Tag: book
Well, week 1 of the Do More Faster book tour was a blast, but I’ve contemplated renaming it the “Do More Faster And Then Sleep All Weekend to Recover Book Tour” based on the empirical data from my 24 hour sleep session from Saturday at noon to Sunday at noon.
The book tour is in Boulder on Monday and Tuesday, then Denver on Tuesday night, and then Boston on Thursday. If you haven’t yet signed up and want to come, there are still some slots open as follows:
Monday Night – 10/18 – Two Guys and a Book – Beer with Brad and David. We’ll be at the Dairy Center for the Arts (2590 Walnut Street) from 7pm to 9pm tonight handing out book, drinking beer, and having fun.
Tuesday – 10/19 – We have two events during the day at the TechStars Bunker. If you are interested in TechStars, come to TechStars For An Hour from 2:30pm – 3:30pm. Then from 4pm – 5pm we’ll be having an event called Angels in the Architecture where we will discuss the local angel and VC landscape with co-panelists Howard Diamond, Brad Bernthal, Dave Carlson, Ray Crogan, Ari Newman, and Paul Berberian. Howard, Brad, Ari, and Paul also contributed to the book so come and get them to sign your copy! You need to register for each event – TechStars For An Hour or Angels in the Architecture.
Tuesday Night – 10/19 – We are having the big Boulder / Denver event at the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup on Tuesday night. As of now 425 people are coming so don’t miss out. We have a bunch of the contributors from the book attending – maybe I’ll make them read their chapters.
Finally, on Thursday, I’ll be in Boston. We are doing an Angels in the Architecture event from 2:30pm – 3:30pm and then heading over to the MASS Challenge from 5pm – 9pm.
Sunday morning I read The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. I’m a big fan of Leo’s Zen Habits blog (I was turned onto it a few months ago by Amy) and I had high hopes for the book. It delivered.
Several times a week I hear from a friend or colleague that he or she is overwhelmed with the amount of stuff going on in their world. Occasionally someone ends up in my office in tears as they struggle to make sense of the madness that has become their life. I continuously gets email responders from people I email that say some variant of “I’m way behind on email – be patient” which is often foreshadowing for their subsequent blog post or tweet that says “I’ve declared email bankruptcy – starting over.”
A decade ago I figured out a rhythm that works for me. I’ve always managed to get through an enormous amount of stuff, but I would periodically go off a cliff and just completely melt down from complete exhaustion. I’d either end up asleep for a week or in bed with a nasty cold (trying to sleep, but mostly just feeling shitty) until my body (and brain) recovered. My ultimately solution was a combination of some of the things I’ve talked about in my Work-Life Balance posts (and that I’m writing about now in my Work-Life Balance email newsletter).
Some of my tactics show up in Leo’s book. As I read through it, I thought to myself that “everyone I know that struggles with being overwhelmed” should read this book. As fits the title, it’s not a long book, but it’s well organized, has a clear philosophy throughout, and is easy to relate to and understand.
I was already a fan of Leo’s, but now I’m even a bigger one.
Now that Do More Faster is out and I appreciate how hard it is to write and publish a book, I read every book through a different (more appreciative) lens. This morning, I spent three hours on the coach and plowed through Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry. It was excellent.
Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, tells the story of Salesforce.com in 111 short stories. He mixes each story with clear advice, from his perspective, about creating, building, and scaling a business. I loved the format that Benioff used to organize these stories into clear themes, while still marching linearly through the story of Salesforce.com.
This is a book aimed at entrepreneurial CEO’s but scales nicely to any founder of a company. It also reminds us of the actual evolution of Cloud Computing, which several very large technology companies continue to try to claim credit for. When reading this book, you realize how deep and clear Benioff’s vision was from the beginning.
It was well worth the time to read and gave me some structural ideas for some writing that I’m working on.
With the release of our book “Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup“, my co-author David Cohen and I are taking the show on the road. Next week is Palo Alto on Tuesday, Los Angeles on Thursday, and Seattle on Friday.
In most cities, we are doing four separate events:
Pitch More Faster: Several emerging local companies will present their companies to me and several other local VCs. They will provide direct and specific advice to each company on how to improve their pitch and/or their business. This is an invite only event.
TechStars For An Hour: If you’re interested in learning more about TechStars or possibly applying, this is a great chance to come and learn about the program from me and David Cohen (TechStars CEO). We’ll talk about the results so far, what it’s all about, how it works, and much more. The event is also great for angel investors and venture capitalists who would like to learn more about how the TechStars program works, and how to get involved. These are open but limited attendance events – you need to pre-register on Eventbrite (links below).
