Founders at Work: Stories of Startups Early Days was published in January this year, but I forgot about it so here's the catch up post.
I'm not a big fan of reading startup stories, because I reckon it draws me into the blackhole of inaction, along with reading how-to-startup guides. Besides, just because somebody says you can't do it like this, doesn't mean its not possible, maybe all it needs is a new twist. And the more you read, the more 'advice' you get, the more your thoughts begin to revolve around the 'successful tactics, ideas or trends' subconsciously, resulting in more and more me-too startups (check out the numerous myspace music/video players all sprouting up at around the same time), or startups spiralling into exactly the same mistakes as previous ones. There's nothing like learning by actually doing it - there's so much more you can get out of that than reading a book I reckon, plus you get a real-life chance to think outside of the box and see if an idea actually works, not having to trust the decisions of 'advisors', who can't always be right. I'm young, ambitious, stupid and blind - maybe that's what's needed to be different and succeed nowadays.
Anyway, back to the book - even though I'm not a big fan, I think I'll end up getting it just for the entertainment value, the stories of how crazy the early days were, how they struggled to survive, their first big break, their new found status, etc. Guy Kawasaki's got a nice summary up on
his site.