Founders at work : Stories of startups' early days / Livingston, Jessica

Publication details: New York, NY. Apress 2008Description: xviii 466 pagesISBN:

9781430210788

Subject(s):

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Standard Loan	Thurles Library Main Collection	658.11 LIV (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		30026000008804

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Now available in paperback--with a new preface and interview with Jessica Livingston about Y Combinator!

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 businesses do--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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

Foreword (p. ix)
Preface (p. xi)
About the Author (p. xiii)
Acknowledgments (p. xv)
Introduction (p. xvii)
Chapter 1 Max Levchin: PayPal (p. 1)
Chapter 2 Sabeer Bhatia: Hotmail (p. 17)
Chapter 3 Steve Wozniak: Apple Computer (p. 31)
Chapter 4 Joe Kraus: Excite (p. 61)
Chapter 5 Dan Bricklin: Software Arts (p. 73)
Chapter 6 Mitchell Kapor: Lotus Development (p. 89)
Chapter 7 Ray Ozzie: Iris Associates, Groove Networks (p. 103)
Chapter 8 Evan Williams: Pyra Labs (Blogger.com) (p. 111)
Chapter 9 Tim Brady: Yahoo (p. 127)
Chapter 10 Mike Lazaridis: Research In Motion (p. 141)
Chapter 11 Arthur van Hoff: Marimba (p. 153)
Chapter 12 Paul Buchheit: Gmai (p. 161)
Chapter 13 Steve Perlman: Web TV (p. 173)
Chapter 14 Mike Ramsay: TiVo (p. 191)
Chapter 15 Paul Graham: Viaweb (p. 205)
Chapter 16 Joshua Schachter: del.icio.us (p. 223)
Chapter 17 Mark Fletcher: ONElist, Bloglines (p. 233)
Chapter 18 Craig Newmark: craigslist (p. 247)
Chapter 19 Caterina Fake: Flickr (p. 257)
Chapter 20 Brewster Kahle: WAIS, Internet Archive, Alexa Internet (p. 265)
Chapter 21 Charles Geschke: Adobe Systems (p. 281)
Chapter 22 Ann Winblad: Open Systems, Hummer Winblad (p. 297)
Chapter 23 David Heinemeier Hansson: 37signals (p. 309)
Chapter 24 Philip Greenspun: ArsDigita (p. 317)
Chapter 25 Joel Spolsky: Fog Creek Software (p. 345)
Chapter 26 Stephen Kaufer: TripAdvisor (p. 361)
Chapter 27 James Hong: Hot or Not (p. 377)
Chapter 28 James Currier: Tickle (p. 387)
Chapter 29 Blake Ross: Firefox (p. 395)
Chapter 30 Mena Trott: Six Apart (p. 405)
Chapter 31 Bob Davis: Lycos (p. 419)
Chapter 32 Ron Gruner: Alliant Computer Systems, Shareholder.com (p. 427)
Chapter 33 Jessica Livingston: Y Combinator (p. 447)
Index (p. 455)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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.