My friend Ben Casnocha’s book titled My Start-Up Life hits the stores on May 18th. The website for the book – being published with Jossey-Bass (Wiley) is up. It’s all great stuff – I’m super excited about this having read, commented on, and contributed a short piece to the book. It’s always fun to end up on the back cover of a book – here’s my quote:
This book is extraordinary. I predict it will be a New York Times bestseller. While the world is filled with inspiring stories, there are few as insightful, enlightening, and powerful as Ben’s.
Help my prediction come true – pre-order your copy of My Start-Up Life now.
Christopher Buckley is a genius. I’ve written about how I’ve loved his previous books Thank You For Smoking and Florence of Arabia. I read Boomsday over the weekend – it’s Buckley’s best yet. Cassandra Devine is awesome and her approach to solving the impending social security crisis (and the formation of “Concerned Americans for Social Security Amendment Now, Debt Reduction and Accountability”) and her proposal of “volunteer transitioning” is out of the box brilliant (every major government wanna-be reformer should read it for ideas.)
I’m not a boomer (I was born in 1965 so I missed that particular generation by a year or so) so I’m always entertained by a book that takes shot after shot at the boomer generation. Here’s a good exchange between Cass, Randy (senator, blue blood, love interest, one-legged war veteran – sort of, candidate for president), and Terry (Cass’s boss, mentor, friend, and frustrated boomer PR flack.) From page 247.
“Your generation,” Cass said to Terry and Randy. “Not mine.”
Terry looked up from his Kai-shek chicken. “I suppose yours would do the right thing? Dream on. Every generation thinks it’s the most put upon in history. You’ve got your panties in a twist fretting about the deficit. My generation had real crises.”
“Oh, please,” Cass said. “Here it comes. Where were you when JFK was shot? If I hear one more Baby Boomer tell me, in mind-numbing detail, I think I’ll throw up.”
“I was in eighth grade,” Randy said. “We’d just come back from gym and —”
Cass said, “Prosecution rests.”
“It was a big deal,” Randy said. “What does your generation have to match it? The day Paris Hilton’s Sidekick was stolen?”
This book makes a mockery of some of our favorite “characters” (president, senators, the Catholic church, pro-life groups, PR firms, the FBI, dot-com billionaires, hot-body second wives of dot-com billionaires, powerful religious figures, the president’s chief of staff, feckless vice-presidents, each and every “generational segment”, russian prostitutes, and Yale. Brilliant.
Amy and I just got back from an awesome week off. We flew to Laguna Beach for our Q1 vacation, disconnected completely, and hid from the world for a week. Lots of sleep, running, sun, great food, that marital thing (you know – walking on the beach and holding hands), and a few movies (Deja Vu was way better than expected and Blood Diamond lived up to expectations.) And books – lots and lots of book.
I started the week with Firing Back. The subtitle “How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters” summarizes it nicely. The stories were great; the analysis was tedious, tiresome, and – like all too often – needed to be edited by 0.33x. I recommend either the Cliff Notes, a quick skim, or just keep reading Forbes.
24: Vanishing Point was much more satisfying to me than this season’s 24 has been. I think 24 has reached the “Alias point” for me (where I know what’s going to happen before it happens so I’m not that interested anymore, although it was pretty cool when Martha stabbed Charles.) Vanishing Point is another “in the past” books which helps build the 24 backstory. If you are a 24 fan, read them all.
MIG Pilot was the best book of the week. I can’t remember who recommended it to me (thanks!) It’s the story of Lt. Belenko, a Russian MIG pilot who stole a MIG on 9/6/76, flew it to Japan, and defected to the US. As I was reading it, Amy grabbed it and said “a real life 24, huh?” World politics was very different before CNN and the web.
Curious and Interesting Numbers was also fantastic. It starts with -1 and i, patiently takes us through 117 pages before breaking the number 100, and then accelerates into some really interesting numbers. We end with 1^billion (a “gigaplex”), F23471 (the largest known composite Fermat number), 10^10^10^34 (Skews’ number – that was a new one to me) and then Graham’s number (the world champion largest number.) After reading it, 3, 9, 27, and 42 are still my favorite numbers.
Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation started off strong. Andrew Metrick – an associate professor of finance at Wharton – has written 50% of a must read book for any analyst or associate at a venture capital firm (and most principals and partners, but I won’t presume to suggest what would be helpful for them.) Part 1 and Part 2 are a superb, detailed overview of the “history, terms, and math of venture capital.” (the first 50%.) Part 3 is an academic section on “partial valuation” – really just finance theory on VC term and exit scenarios (not terribly practical, but probably fun for some business school students.) Park 4 is section on “the finance of innovation” that has the practical utility of 1 over infinity. Hint to entrepreneurs – if your VC starts talking about game theory during your term sheet negotiations, run. Look for a deeper review on AsktheVC. Criticism notwithstanding, the first half of this book is outstanding.
