Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days First Edition

Jessica is married to the start-up guru Paul Graham, who founded something called Y-Combinator, which over the last 20 years has proven to be the most successful start-up factory of all time. Paul writes a periodic blog which is also mostly fascinating and koan-like about start-ups and all the things he’s learned about starting businesses. (see below). His wife, Jessica, was also involved in in Y-Combinator and is a force of nature on her own. Paul credits her with teaching them to focus on the right things about a start-up, mainly DON’T focus on the initial idea. Focus instead on the team and their personality traits. The initial ideas will shift, morph, pivot several times until they find the path forward (or don’t) and you need to back teams that have this "relentless resourcefulness” to persist in that journey. Founders at Work is a series of long form deep dives into some of the world’s most successful startups and technologies - but zeroed in on the Founders and the very earliest days of the Company. What was going on in their heads? How did they find each other? Why did they start the company? What were the first months & years really like? It is amazing to read because every single one of them honestly recounts the chaos and utter cluelessness that they had at the inception and, often, for many years before finally figuring out the right growth path. And usually the figuring out came about b/c of some near-death experience for the Company - some ‘disaster” / existential crisis that forced them to abandon the “plan” and focus on survival or a hail mary. Which turned out to be the key to success. There is serious survivorship bias at work here. She doesn’t interview failed start-up founders- BUT, it’s enlightening to understand that nearly ALL start-up success is “un-planned” and often the result of a potent combination of relentless resourcefulness, persistence, LUCK and simply not dying before you figure it out. Flipped around, it means that MOST start-ups have plan that gets tossed out the window sooner or later and things usually, mostly and persistently feel like chaos. That’s the norm.

This book dives deep into the DNA of Silicon Valley, offering insights into both startups and venture capitalists. My understanding of the startup ecosystem had always been rooted in the 2010s and beyond, but reading this book, which traces back to the 1960s and explores the evolution of startups in the ‘90s and early 2000s, provided a completely new perspective on how the Bay Area truly operates. It sheds light on the origins of the hardware and internet revolutions, and it’s fascinating to see how some startups mentioned in the book, once valued at billions in the mid-2000s, have since disappeared.This book sparked many reflections, but the most significant lesson it reinforced is that persistence is the cornerstone of success.

I bought the kindle edition of this book and I found it to be a terrible reading experience. Quote often it seemed like pieces of sentences were missing and occasionally when going from one page to another I would see the text of two lines superimposed on each other. I don't have a kindle so I used the android kindle app and kindle for the PC and both left much to be desired. Also I hated that if I flipped a few pages ahead that it would reset the location. Overall I would not recommend the e-book edition, the quality is horrendous. Also now that I see the prices, I paid more for the terrible kindle edition than the hardcover edition goes for. Anyway I would never recommend paying more for an e-book than a print book because you have less rights than with the print book. Also for a book like this I think there is value to being able to flip through it really quickly while the kindle interface is best for flipping through page by page.That being said, the quality of the book was great. It was full of all sorts of insights and experiences. They can all be summarized as don't give up, watch out for VC's but don't write them off, listen to your customers, be willing to change, make sure the initial founding team works together well, etc... But just listening the values does not do it justice. You really have to read the experiences. The book is full of all sorts of insights too, not just about entrepreneurship but also about the individual companies. For example I was really impressed about PayPal and the fraud stuff they did and how valuable that was. I just never knew. Overall I think the book was very well put together. Although some of the founders liked to talk a lot more than others and it droned on and on. But others were brief and insightful. I would definitely recommend this.If I bought the print edition I suspect I would be giving it 5 stars. But really the kindle experience is probably worth 0 stars. But the content is so good that I figure 4 stars is fair. Since at this time I see hardcover editions for $5 or $6 new I would say go grab one of those now!!! The book is definitely inspirational.