Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Enjoyable story, interesting observations, tangible results

Customer Rating:

I enjoyed this tale of ideas, optimism, challenge, toil and learning. The originating premise of the book was to track a great code project from inception to market, but turned into a slightly embarrassed fly-on-the-way tale of a software team lost in the woods. The book is informative, well written and deals with the topic with clarity and insight. The pace slows towards the end, but this feels more of a reflection of the project. It also has the virtue that the project is still ongoing (and the latest build available for download), and its passage is well documented on the web. This gives a rare opportunity to see how the design decisions and characters in a project contribute to an end product. I would have given 4 stars for the book, but the ability to look at the ongoing project with the back story is worth 5.

True inspiring entrepreneurs stories

Customer Rating:

Many authors have written "how to" styled books on start ups - always a pain because there is so much bias in their 'theory'. This is MUCH better: learn from real life stories of successful people! +++ What I love most about it: it's a no b*s* book where you can learn from the interviews of some of the most famous entrepreneurs of the 90s (at Apple, Adobe, Flikr, Craiglist, Hotmail...). The stories are just so inspiring when the real people tell them and what a collection! --- What I like least: it's only about software/tech companies hence some learnings will not apply to other industries. This is not the core of the books through so it's a really minor criticism. Overall, extremely inspiring book. I recommend it to all would-be entrepreneurs or simply to those curious about how these famous companies got started!

Pure motivation

Customer Rating:

This book is just pure motivation with an all-star cast. Especially memorable are the stories about Hot or Not and Tickle. Sometimes a good idea is all that is needed. Then there are the other types of stories, where success came from engineering ingenuity, like the story of Adobe. I have read around a dozen books about dot com success stories, and this one was definitely the best. If you need more reasons to get it, consider it has both Paul Graham AND Joel Spolsky sharing their experiences in the same book!

Those who were "present at the creation"

Customer Rating:

What we have here are interviews of 32 founders of start-up companies, interviewed by Jessica Livingston. To most readers, few of the names are familiar (e.g. Steve Wozniak and Apple Computer) and the interviews will often seem rambling, poorly edited, etc. That is a fair reaction. However, they have the value of being extemporaneous rather than "sanitized." However different the start-ups' circumstances were and however different their founders' perspectives on those circumstances may be, there are common themes: naiveté, almost unlimited enthusiasm, little (if any) fear of failure, and especially, a rock-solid faith in what could be accomplished. Those with an ability to read between the lines will also develop a sense that most of the founders do not second-guess themselves when recalling their blunders. To me, the greatest single value of this book is that we are learning about 32 start-ups from eyewitness accounts provided by those centrally involved. True, human memory can often be selective and on occasion self-serving. Nonetheless, these founders (with few exceptions) seem to be making a sincere effort to "tell it like it was" without aid of a ghostwriter or even an editor with special talents for clarity and (especially) concision. Of special interest to me are the interviews of Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Blake Ross (Firefox), Paul Buchheit (Gmail), Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail), Mitchell Kapor (Lotus Development), Max Levchin (PayPal), Mike Ramsay (TiVo), and Tim Brady (Yahoo). Of course, each reader must determine for herself and himself which interviews are most interest and, perhaps more to the point, which interviews are most valuable to those who about to launch a new company or have only recently done so.

Essential Reading for Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs

Customer Rating:

This book is without doubt one of the best reads available for entrepreneurs looking to start a a web 2.0 company. The number of case studies and insights offered both on successes and failures and practical approaches to impossible situations is simply amazing. I've started up a couple of companies and been living in the web 1.0 and now web 2.0 worlds, and am also a consultant on many web 2.0 projects and this is my recommended read for the entrepreneurs who want more insight into launching their online businesses. What is particularly important about the book is that most of the companies and individuals covered are extremely relevant today and are market leaders in many of the emerging ebusiness sectors.