A friend of mine just got offered a top executive position at a tech startup and is in culture shock. In his own words "there are these rooms full of kids and I can't understand what they're saying, and the valuations - they don't add up...", etc. etc. "What am I missing here?"<p>This guy needs to get up to speed fast on startups, product management, engineering, hacker culture and so on after a lifetime of hierarchical command and control in the financial services industry. What are the most concise and illuminating introductory texts I can refer him to?<p>Thanks!
I've been looking for an <i>entrepreneur book list</i> for a long time too. I'm not nearly as experienced as your friend, so my books may be too basic.<p>- Start here: <a href="http://www.ycombinator.com/resources/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ycombinator.com/resources/</a> There are many wonderful articles written by Graham himself.<p>- <i>The Four Steps to the Epiphany</i>, Steve Blank.<p>- <i>The Art of the Start</i>, Guy Kawasaki.<p>- <i>The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company</i>, Steve Blank and Bob Dorf.<p>- <i>Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future</i>, Peter Thiel.<p>- <i>ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever</i>, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.<p>- I haven't read the <i>Founders at work</i> series yet, but everyone seems to find it very valuable.
Saying “<i>Hacker/Startup culture</i>” is a little like saying “<i>C/C++</i>” – they are not the same and should not be conflated. Actually, it’s more like saying “<i>Lisp/Java</i>” – many people are enamored by the latter and thinks that the former is very similar, but it is in fact only similar in some superficial ways, and completely different in design, values, and style.
Culture shock is really bad news for a new position or a new hire. It's very difficult to change culture. Your friend needs to be a leader, not someone who is catching up. It's probably not the right place for him to be.
Uh... major red flag imo. I recommend your friend stays put and finds a way to slowly tiptoe into startuplandia. The job offer he got sounds like it isn't a good fit in a lot of ways.<p>Some companies are crazier than others... a lot crazier.
Not knowing much about him, let's throw a bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks:<p>- <a href="https://model-view-culture.myshopify.com/products/your-startup-is-broken" rel="nofollow">https://model-view-culture.myshopify.com/products/your-start...</a><p>- <a href="https://modelviewculture.com/" rel="nofollow">https://modelviewculture.com/</a><p>- Something by Don Reinertsen, maybe The Principles of Product Development Flow, maybe something else.<p>- Valve Employee Handbook <a href="http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...</a><p>- <a href="http://thinkrelevance.com/how-we-work" rel="nofollow">http://thinkrelevance.com/how-we-work</a><p>- Ries, The Lean Startup<p>All of these sources hide lots of dysfunction, so as always take them with a grain of salt. Take Ricardo Semler's fun books. In one of his Harvard Business School lectures, he mentioned how his books are artificially optimistic, because publishers want to sell more books.
"How Google Works" by Eric Schmidt is a good place to start.<p>A bigger question is why was he brought in? Does he need to do a turnaround? Has something gone badly wrong?<p>What stage are they at? Is there a user base? Do they pay, or is this ad based? Who's the competition? What do you have that they don't? First look at the business from a user perspective, then the technology used to service it. If they're not doing something technically hard, the technology end is about keeping the users happy, scaling and not screwing up.
I really liked <i>The Lean Startup</i> by Eric Ries - it's very opinionated (in a good way) about what a startup is and how they are rather different from "normal" companies.<p>All I need to do now is invent a time machine to send it to myself 20 years ago... :-)<p>It's also very prescriptive about the activities a startup management team should be focusing on which I suspect is a great place to start if you are coming into a new team in a leadership role.
About culture:
<a href="http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html</a>
<a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html</a>
<a href="http://blog.codinghorror.com/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.codinghorror.com/</a>
And reading random comments on:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/best" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/best</a> and <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/news" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/news</a> .
The question I'd ask him is how he's felt about the lifetime of command and control? If he's always been the guy who kept trying to change things, adjusting to a startup is going to be a matter of helping him understand how to best have an impact (and get used to the fact that people will actually appreciate and support his efforts). If he's the guy who followed the handbook, he's in for a much bigger shock.<p>For me, I've been bouncing off the walls for 12 years in a large bureaucracy. Reading Eric Ries's Lean Startup and finding Paul's blog was like drinking water for the first time. I hope he has the same experience.
An unconventional one, but important: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland<p>It's 20 years old, and dated in terms of technology but a good overview of valley culture in the mid 90's.
Paul Graham (YC/HN founder) has some good essays on startup/hacker culture. <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html</a><p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html</a> is probably the one that had the biggest impact on me and is sort of a manifesto for startups.
In the non-fiction sphere they could do worse than to read:<p>- <i>Snow Crash</i> by Neal Stephenson<p>- <i>Neuromancer</i> by William Gibson<p>Both books have had a huge impact on hacker culture, as well as doing a good job of documenting it. They will convey aspects of the culture that more traditional startup books can't convey - hacker language, attitude, motivation etc.<p>They are both great reads too.
Get them to signup on Y Combinator's How to Start a Startup (<a href="https://startupclass.co/" rel="nofollow">https://startupclass.co/</a>) and watch the videos. Might get them up to speed faster than going through a list of books. However, Red_Tarsius did offer a very good list of titles.
Ricardo Semler - Maverick is a good one for non heirarchal approaches.
The AES case study of holarchy is v interesting.
Swombat's blog (easily findable!) is a trove of material on startups and moving from corporate to startup, as are the Granttree and Escape The City blogs.
Hacker culture: "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution"[1] and "In the Beginning was the Command Line"[2]<p>Startup culture: <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/04/no-exit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/2014/04/no-exit/</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html</a>