Anything you want

by Wojciech Adam Koszek   ⋅   Jul 25, 2012   ⋅   East Palo Alto, CA

Derek Sivers is a pretty influential entrepreneur and a coder. I enjoyed reading his words as much as his code, yet this book is a great read, on par with "Lean Startup" and "Rework". Go and read. You won't regret. If I ever make a software startup bootstrapping bible, this book will be somewhere there.


About Derek I learnt by accident.

Sort of.

After reading Spolsky’s blog and his recommendation of doing some writing on the side as a next step in boosting your communication skills, I came up with an idea for making my own page, where I could write this and that.

I knew little about blogs, so I Googled this and that, and found “Technical Blogging”:

While reading reviews, I’ve found Derek’s name, and after reading about him for 5 minutes, I decided I must start following what this guy has to say.

My friend Alan asked me once whether we’ll have to work our assess off in order to get into the league of people who claim to know what business is all about, or whether it’d be possible after reading 5 books.

Well, I didn’t know the answer back then, but now I feel like you can gain +5 years of experience by reading..

The book is among “Lean Startup” and “E-myth revisited” probably the most influential book I’ve ever read.

Derek started something we could call a hot-dog stand. Just like Howard Jonas, he started from whatever seemed to make sense to him, maybe with one exception: looks like Derek didn’t know he’ll end up with $22M for his company.

What is being described is a true lean approach to business: don’t take money from anybody, start small, work your way up, charge from the day #1. Listen to customers and offer high-end treatment for them and their orders. If I were to state several rules, these would be the ones to follow.

There’s also amazingly unique thing about Derek – he answers to e-mails from us, poor ants straight from the Internet cloud.

I highly suggest this book to anybody, even those not interested in having a business. We could say that Derek’s book is one of these American stories that happen to be true. You can find proofs by just clicking!

Simply: MUST HAVE.


Previous
“David and Goliath”
Next
“Father & Son -- my life at IBM”

Subscribe for updates

Once a month I send updates on the new content and hints for software engineers.



Liked it? Share it!


About the author: I'm Wojciech Adam Koszek. I like software, business and design. Poland native. In Bay Area since 2010.   More about me