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), an...
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.
作者简介
· · · · · ·
Jessica Livingston is a founding partner at Y Combinator, a seed-stage venture firm based in Cambridge, MA, and Mountain View, CA. She was previously VP of marketing at investment bank Adams Harkness. In addition to her work with startups at Y Combinator, she organizes Startup School. She has a BA in English from Bucknell.
I think there's a general principle at work here: the less energy people expend on performance, the more they expend on appearances to compensate
...and Flickr grew out of an online game (查看原文)
The default of how you do these things is very powerful, if you've been in the industry for a long time,So we were sort of beneficiaries of our naivete. We thought, "We don't know how to do this, let's just invent it "
We built the system to be viral from day one. The idea was: I can send you the money, even if you aren't a member, If I send you 10, you get an email saying, You have 10 waiting for you, Sign up, and you can take it. That's the most powerful viral driver there is. Free money available to you (查看原文)
比起那本《coders at work》，这本《founders at works》要好看很多，而且后者还是先出的呢。这是一个访谈录，作者对那些知名的IT创业者的采访记录。据说作者她还嫁给了其中的一个访谈对象Paul Graham，也就是《hacker and painter》一书的作者（几个月前才看了该书的中文版）...
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Not so much because I needed it at that point, but because I knew that, ultimately, you cannot accomplish something completely on your own. You really need to develop a network of people who win when you win. Being on the East Coast, I believed that it was very important to establish a good network in Silicon Valley, where I didn't have a presence. 融资的原因，有点恐怖
2016-06-05 07:38
Not so much because I needed it at that point, but because I knew that, ultimately, you cannot accomplish something completely on your own. You really need to develop a network of people who win when you win. Being on the East Coast, I believed that it was very important to establish a good network in Silicon Valley, where I didn't have a presence.引自 Chapter 7
Know in your heart that you are a good person with good goals because that will carry over to your own self-confidence and your belief in your engineering abilities. 有黄金精神的工程师！
2016-05-13 20:26
Know in your heart that you are a good person with good goals because that will carry over to your own self-confidence and your belief in your engineering abilities.引自 Chapter 3
One of the exceptional things for me, coming to Google, was that it was the first time that I would tell people my crazy ideas and they'd say, "Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking the same thing." 奇葩也是需要组织的。
2014-04-01 21:33
One of the exceptional things for me, coming to Google, was that it was the first time that I would tell people my crazy ideas and they'd say, "Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking the same thing."
奇葩也是需要组织的。
Introduction Some kind of magic happens in startups, especially at the very beginning, but the only people there to see it are the founders. The best way to understand what happens is to ask them, so that’s what I did. In this book, you’ll hear the founders' stories in their own words. Here, I want to share some of the patterns I noticed. When you’re interviewing a series of famous startup f...
2011-07-20 10:13
Introduction
Some kind of magic happens in startups, especially at the very beginning, but
the only people there to see it are the founders. The best way to understand
what happens is to ask them, so that’s what I did.
In this book, you’ll hear the founders' stories in their own words. Here, I
want to share some of the patterns I noticed. When you’re interviewing a series
of famous startup founders, you can’t help trying to see if there is some special
quality they all have in common that made them succeed.
What surprised me most was how unsure the founders seemed to be that
they were actually onto something big. Some of these companies got started
almost by accident. The world thinks of startup founders as having some kind of
superhuman confidence, but a lot of them were uncertain at first about starting
a company. What they weren’t uncertain about was making something good—
or trying to fix something broken.
They all were determined to build things that worked. In fact, I’d say determination
is the single most important quality in a startup founder. If the founders I spoke with were superhuman in any way, it was in their perseverance.That came up over and over in the interviews.
Perseverance is important because, in a startup, nothing goes according to
plan. Founders live day to day with a sense of uncertainty, isolation, and sometimes
lack of progress. Plus, startups, by their nature, are doing new things—
and when you do new things, people often reject you.
That was the second most surprising thing I learned from these interviews:
how often the founders were rejected early on. By investors, journalists, established
companies—they got the Heisman from everyone. People like the idea
of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation,
they tend to reject it because it doesn’t fit with what they already know.
Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it’s an uphill
battle. It’s curious to think that the technology we take for granted now, like
web-based email, was once dismissed as unpromising. As Howard Aiken said,
“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll
have to ram them down people’s throats.”
In addition to having perseverance, founders need to be adaptable. Not
only because it takes a certain level of mental flexibility to understand what
users want, but because the plan will probably change. People think startups
grow out of some brilliant initial idea like a plant from a seed. But almost all the
founders I interviewed changed their ideas as they developed them. PayPal
started out writing encryption software, Excite started as a database search
company, and Flickr grew out of an online game.
Starting a startup is a process of trial and error. What guided the founders
through this process was their empathy for the users. They never lost sight of
making things that people would want.
Successful startup founders typically get rich from the process, but the ones
I interviewed weren’t in it just for the money. They had a lot of pride in craftsmanship.
And they wanted to change the world. That’s why most have gone on
to new projects that are just as ambitious. Sure, they’re pleased to have more
financial freedom, but the way they choose to use it is to keep building more
things.
