The Entrepreneur’s Bookshelf: Founders at Work

Lately, I have been seeking some inspiration while making plans to move on after my present job. I chanced upon a book “Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days” by Jessica Livingston. It is a collection of interviews with many founders of well-known start-ups, for example, 37Signals, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, Apple, Six Apart, Firefox, Bloglines, Craigslist, Research in Motion and etc. I will talk about some of the lessons that I learned from the book.

“Firs of all, because it was not a venture to start. I was building a product and that’s it.”
- Joshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us

Instead of going linear with the book, I decide to adopt a different reading strategy with this book. I just randomly pick a founder which I fancy and read through the interview at one go. After each chapter is about a different founder, the first few people I started looking were David Heinemeier Hansson (37Signals), Mena Trott (Six Apart), Blake Ross (Firefox), Paul Graham (Viaweb), Mike Ramsay (TiVo), Paul Buchheit (Gmail). Of course, as I read on, I reflect upon how they started in the first place and what they set out to achieve. Of course, most of them are technically gifted and Jessica Livingston (the author) provided a good term for them, “craftsman”. All the founders come from different backgrounds: for example, Steve Wozniak started off as an employee in HP while working on the Apple I personal computer in his spare time. As a matter of fact, a lot of what they end up doing emerged from their favourite hobbies.

1. Start with passion and not money

All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I’d never once done that thing in my life.
- Steve Wozniak, founder of Apple,

If there is a lesson to be learnt from this book, it’s this one that makes it the most tricky. I often think that it’s a cultural issue. Asians tend to be more pragmatic and less idealistic in their views. A lot of people in Asia don’t do crazy innovations like those in Silicon Valley, because their typical excuses are either (1) why should I waste my time to do this? (2) show me the money and I will do it. (3) I don’t see the need to do this even though it’s a good idea. Actually, Steve Wozniak succeeded because he bootstrapped the resources to build the first personal computer. You squeeze out every resource possible to make that one product you are interested in.

2. It takes a lot of mental flexibility to continuously getting the idea to the right shape

In the book, Max Levchin talks about the original form of PayPal before it came to the present version. In some sense, he wanted to find a way to commercialize something that he innovated upon security. Along the way, through engaging customers and looking for people to share his vision, he polymorphed his idea from the first idea into another one. Most founders featured in this book sees the need to adaptable. Starting up a new idea is a process of trial and error, and you will end up making more mistakes than getting everything right at the first go. In fact, sometime back, I commented to my co-founder from SimuGen about doing a start-up is like firefighting on every front and we recounted the topsy-turvy days of living on the edge to make our ends meet.

3. Do you really need the money from the VC?

Strangely a lot of these founders realized in the end that they do not need the money. In fact, they are constantly approached by the same group of hounding VCs. Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us) made a very good point that being overcapitalized is a path to failure. Sometimes, you need the money to expand against your competitors, according to conventional wisdom. Yet, for most of these founders, they did not seek out the funding but the mentorship and customers who will help them to build the product.

Of course, there are many lessons which an entrepreneur can draw from this book. I will prefer that you go and take a look. Perhaps, you will find a different interpretation from me. I thought that this book offered me a perspective that it really does not matter what age you start a company. Some people told me that you should do it when you are 17, and some feel that it’s 40. In the end, only the right time, the right place and the right conditions will determine whether you are going to take the leap and make the jump.

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