The Blog of Burgher Jon

I read a lot of nonfiction books (here’s the list), I think this is nonfiction number 14 (overall 15) for me on the year and I’m used to finding ones that are labeled “fast paced” and “easy to read”.  The reality is, few of them live up to that expectation.  David Kirkpatrick achieved a quick pace and an easy read with The Facebook Effect.  He adeptly combined a narrative of Facebook’s history with an overview of some of the issues and opportunities Facebook faces.  He has chapters on the political ramifications of “owning” online identity, privacy, Facebook’s cultural aspirations and monetization all woven in to the fabric of the story without making you feel that you’ve left the fireside story telling of Facebook’s history.

The bad news is, the story is horribly biased.  Kirkpatrick claims to have interviewed about 50 people in the company and about 50 people outside the company.  Those outside the company ranged from investors to former employees with huge holdings in the company and all the biased individuals in between.  It truly feels like the story had just enough embarrassing moments sprinkled in to make it feel believable, but certainly not enough to be the whole truth.  If there are 1000 pictures that clearly show how Facebook grew up these last 7 years, this book shows you the 50 they’d post on Facebook.

The bottom line: If you like Facebook or startups or good non-fiction, definitely read the book.  If you’re looking for the “you can’t handle the truth” version of Facebook’s history, you’ll have to wait until a less authorized telling hits book stores.

I first received a diagnosis of mild ADD in the 5th grade.  By the time I was in the 5th grade, I was already most of the way to the analytical, introspective person I am today.  I took the diagnosis seriously, I studied the disorder, and I put in place a number of actions that allowed me to become effective with ADD.  In fact, as I have refined those practices, I have come to firmly believe that I would be significantly LESS effective in life if I didn’t have ADD.  All the same, earlier this year, I decided to take a close look at the way I approach my work with an eye towards better achieving my goals.  Part of this was jumping back in to researching new developments in dealing with ADD.  The logical choice was Delivered from Distraction by Doctors Hallowell and Ratey.  I, like many others, with ADD had been greatly helped by this pair’s first book Driven to Distraction, which has become the bible for dealing with youth ADD.

Though the book claims to be a useful resource for adults with ADD, I was thoroughly disappointed by the effort.  The book might be helpful for those who have a child with ADD or are a child with ADD (as the first book was).  But, the added sections about adults were not overly useful and were limited to 20% or so of the content.  I got a few helpful tips, but not nearly the quantity or quality of advice I would have hoped for.

I’m still in search of a good book on dealing with adult ADD.  When/If I find it, I’ll pass it along in this space.  So many of us in the startup space suffer from ADD, at least mildly that its probably worth it.

The hilarious clip above was put together by @37Signals to promote Rework

This book was invaluable to me.  I come from a giant corporate background (IBM) and I work for a startup that’s going the glamorous startup route… taking on funding, building a dazzling product, making a world beater that will one day be an IPO, acquisition target, or plain old big company.  Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson run an entirely different kind of organization.  They built their company (37 Signals) as a web design firm (it still is by the way) and along the way created a suite of management software, a design tool for the iPad and a new web app development framework called Ruby on Rails.  I know what you’re thinking, who’s their VC?  How much are they valued at?  Any potential acquirers?  The answers: No one, they’re bootstrapped; No one knows, without an IPO or funding looming why bother to guess?; They’re not for sale.  In spite of that impressive list of accomplishments they’re still only 20 employees, only half of which live in Chicago (headquarters).  In this book they describe all of the reasons and the how-tos for starting a business their way.  I don’t agree with them that it’s right for every company, but if your background is in other types of companies and you want to start your own, it’s worth hearing what they have to say.

Here are a couple points I found especially interesting:

• They point out that you should only make permanent decisions when you absolutely have to.  Hiring someone or moving in to a big office or taking on funding or signing along term contract all carry with them their own baggage.
• They argue you should use your byproducts.  They point out that Kingsford Charcoal was actually Ford Charcoal originally, as charcoal was a byproduct of making cars in those days.
• If you’re creating a product, make something YOU would use.
• In one of my favorite quotes, “Long-term plans are really just wishes.”
• When you make a product, make it intentionally simpler then your competitors.  Show how agile and intuitive it is, not how many bells and whistles it has.

I just finished Michael Lewis’ new book, the Big Short.  It follows three groups of investors as they forsaw and then attempted to bet on the biggest financial calamity since the great depression.  As is typical with Lewis’ books (including “The Blind Side” which was recently made in to a movie), he took a larger social issue and found a key character or two that he could use to illustrate the point.  He did so masterfully by following Michael Barry, Steve Eisman and several others bet a couple million against the US SubPrime business and made hundreds of millions.  Throughout most of the telling the protagonists are desperately trying to figure out why they are the only ones that see this coming.  It’s an interesting question.

The book does a better then average job of describing the financial instruments (CDOs, Synthetic Bonds, CDSs, etc…) in layman’s terms; although with Lewis’ slight political twist.  This information alone though is worth the $11 at Amazon.  Throw in the breezy pace and great story telling of one of this generation’s best authors and you’re in for well more then your money’s worth.

Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
Part IV Chapter 18

While I don’t agree with everything that Ayn Rand says, I tend to believe she is on to something with objectivism.  The true democratic nature of it is something that appeals greatly to me.  I said as much when I reviewed “Virtue of Selfishness” in this space.  I would have said it again if I was in the habit of writing book reviews on the blog when I read Atlas Shrugged.  All that said, The Fountainhead has to be one of the best Fiction books ever written and certainly is better then Atlas Shrugged; from both a pleasure of reading and an understanding of objectivism perspective.

The reason it is more enjoyable from a pleasure of reading perspective is that it does not suffer from the same long, boring middle that Atlas Shrugs does.  As the world slowly creeps away from Daphne Taggert, my interest waned.  In Fountainhead some of the most interesting dialog and actions happened while the world crumbled around Howard Roark.

The reasons it makes objectivism more understandable are Peter Keating and Gail Wynand. Keating’s character (though intended to be the villain) is one that we can all relate to.  He lives his life in a way that we can sympathize with, probably even see in our own.  At the same time though, we can understand why Rand feels it’s terrible.  Wynand attempts to live by the objectivist ideals and fails miserably.  The way Roark encourages him to recover is a lesson to all of us who are incapable of living Roark’s unblemished life.  In Atlas Shrugged, Rand didn’t present such relate-able characters, instead providing only Elsworth Monkton Tooheys (the arch villain) and Howard Roarks (the unattainable hero).

For this reason, I highly recommend The Fountainhead.  Read it slowly if you must, even with other books in the middle.  It took me 4 months, and I read it while reading plenty of other texts, but do yourself a favor and read it, then evaluate your priorities.