Angels In The Architecture: A group of local angel investors, me, and a few angel backed entrepreneurs will discuss the role of angels investors in the VC / angel ecosystem. This is an invite only event.
Evening Entrepreneurial Meetup: We will have a party at night – venues will vary by city. These will be open events – sign up on Plancast (links below).
The tour is being sponsored by Cooley, Silicon Valley Bank, Microsoft, and Rackspace. We’ll be holding most of the day time events at one of their offices and we deeply appreciate all of their support. We’ll have plenty of good stuff to give away along with interesting people to meet and spend time with, including many of the people that contributed to Do More Faster.
If you are interested in attending, get sign up info via the Do More Faster Plancast, the Do More Faster Facebook page, or the Do More Faster Twitter account.
In the mean time, the sign up links for next week’s events follow. Since space is limited, please don’t sign up unless you are planning to attend.
Palo Alto: Tuesday October 12
3:30pm – 4:30pm: TechStars For An Hour
7:00pm – 9:00pm: Do More Faster Book Tour Kick Off: Gordon Biersch Brewery
Los Angeles: Thursday October 14
3:30pm – 4:30pm: TechStars For An Hour
7:30pm – 9:00pm: Do More Faster Evening Meetup (also knows as Two Guys and a Book and Beers): The Den of Hollywood
Seattle: Friday October 15
3:30pm – 4:30pm: TechStars For An Hour
7:00pm – 9:00pm: Do More Faster Evening Meetup (aka The Easy): TechStars Seattle
Of course, if you bring a copy of the book, David and I will happily sign it.
About a year ago David Cohen and I were having a beer together talking about ways to capture all the different things we’d learned about early stage entrepreneurship from running the TechStars program. In a moment of insanity, we decided to write a book. The result is Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup.
Over the next six months, we worked with many of the mentors and entrepreneurs that have participated in TechStars. Our goal was to write a unique book full of useful information for any early stage entrepreneur. Rather than give advice or simply tell an entrepreneurial success story, we decided to blend the experience of the TechStars entrepreneurs and the TechStars mentors in an organized fashion. As a result, we ended up with seven themes (Idea and Vision, People, Working Effectively, Product, Fundraising, Legal and Structure, and Work / Life Balance) and about eighty separate lessons and stories.
We were on the verge of self-publishing it when we were introduced to a senior editor at Wiley who embraced the project and one other one that we proposed. As a result, we ended up with a two book deal with Wiley. When I reflect on things, getting Wiley in the mix has been awesome as they have helped us materially improve the quality of the book.
My professional career – since I was 19 – has been focused on entrepreneurship either as an entrepreneur, angel investor, or venture capitalist. I’ve spent a lot of time since 2005 thinking about the “science of entrepreneurship” as well as the “dynamics of entrepreneurial communities”, especially as I’ve helped bring Boulder to the forefront of entrepreneurial communities in the US. I’m extremely excited about Do More Faster and hope it lives up to my expectations. But most of all, I’m really grateful to everyone who has participated in TechStars and has contributed to the book.
The publication date is 10/4/10 and it should be in bookstores around the US by 10/20/10. David and I are doing a 12 city book tour starting in Palo Alto on 10/12/10 – all the info is up on the Do More Faster Plancast. And of course, you can follow Do More Faster on Twitter or join the Do More Faster Facebook Page.
Finally, Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is available for pre-order on Amazon as of right now. If you are interested, go grab a copy.
As I watch Amy scurry around and put the final touches on our Homer house before we leave to go home to Boulder, I thought I’d stay out of the way and write a quick final book post on The House Advantage. I read a bunch more books the past two weeks but ran out of gas reviewing them all – see my Shelfari bookshelf if you are interested. But The House Advantage was worth mentioning.
My friend Niel Robertson – the CEO of Trada (which we are investors in) introduced me to Jeff Ma (the author) and then also sent me a book. It turns out that I know Jeff and lived next door to his sister when I was at MIT. You also may know Jeff – he’s the main character in Ben Mezrich’s excellent book Bringing Down the House and the inspiration for he main character in the movie 21. It also turns out that Jeff is an accomplished entrepreneur. He’s had several successful companies, the most recent being Citizen Sports which Yahoo recently acquired.
The subtitle of The House Advantage is “Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business”. In it, Jeff takes on a topic that most business people avoid – statistics. He uses his experience with both the MIT blackjack team, sports statistics, and his friends experiences in these areas to explain very important statistics concepts in very clear and straightforward ways. He’s a great writer – rather than resulting in a dull book about business stats, it’s a spicy read full of stories of Vegas, sports, high speed car chases, airplanes exploding, terrorist drug lords, extreme dance parties, and … well – ok – Vegas and sports.
