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.

well, it's not really a book but series of stories...this is a must read for anyone who wants or is in the process of starting a startup (mostly technology related). there are some amazing and sometime shocking stories from founders' perspective. i got the book few days ago and it's about 450 pages and haven't finish it yet. the good thing is that you can pick a chapter (each chapter is a founder's story) and read that one only. so far, i have read 8 of them so far.hands-down, the hotmail story, told by Sabeer Bhatia, is the most amazing one. some very inspiring and sad conte-de-faits mostly involving valuation, term sheets, and legal matters. A must-read.why did i give this great book 4 stars? i am not going to read all of those stories probably but out of those 9 i have read so far, some are a bit like a wired magazine type of stories: i-want-to-show-the-world-i-am-humble style or i-only-had-10-dollars-in-my-pocket-when-arrived-to-usa... although these stories have some elements of truth in them, they have been way exaggerated in the last 10 years. the other thing i didn't like was the fact that the title is not matching the content. i'm not exactly sure but out 32 chapters, 10 of so-called-founders are not founders but early employees. there is a distinct line between founders and early employees in term of equity, functions, early pitches, funding hassles, discipline and work ethic, connections, etc...writer's questions were precise and inviting for discussion. i personally felt that it was watching a television interview.kudos to the writer anyway. it's a very good book.