Startups are different from established companies—almost astonishingly so
when they are first getting started. It would be good if people paid more attention
to this important but often misunderstood niche of the business world,
because it’s here that you see the essence of productivity. In its plain form, productivity looks so weird that it seems to a lot of people to be “unbusinesslike.”
But if early-stage startups are unbusinesslike, then the corporate world might
be more productive if it were less businesslike.
My goal with these interviews was to establish a fund of experience that
everyone can learn from. You’ll notice certain classes of problems that constantly
bit people. All the founders had things they wished they’d known when
they were getting started. Now these are captured for future founders.
I’m especially hoping this book inspires people who want to start startups.
The fame that comes with success makes startup founders seem like they’re a
breed apart. Perhaps if people can see how these companies actually started,
it will be less daunting for them to envision starting something of their own.
I hope a lot of the people who read these stories will think, “Hey, these guys
were once just like me. Maybe I could do it too.”引自第17页
One of the exceptional things for me, coming to Google, was that it was the first time that I would tell people my crazy ideas and they'd say, "Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking the same thing." 奇葩也是需要组织的。
2014-04-01 21:33
One of the exceptional things for me, coming to Google, was that it was the first time that I would tell people my crazy ideas and they'd say, "Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking the same thing."
奇葩也是需要组织的。
Not so much because I needed it at that point, but because I knew that, ultimately, you cannot accomplish something completely on your own. You really need to develop a network of people who win when you win. Being on the East Coast, I believed that it was very important to establish a good network in Silicon Valley, where I didn't have a presence. 融资的原因，有点恐怖
2016-06-05 07:38
Not so much because I needed it at that point, but because I knew that, ultimately, you cannot accomplish something completely on your own. You really need to develop a network of people who win when you win. Being on the East Coast, I believed that it was very important to establish a good network in Silicon Valley, where I didn't have a presence.引自 Chapter 7
Not so much because I needed it at that point, but because I knew that, ultimately, you cannot accomplish something completely on your own. You really need to develop a network of people who win when you win. Being on the East Coast, I believed that it was very important to establish a good network in Silicon Valley, where I didn't have a presence. 融资的原因，有点恐怖
2016-06-05 07:38
Not so much because I needed it at that point, but because I knew that, ultimately, you cannot accomplish something completely on your own. You really need to develop a network of people who win when you win. Being on the East Coast, I believed that it was very important to establish a good network in Silicon Valley, where I didn't have a presence.引自 Chapter 7
Know in your heart that you are a good person with good goals because that will carry over to your own self-confidence and your belief in your engineering abilities. 有黄金精神的工程师！
2016-05-13 20:26
Know in your heart that you are a good person with good goals because that will carry over to your own self-confidence and your belief in your engineering abilities.引自 Chapter 3
One of the exceptional things for me, coming to Google, was that it was the first time that I would tell people my crazy ideas and they'd say, "Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking the same thing." 奇葩也是需要组织的。
2014-04-01 21:33
One of the exceptional things for me, coming to Google, was that it was the first time that I would tell people my crazy ideas and they'd say, "Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking the same thing."
奇葩也是需要组织的。
moomin
机械工业出版社2010版
leo张大志
机械工业出版社2010版
丸子(^.^)v
mftian
optman
霸王硬上龙
机械工业出版社2010版
One of the exceptional things for me, coming to Google, was that it was the first time that I would tell people my crazy ideas and they'd say, "Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking the same thing." 奇葩也是需要组织的。
1 有用 optman 2011-10-03
那些IT创业故事，他们是如何开始的，转折点是什么，如何拉到投资的，有什么经验教训。寄希望于从中学到点什么的人来说，其实人家刚开始干也是什么都不懂就开始了。最重要的，其实是开始干！找到合适的伙伴非常重要，否则你很难坚持到成功。
0 有用 d 2011-08-13
不要做长期计划。
0 有用 trismile 2010-07-15
中文版翻译的太差，还是看英文的吧。
0 有用 蝉 2013-12-12
:无
1 有用 bymbrofeng 2013-04-09
有些书还真是不能读的太早，比如这本。当年读了，觉不过尔尔。现在重温，看到别人的创业故事，包括各种犯的错误，自己规规矩矩的很多都经历了，才感觉不过。推荐此书，不过你可能要在一个创业公司工作过再读。
0 有用 虚弱橙 2021-08-30
断断续续两年，还是没能全部章节都看完。从“啊好想写一本这样的书”到“这么多红极一时的公司放到历史上居然都不配拥有姓名”……
0 有用 凡轩 2021-07-27
这本书是原IBM的同事知道我要创业后推荐的，很不错的一本书，可以了解到创业里面的管理、冲突和一些产品想法的由来。
0 有用 辰丁 2020-08-28
把几个自己关心的读了，非常赞，都是直接采访的创始人，第一手信息，直奔重点。推荐（PayPal、Hotmail、Excite、Adobe、Gmail、Firefox）。
0 有用 Kan 2020-07-06
成年人应该都懂得幸存者偏差的道理，所以鸡汤喝喝暖暖心也就可以了，该干啥还是该干啥
0 有用 偶像派跑堂 2020-02-19
很久之前看的书了，了解到很多IT创业潮早期有趣的故事