As I was reading it, I kept thinking “every CEO I work with and every investor I’ve ever met should read this book.” After I finished, I thought “every academic researcher who has ever written a paper should read this.” None of the statistics concepts are complex, but they are regularly misused, abused, and confused. Or ignored.
As a bonus, the book includes the Basic Strategy Chart for Blackjack. How many business books can claim that? Seriously, this is an outstanding book – Jeff – well done!
It looks like I got 25 haiku’s in my haiku contest for a copy of The New Polymath. After consulting with Vinnie Mirchandani (the book’s author) we’ve chosen Rini Das as the winner for the following haiku:
Old Polymath all men
If New Polymath a woman
Then we call it “Progress”
Amy told me she approved of our choice. Rini – “the book is in the mail.”
I snuck another book in last night before I went to bed but was too tired to blog about it. After The New Polymath, I felt like I needed something similar but different so I read Where’s My Jetpack by Daniel Wilson (CMU Ph.D. in Robotics).
It was hilarious. Following are the chapter titles: Jetpack, Zeppelin, Moving Sidewalk, Self-Steering Car, Hoverboard, Teleportation, Underwater Hotel, Dolphin Guide, Space Vacation, Hologram, Smell-O-Vision, Robot Pet, Mind-Reading Device, Anti-Sleeping Pill, Invisible Camouflage, Artificial Gills, X-Ray Specs, Universal Translator, Robot Servant, Unisex Jumpsuit, Smart House, Food Pill, Self-Contained, Skyscraper City, Ray Gun, Space Mirror, Space Elevator, Cryogenic Freezing, and Moon Colony.
Wilson talks about the history of each invention, along with their original sci-fi source as well as the actual lineage of the invention in the real world. It was surprising to me how many of these almost got commercialized but then died for – well – usually pretty obvious reasons.
Of these, the three I want the most is a Jetpack, a Hoverboard, and a Teleportation Machine. Actually, I’d like a portable teleportation machine that my jetpack fits in. Smell-O-Vision – not so much.
Tonight’s book is The New Polymath by Vinnie Mirchandani. Actually, it’s the book I read the last two nights as it was too much to get down in one night. I’ve been promising Vinnie that I’d read his book ever since he sent me the galleys a few months ago. I tossed the PDF up on my Kindle which, when I got around to it, was unreadable because of the tiny font and the way the Kindle scaled the PDF to fit the page. I promptly went on to another book and never read it.
Vinnie was patient with me and was willing to keep talking to me and provide some advice on a completely unrelated topic. When the book came out I hopped on Amazon and plopped down whatever they charged me for the Kindle version. And I’m glad I did, not just because I like Vinnie and his writing, but because it’s an excellent book.
For a feeling of the type of topics Vinnie covers, take a look at his blogs: Deal Architect and New Florence. New Renaissance. Vinnie is all innovation, all the time. Which I love.
The New Polymath was an excellent tour de force of innovation. Vinnie served up example after example after example in an interesting and relevant framework that kept things moving, unlike a lot of business books where you hit page 79 and just stall. In this case, whenever an example started to peak, it was time for the next one. Last night, I stopped and went to bed when I was about halfway through and considered letting the book sit for a few days but tonight when I finished dinner I sat down and finished it off.
The only chapter I found too long and uninteresting was the one on BP, but I couldn’t figure out if that was because of what’s currently going on with BP or if it was just too much by the time I got to it. But, like a reference on someone where the inevitable “does the person have any weaknesses you are aware of” question arises, I get to point to the BP example and say “ok – that one wasn’t my favorite, but it was minor compared to all the great stuff in this book.”
It was kind of fun to see lots of friends and colleagues as examples. This was an unexpected surprise as I hadn’t previewed the book in advance and had never talked to Vinnie about it. Like any good polymath, Vinnie covered a lot of different ground. While there was a tech / IT / Internet focus, there was plenty of cleantech, energy, bio, and broad business (non-tech) examples. And there were a couple that were deliciously surprising and unexpected.
Vinnie gave me a copy of a book to give away to one of you, demonstrating his command of social media marketing. I’ve decided to run a competition – the best haiku with the word “polymath” in gets the book. Leave your haiku in the comments (make sure you use a valid email address so I can email you if you win.) Show me what you’ve got.
Update: A few folks emailed me that they couldn’t find the Kindle Version of The New Polymath. For some reason it’s not linked to the hardback edition.