The Inmates Are Running The Asylum was ok. Alan Cooper is a well known software designer who is also known as the “father of Visual Basic.” If you develop software for a living and haven’t read this book, it’s worth a spin through it to rough up your brain a little.
Architecture of Happiness was brilliant – the second best book of the week. Alain de Botton did a superb job of mixing text, photos, and concepts about architecture and the philosophy of life and happiness. Little known “Feld fact” – I “minored” (we didn’t really have minors at MIT – they call them “concentrations”) in art and architecture (course 4) and love buildings. I’m sure I’m an architect in a parallel universe.
I finished with my long time friend Ilana Katz’s (Feld Technologies employee #7) last book titled “Edith’s Refrain” (unpublished). It is the best of Ilana’s writing to date and was a pleasure to settle into as I began to consider re-entry into the real world.
Amy and I returned to an absolutely glorious day in Boulder well rested, happy, batteries recharged, and very much in love.
If you’ve ever been a management consultant you’ll love Consulting Demons by Lewis Pinault. My first company (Feld Technologies) did a lot of work for and with a major east coast consulting firm between 1988 and 1993 and I got to see the consulting industry from the inside. In addition to writing all of their back office software (stuff like accounting, recruiting, expense management, time tracking) we worked with them on a number of their client projects as their “IT specialists.”
Pinault’s book totally nails the life, the industry, and the experience of management consulting. It’s cynical and not that pleasant, but it’s a classic confessional that – if you identify with the business – is enthralling. BusinessWeek had a short review when it came out titled First, Let’s Kill All the Consultants and CIO Magazine had an except on one of the great sections titled The Devil You Don’t Know.
At the end of the book, Pinault steps off the consulting treadmill in 2000 to go follow his dream (getting a JD with an emphasis on Space Law and working toward a PhD in Planetary Geosciences and Future Studies.) A short trip on the web determined that he got back on the treadmill at some point, establishing himself as a “Guru” (there is a hysterical chapter on this – Chapter 10 – The Great Centurion) via his book The Play Zone: Unlock Your Creative Genius and Connect with Consumers. He’s chairman of BOX and is a Senior Client Partner in Korn/Ferry’s Leadership Development Solutions practice.
The book – plus Pinault’s trajectory through his consulting career – helps reinforce any cynicism one might have about management consulting.
Every now and then I realize that I had a theme to my weekend reading. This weekend I absorbed three books: Ego Check, Toilets of the World, and The No Assholes Rule. Do you see the theme?
Ego Check – written by CU Professor Mathew Hayward – was pretty good although once again a 225 page book could have been edited down to about 75 pages and gotten the same point across. The anecdotes and stories were mostly familiar to me, although Hayward put them together in a cohesive framework that’s useful if you want to study leadership styles and how “executive hubris” can destroy people and companies. Note to anyone writing a business book – think “75 pages.”
I’m fascinated by toilets and Toilets of the World didn’t disappoint. Enough said.
The No Assholes Rule weighed in at 186 pages – about 100 pages too long. Like Ego Check, it wasn’t a bad business book, but it was too long for the simple point that it was making. So far, my favorite business book of all time is On Bullshit which is about the perfect length.
I just spent the last four hours lying on the couch reading Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software. I’ve been dragging this book around for a couple of weeks and finally tackled it.
It was simultaneously depressing, anxiety producing, and inspiring. I’ve been involved in thousands of software projects over the past 20 years – my first company wrote hundreds of custom applications – ranging from short projects that took weeks to long projects that stretched out over years. I’ve been involved in numerous different approaches to building software, have worked with amazing teams that struggled to produce anything and average teams that shipped on time and on budget (and all permutations therein.) While my experiences have been all over the map and my level of deep engagement in the design and development process has lessened dramatically over the years, I never forget the joy of shipping a release.
One of my favorite pieces of software of all time was Lotus Agenda. I used it for many years after I started using Windows – I think Agenda was the final DOS-based application that I stopped using. So, when Mitch Kapor (the vision behind Lotus Agenda) announced the creation of the Open Source Application Foundation and the vision of their product Chandler some time in 2002 I was intrigued.
Dreaming in Code chronicles the agonizingly slow creation of Chandler. The book ends in late 2005, well before Chandler is released. It’s 2007 and Chandler is still on version 0.7 with the preview release targeted for April 2007. The vision for Chandler 1.0 is “an open source Personal Information Management (PIM) client application with innovative design and ambitious plans for sharing, extensibility and cross-platform support.”
I stopped paying attention to Chandler several years ago – I’d lost interest around version 0.4 since it basically didn’t do anything usable. I just downloaded and installed version 0.7 and the pain from the book washed over me again. Chandler has a long way to go before it’s useful, and then it’s not clear to me that it’s relevant any more.
