f2f2s |

Two books, two haiku reviews.

Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

I assume you’ve seen
the Twitter account. This book
is more of the same.

The Last Season by Phil Jackson

2-k-4 Lakers.
Shaq and Kobe, what a mess.
Jackson’s head explodes.

Santiago sure looks inviting, huh? It might be my home for a little while.

I’m working to put together an application for Start-Up Chile, a government program to bring entrepreneurs to Chile. The 6-12 month program pays $40,000 to 25 promising entrepreneurs who have a scalable business plan and connects them with mentors and other members of the local business community.

There is no requirement to keep the company in Chile after the program, although they would obviously prefer you maintain some presence.

It looks like an awesome opportunity in a number of different ways.

My 19th book was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. First, let me say that I may have cheated with this book, although I will leave the interpretation up to the reader. I didn’t actually “read” this book. Instead I went to librivox.org and downloaded the free audiobook. They have a great service where volunteers record books that are in the public domain and then give them away for free. I love this because I’m able to get a book like this, through it on my iPhone, and then listen to it while I’m in the car. Each chapter is no more than 30 minutes (with many as short as 5-10) so if you plan it right you can listen to a chapter each trip and be done before you know it.

Now, that said, I may have missed out of the full effect of the book by listening to it. You see, this book was one of the most quotable I’ve ever read (heard) and I wasn’t able to make my usual notes on an index card as I read it. That’s a shame, but thankfully a simple google search like this one will give you a pretty good overview of the words of wisdom you can expect from it.

The first half of the book talked about his early years in life; how he got started in the printing business, how he educated himself, and how he formed the ideals that would define the rest of his life. I found that to be much more interesting than the second half where he talks about creating public libraries, fire departments and the University of Pennsylvania. Don’t get me wrong, those were great accomplishments. I just enjoyed much more being able to see what made Franklin into the kind of person who was able to do things like that.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

I guess a business card makes it official, huh?

Round 18 of the 50 book resolution was an old favorite of mine. Hackers & Painters is a collection of essays by Paul Graham. If you don’t know who Paul is, he was one of the three founders of ViaWeb (which became the software that powers Yahoo! stores), and started Y Combinator. He has a tremendous collection of over a decades worth of essays at http://www.paulgraham.com and he put some of the best into this book.

He’s a brilliant guy and has great insights into where technologies are going and how people should develop companies around them. One of my favorite examples, an essay of his from 2001 includes the footnote, “If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.” Well played, sir.

I bought this book a few years ago when I was living in California. Don’t ask me why I know that, but I know that I bought this book and Founders at Work one day at a book store there and pretty much immediately started reading them in the park across from my apartment. Since then I’ve read this book at least once a year, getting more from it each time.

The book starts out strong with a great essay titled Why Nerds Are Unpopular. I would definitely recommend going to check out that essay, and, if you like it as much as I do, going through some of his other work as well.

One of my favorites is How To Make Wealth, mostly because of the lines like these:

If you want to make a million dollars, you have to endure a million dollars worth of pain.

If you have two choices, choose the harder.

The Other Road Ahead is filled with amazing advice about building products and the philosophical problems of customer choice.

Hackers and Painters is the essay that lends the book its title.

What hackers and painters have in common is that they’re both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things.

This is probably my favorite non-fiction book. I believe you can cobble together all of the essays that make up this book on his website, but if you like the feeling of a book in your hands go buy it and enjoy it.

Hackers & Painters

RWW had an article 2 days ago called The Downside to Bootstrapping.  For those who don’t know, bootstrapping is building a business without taking any investment money.  Basically, you work really hard with as few people as possible, get paying customers as soon as you can, and then grow as the money comes in.  This is how Aaron and I are going about building our company right now.

It has a lot of benefits and negatives, just like taking money does.  It’s slower to grow, you start with niches and areas rather than full scale and nation-wide, it’s a lot more work on one or two people’s shoulders, etc.

However, I think Audrey Watters, the author of the post I linked, may have been a little off in identifying the important ones since the main source of the article was a Venture Capitalist.  Micah the commenter puts it better than I ever could.

I stumbled on to two great articles today thanks to Hacker News. Both seem pretty topical for people like me in their early-mid 20′s, and I hope you can take something from them.

Ignorance by Degrees – Wall Street Journal

This is a review of the new book Higher Education? by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. It presents a very intriguing premise that more and more colleges exist to benefit those who work there rather than the students who pay for them.

This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach – The Last Psychiatrist

The second article is an absolute evisceration of everyone involved in this story from the New York Times last month about the plight of the upper-middle class white man in the current economy. That initial piece about Scott Nicholson made the rounds last month, but if you haven’t read it yet (and don’t have time to now) it’s basically Scott complaining that he can’t find the perfect job even though he applies to a whopping 1 job a day and turned down a $40k job offer to live in his parents’ house.

The author here does a great job pointing out how it’s not just the kid’s fault that he thinks the world is so tough, but that it’s a mindset instilled by previous generations that it is better to find a middle-management position and allow the company to provide for you than go out and do something on your own.