite pile of unread books.  I got to page 100 before I quit – it should have been called "Dumb & Stupid" with a subtitle of "Poorly Written Mental Floss".


I’ve got three great posts for you this morning to interrupt the long essays that my marathon addled brain has been pumping out.

First Mover vs Fast Follower – Who wins? Don Dodge reprints a story he wrote three years ago about whether being first wins or being a fast follower wins.  He adds some useful nuances for any entrepreneur (or VC) that is obsessed with the "we have to be first to market to win", "#1 takes most of the market, #2 takes the rest, and #3 to #n don’t matter", and other such cliches.

The Downturn Is a Rounding Error: Since I’m not a macro guy, I didn’t notice we were having an economic downtown.  I guess I noticed that the price of gas was higher, but as Amy is fond of saying, "don’t bother me about it until a gallon of gas costs more than a gallon of milk."  Oops – getting close (I think Amy meant "organic milk.")  Plus, our government is telling us that there is no "core inflation" (where "core inflation" doesn’t include fuel or food.)  Tom Peters helps us understand what he thinks really matters.

You gotta start somewhere: David Cohen posts an email to his business partner David Brown dated 2/08/06 that was the origin of TechStars.  I checked my calendar and the first time I met David was at 4pm on 6/06/06.  I find history to be fascinating.


Getting up at 3:45am to travel ruins my morning routine that includes jamming through email, web, and blogs.  I’ve had some time to catch up this afternoon (while Amy naps to recover from the early morning silliness) and I’ve got some good stuff for you.

I’m Training To Ruin A Marathon: A gem from The Onion.  On Saturday I’m going to run a marathon; this dude has a plan to ruin a marathon.

How to be a TechStar Part 2: A guide to Boulder’s Coffee Shops: Another gem – this time from Rob Johnson of EventVue (one of the TechStars companies).  Coffee is a very important part of Boulder.  Rob breaks it down for us all.

An evolution of definition: Eric Norlin talks about how "definitions" like "enterprise 2.0" evolve by comparing remembering how "digital identiy" works.  He has some constructive suggestions and explains what "Defrag" means – sort of.

Email Productivity: Albert Wenger at Union Square Ventures explains how he processes his inbox.

Validate Your Own Market: Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital explores common pickup lines.  He explains why the answer to a VC asking an entrepreneur "What happens if [INSERT LARGE ESTABLISHED PROSPECTIVE COMPETITOR HERE] decides to get into the market" is not "their entry will validate the market."

Have fun.  Drink your coffee and eat your wheaties.


Book: Microsoft 2.0

Jun 16, 2008
Category Books

If you do business with or compete with Microsoft, Mary Jo Foley’s new book Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era is an absolute must read. 

Mary Jo writes the popular All About Microsoft blog and has been a long time Microsoft watcher.  She’s often complimentary of Microsoft but can be brutally critical when she wants to be.  Overall, I’ve found her to be balanced, thoughtful, and usually enlightening.

While her blog is usually about stuff happening in the moment, the book Microsoft 2.0 does a great job of looking backwards and summarizing how Microsoft got to this point (along the many dimensions of their business) and then looks forward and explains where she thinks their priorities are and who is or will be responsible for them.  I found her long laundry list of key people and initiatives within Microsoft particularly useful.

Mary Jo wrote this before the conclusion (at least the present conclusion) of the Microsoft / Yahoo! semi-attempted merger so there are some things she’s left hanging, but from my perspective she gets a lot of things right.  It’s easy to get lost in all the Google / Microsoft / Yahoo! / Apple consumery noise and forget about the incredible business software, infrastructure server software, and operating systems businesses that Microsoft has built (and now has to defend); Mary Jo does a great job of separating the various parts of Microsoft’s businesses and articulating their strengths and weaknesses.

I’ve read a lot of books on Microsoft over the years.  The only other one that I’d put in the absolutely must read category is Partnering with Microsoft: How to Make Money in Trusted Partnership with the Global Software Powerhouse by Ted Dinsmore and Edward O’Connor.

Nice job Mary Jo!