Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days 1st Corrected ed., Corr. 2nd printing Edition

by Jessica Livingston (Author)

191 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-1590597149

ISBN-10: 1590597141

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Founders at Work recounts the early struggles for independence and acceptance of many of modern technology’s giants, through personal interviews that are at times hilarious, at times painful, and always inspiring. As human-interest stories they will interest the same audience that enjoys reading about the Google founders in PEOPLE magazine. These stories are exceptionally interesting, because they're about the early stages, when the founders were younger and inexperienced. Most readers know startup founders only as confident millionaires. As novices trying to find their way by trial and error, they're more human, and easier for the reader to identify with.

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jessica Livingston is a founding partner at Y Combinator, a seed-stage venture firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Mountain View, California. She was previously vice president of marketing at investment bank Adams Harkness. In addition to her work with startups at Y Combinator, she organizes Startup School (www.StartupSchool.org). She has a bachelor's degree in English from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

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Product details

Hardcover: 458 pages
Publisher: Apress; 1st Corrected ed., Corr. 2nd printing edition (January 25, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590597141
ISBN-13: 978-1590597149
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (191 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #158,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #79 in Books > Textbooks > Business & Finance > Entrepreneurship
- #169 in Books > Textbooks > Computer Science > Software Design & Engineering
- #172 in Books > Business & Money > Industries > Computers & Technology

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Top Customer Reviews

A classic, but skip Apress’ awful paperback edition

ByAlan Hoganon December 7, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book contains great interviews by an insightful and influential person. While I haven’t finished it yet, I am writing this review mostly to be able to add some product images. I was horrified by the quality of the printing of this book! Apress, the publisher, ought to be ashamed. I have uploaded images showing how poorly the printed word looks in the paperback edition. Note the awful dithering (fuzziness). None of the letters are crisp. It almost looks like a cheap photocopy on a bargain-basement laser printer.

I do not know if the hardcover edition has this problem or not.

0Comment 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Excellent

ByGraybeardon February 12, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a wonderful collection of interviews of company founders and co-founders. Kudos to the author for asking good questions and kudos to the interviewees for their candid, fascinating, detailed answers.

What surprised me most was how down-to-earth and normal most of these successful people were. Only a couple of them seemed full of themselves. The rest, surprisingly, were just the opposite. Their stories about their startup days provided insights into their values, motivations, aspirations, points of view, work ethic; as well as their worries, fears, doubts, and concerns; plus their approach to making tough decisions and a recognition of their personal limitations and flaws. Their interview responses are full of insights into their decisions about business development, product development, product management, pricing, promotion, distribution, customer service, technical support, accounting, finance, hiring and technology choices; and dealing with venture capitalists, business partners and actual or potential competitors.

The interviews also provide a lot of insights into technology trends and market trends during the time that the founders' companies were starting up.

Here are the companies whose founders were interviewed, in the order they appear in the book: PayPal, Hotmail, Apple, Excite, Software Arts, Lotus Development, Iris Associates, Groove Networks, Pyra Labs (Blogger.com), Yahoo, Research in Motion, Marimba, Gmail, WebTV, TiVo, Viaweb, del.icio.us, ONELIST, Bloglines, Craigslist, Flickr, WAIS, InternetArchive, Alexa, Adobe Systems, Open Systems, Hummer Winblad, 37signals, ArsDigita, Fog Creek Software, TripAdvisor, HOT or NOT, Tickle, Firefox, Six Apart, Lycos, Aliant Computer Systems, Shareholder.com.

This book is perfect for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, technology startups, technology companies in general, and business books in general. I've read the book once already and now I'm in the middle of reading it a second time. I wish there were an audio version of it.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Truly a must read for every tech entrepreneur

ByZeeshan Ziaon May 19, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Amazing set of interviews. I loved that one can find some founder in every possible circumstance interviewed in here. Also loved that almost every advice one founder gives is negated by another founder in some other chapter!

Take away message for me: there are very few rules when it comes to founding a tech startup. Just be yourself, and toss the proverbial coin.

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Great content but kindle edition leaves much to be desired

ByChristopher R. Fieldon July 31, 2010

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

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but the terrible print quality(soft cover) - the main text of the ...

ByX. Guoon October 10, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

My 1-start rating isn't for the content of the book, but the terrible print quality(soft cover) - the main text of the book is printed in a font that's not a solid block but with some pattern, which makes it appear out of focus - very uncomfortable to read. I have decided to return the book.
Was trying to get the Kindle version as many reviews are based on that, but somehow it's no longer available :(

Attached is a picture I took with a page from this book. It actually reads worse than that due to the out of focus effect.

0Comment 7 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Good

Teaches you about what it's like to found a company. Many inspiring stories that show how it is to be done.Read more

Published 19 days ago by Scott

Steve Wozniaks interview was lame, he was asked a question and he goes ...

Steve Wozniaks interview was lame, he was asked a question and he goes off about random topics that the typical entrepreneur knows nothing about like chips.Read more

Published 2 months ago by Amazon Customer

Founders at work

Great book! Many interesting stories from founders. Very interesting, with a lot of useful advice.Read more

Published 4 months ago by Milan Remikovic

Reading about the companies that you are familiar with and ...

Reading about the companies that you are familiar with and their early history is fascinating. However it's difficult to identify with some of the other, more obscure companies...Read more

Published 5 months ago by supergrafx

informative

Informative Read more

Published 7 months ago by S Hitier

Five Stars

Great book. Nice stories on how all the technologies and companies were starting and growing.Read more

Published 11 months ago by Andrey Sergienko

No more manufacturing??

It was all about people that developed software or e.com., businesses. I was hoping that it would be about people that started manufacturing companies.Read more

Published 12 months ago by Amazon Customer

An excellent collection of stories that should not be forgotten

An excellent collection of stories that should not be forgotten. -1 star because this book needs a new edition!Read more

Published 1 year ago by Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Great stories

Great stories, if the audio exist, I would buy that instead to listen during commute.Read more

Published 1 year ago by Louis P.

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