Founders at work (http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1590597141) is a series of 32 interview with founders of well-known startups. Some have become very successful as independent companies such as Apple where Steve Wozniak was interviewed, Adobe Systems where Charles Geschke was interviewed, and Research in Motion where Mike Lazaridis was interviewed. Others were major successes through acquisition, including Mitch Kapor (Lotus Development), Max Levchin (PayPal), Steve Perlman (WebTv), and Ray Ozzie (Iris Associates & Groove Networks). Some are still startups, and some failed long ago. The book itself is not amazingly well-written, but I found the interviewees captivating and the book was great by that measure.
The book gives a detailed window into how startups are made, how some have succeeded, and how some have failed. In portions of the book small windows into the VC community are opened. The story of how Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) worked with Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) was revealing.
Some common themes emerged for me as I read through the book. One theme was that success often came from great people coming together without much funding but considerable motivation and they just kept trying things and evolving and failing and trying again, and trying some more and then changing again. Often success comes not from a brilliant, well-funded ideas but from intense drive and trying things quickly and failing fast. Often the VC funded idea X and the money was used to develop a completely unrelated idea. Often success was found as the last dollar was spent. I’m quite certain that the ones we didn’t read about were the ones where the last dollar was spent just before success was found. The lesson for us is to spend small when investigating a new idea. Move fast, spend little, keep the team small and keep evolving. Admit when it’s not working and keep trying related ideas. It was an enjoyable read.
–jrh
James Hamilton, Windows Live Platform Services
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