| | |  | Scott Berkun | Home » » Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days | | | | | | | Description: | | For would-be entrepreneurs, innovation managers or just anyone fascinated by the special chemistry and drive that created some of the best technology companies in the world, this book offers both wisdom and engaging insights—straight from the source.
— Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, and author of The Long Tail "All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money and (b) not having done it before, ever." —Steve Wozniak, Apple
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company. Where did they get the ideas that made them rich? How did they convince investors to back them? What went wrong, and how did they recover? Nearly all technical people have thought of one day starting or working for a startup. For them, this book is the closest you can come to being a fly on the wall at a successful startup, to learn how it's done. But ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence. The reason their founders become rich is that startups do what businessesdo—create value—more intensively than almost any other part of the economy. How? What are the secrets that make successful startups so insanely productive? Read this book, and let the founders themselves tell you. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Jessica Livingston | | Hardcover:
| 500 pages | | Publisher:
| Apress | | Publication Date:
| January 22, 2007 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1590597141 | | Package Length:
| 9.1 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.1 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.3 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.7 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 86 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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 An inspiring bookFeb 12, 2010
Being one who likes to read stories of the successful entrepreneurs, it was only natural that I'd be drawn to this book. The subjects in the book didn't necessarily all go to create Google-sized companies, but were still successful either way. They were either taken over or merged (at the time of the book's writing) with other companies.
I do not run or own a company, still I found the book to be quite enlightening to people like me who'd like to break on their own one day. It was quite sobering and instructive to realize just how hard work, passion and perseverance can really take you far. The book is quite an easy read and extremely enjoyable. Just about every story is likely to leave you with a very strong impression on your endeavors, whatever they may be.
 Inspiring!Jan 15, 2010
Very interesting to know what was on the mind of people starting business that managed to become part of the history like Yahoo, Hotmail, Blackberry RIM, Flickr, Apple, Adobe and Lotus. Basically, people with some geniality and good ideas, faith in a vision, stubbornness, lack of options (sometimes) and a little luck (or a lot in some cases). I definitively recommend it.
Worth its weight in gold...Jan 07, 2010
Hilarious & fascinating account of lots of good entrepreneurs & their success stories. Their advice & experience is priceless, & very fun to read.
The strange thing is that they all recommend you to avoid repeating their mistakes, but it seems like their success may have not happened without doing them...
So, you would become much smarter after reading this, but should you?
This book rocksJan 01, 2010
This is an amazing book. Plenty of detailed review here but if you are looking to get a sense of the real world inside of a startup, this is outstanding. Its quite long and I have to say at the end I was sorry there wasnt more. Amazing. I hope she does a vol 2.
Good startup book; HIGH on economicsSep 26, 2009
Overall good book. I obviously enjoyed certain interviews more than others (almost slept through the Lotus and co. ones), I enjoyed and learned a lot from their stories. I wish there was more focus on peer relations and less on VC's business, but I'd be an ignorant if I overlooked the fact that these companies didn't grow as big as they are on good will alone.
Very inspiring book. I'd recommend it to anyone interest in starting up any kind of business.
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