Notwithstanding the incredible challenges this project has had, Kapor’s brilliance, patience, vision, and leadership shines through and inspires. My favorite paragraph was when the author – Scott Rosenberg – asks the question “With all the dispiriting delays, had he ever considered shutting Chandler down?” Kapor replies:
“No. There were times when I felt horrible depressed. But I’ve learned in my life, not just there, that if I have very powerful feelings of hopelessness, I should sit with them. I should refrain from taking action – because those feelings tend to be transient; they tend to be triggered by circumstances. Instead, just personally, take some time out, whether it’s an hour or a few hours or a day or two. And that’s as long as it’s ever been with this process to regain perspective. And every time I’ve come back, saying I believe we can find a way to accomplish the long-term vision by adapting how we about about doing it.”
One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Dune – “fear is the mindkiller.” Kapor shows us how he copes with it.
In addition to telling a poignant story of a software project, Rosenberg does an outstanding job of providing a survey course in the evolution of software development. If you are involved in a company that builds software for a living and want additional perspective on it, Dreaming in Code is worth your time.
My reading pace has been slower than usual lately. I digested a few books in January including Sweet and Low (the story of Sweet and Low and the fascinating machinations of a particularly complex family business), 24: Cat’s Claw (to deal with my 24 addiction prior to Day 6 starting), and Christopher Moore’s brilliant You Suck.
Coming off of You Suck I needed something deep and thoughtful. So I settled on AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll – the history of my favorite heavy metal band. I was in high school during the Back in Back, Highway to Hell, and For Those About to Rock days and I loved Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, so I got some Bon Scott / Brian Johnson crossover. Of course, the real teenage boy fantasy was to be Angus or Malcolm Young.
The book – AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll – was superb. If you are an AC/DC fan, it’s a detailed history of the band that seems real, comprehensive, and written by two people that really care about the band.
If you just want to watch some AC/DC videos, I’ve tagged a bunch of them. Either way, as I head to the airport, I’ve got Highway to Hell echoing in my brain.
One of my favorite things about going dark for a week is that I get to consume a bunch of books. Since we’ve been back from Alaska, my reading pace has been slower than normal, so it was nice to have plenty of uninterrupted time to lay on a couch and read. I usually manage to read a book a day on vacation – this time I only gobbled down five. All but one was great.
I started off with The Cure. Every entrepreneur should read this book. I can’t remember who recommended it to me (someone at the Return Path board dinner?) – it’s the extraordinary personal and professional story of John Crowley, his wife Aileen, their three children (two of whom have Pompe disease), and John’s creation of Novazyme Pharmaceuticals – a company he created to cure Pompe disease in order to save his kids. While John steps firmly on (and possibly over) the lines of medical ethics, his singleminded focus helps make tremendous progress on this disease while creating a very successful company that was acquired by Genzyme for $137m within 18 months of being founded. An old friend – David Hendren – makes an unexpected visit in this book as the lead investor in Novazyme (David was the lawyer who represented Feld Technologies – my first company – when it was acquired by AmeriData.)
Hundred Dollar Baby: I need some mental floss next. Spenser (and Robert Parker) didn’t disappointment me (they never do.) If you are a Spenser fan, this is the latest – both Hawk and Susan play prominent roles.
Destined for Destiny: George W. Bush’s unauthorized autobiography was as disappointing to me as GWB’s performance as president. Scott Dikkers – the editor-in-chief of The Onion was the co-author – and I expected 90 minutes of hilarity. The first few chapters had me laughing, but the book stalled out and I ended up looking at the pictures and skimming. I guess that fits with the topic. Oh well. Unless you are a serious Bush-basher or Onion-lover, don’t bother.
High School Confidential: I love ethnography. My favorite course as a doctoral student was John van Mannen’s – we spent a lot of time understanding how to best do qualitative research using fieldwork. I’ve always fantasized about dropping out and getting “regular jobs” – I love reading books about people that have the courage to do this and then document it. Jeremy Iversen – at age 25 – spent a year as a high school senior in a school in the Los Angeles area. The book is superb – Iversen does a phenomenal job of having the other high school kids tell the story. The most remarkable thing to me was how similar things were to my high school experience (public high school in Richardson, Texas – J.J. Pearce in case you wondered.) While the language is a little different, the social dynamics, sex, teachers, drugs, parents, school administrators, and struggles seemed pretty equivalent.
The Immortal Game: Awesome book. I’ve always loved chess, although I’m an “ok beginner” and I’ve never spent the time necessary to study the game in order to get past “level 1.” Shenk does a superb job of explaining the history of chess, which mixing in a famous game (Adolf Anderssen vs. Lionel Kieseritzky – June 21, 1851, London – known as “The Immortal Game”) to highlight / teach chess and its notation. It’s an incredibly compelling approach to teaching the history of chess – I found myself unable to put the book down.
Overall it was an extremely bookalicious week.
My dad just wrote a great review of Bob Woodward’s State of Denial. We were both reading it at about the same time and had a couple of interesting conversations about it. When Rumsfeld got fired, I moved on to another book (I had about 100 pages left) – I figure Woodward had accomplished his mission. But – I never wrote a review of the book. Now that my dad has done it, I don’t have to.