Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days - By Jessica Livingston

I love business books and this one did not disappoint. Some will question the format of it but the format helps you skip over parts that may not interest you. It is setup so that each chapter is time  spent interviewing a certain person. Once in a while I would come across some part that rambled too much so I could skip without missing a beat.

I found this book to be inspirational and motivating. It made me recall the early days of my career when ideas were fresh on demand and the sky had no limit. One thing you will learn as you go from company to company is that many things ended up becoming something they had no intention of doing to begin with. And sometimes you are in the right place at the right time and there is not some mega genius behind every startup.

The cool part of the book is seeing how regular many of these successful people are. How by luck or random act something happened during their startup or career that all of a sudden turned them into the next big thing over night. This makes you feel as if you have a chance too and the biggest thing you need to do is TRY. If you don’t put it out there then nothing can happen. Maybe you will have to try a few things or businesses but for something great to happen you have to have something on the table for people to see.

I don’t want to write to much on specifics since I hate when I read a book review and they tell you all the good stuff. It makes it really hard to grind out a book sometimes if you know what is coming but stories like the PayPal one really blew my mind when they started talking about the amount of fraud they handled in the beginning, simply amazing.

This is a must read book for anyone in the business world, attempting a startup or someone that loves IT. I highly recommend this read.