Tony Fadell – Build
Shamelessly self-aggrandizing autobiography dressed-up as self-help book for entrepreneurs.
Tony Fadell – Build
Shamelessly self-aggrandizing autobiography dressed-up as self-help book for entrepreneurs.
Nadia Eghbal – Working in Public
From an economical perspective, open source software is no different from other content that is published online.
The book proves that those A16Z folks are very good at marketing sauce on not-so-ground-breaking ideas (as described by Sebastian Mallaby)
Sebastian Mallaby – The Power Law
Nice as a description of the historical evolution of the VC phenomenon, but rather condoning in its evaluation.
In hindsight, the early internet was shockingly primitive.
The gripping storytelling makes the shameless bragging accceptable and entertaining.
Eloit Brown and Maureen Farrell – The cult of We
The book is too overtly written with the benefit of hindsight, which makes the cautionary tale less compelling.
Christiane Lemieux and Duff McDonald – Frictionless
Story on repeat: X had a frustration, X is so privileged that she can raise at least a couple of $100k from friends and family, and X starts an amazing company to solve the problem – at least in theory – for herself and the rest of the world.
After a reasonably insightful chapter describing Alibaba’s strategy, the book slides into an enumeration of facts that illustrate the way in which China’s government steers private enterprise.
The writer never really succeeds in making the Simulmatics story seem important, partly because due to endless digressions about the bad marriages of the men who founded the company and partly because she avoids any substantial assessment of the actual models they used.
Adrian Daub – What tech calls thinking
Entertaining and polemic book, although many of the author’s points hardly need to be argued.
JimMcKelvey – The innovation stack
The book is exactly what it tries to avoid: being just another entertaining founder story (in this case about Square).
Geoffrey Parker, Marshall Van Olstyne, Sangeet Choudary – Platform revolution
Remember: there are many ways in which platforms can fail!
Densely written ‘how-to guide’ for executives who want to build a sustainable growth company.
Former Google China Chief explains why China will win the AI race when it comes to applications of deep learning in the physical world.
A staple of startup literature, advocating a deceivingly simple concept which is hard to get right (as is proven by the examples of startups that have failed since publication).
By far the more readable book on org structure that I have come across.
Written in an entertaining laid-back style that more business books could use and – above all – surprisingly relevant over 25 years after first publication in 1991.