Here are our recommendations for what to read when you are off-duty.
Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
Tony Fadell is best known for leading the teams at Apple that created the iPod and the iPhone. His book is divided into six parts: Build Yourself, Build Your Career, Build Your Product, Build Your Business, Build Your Team, and Be CEO. That sounds like the typical career guide, but Fadell's approach is slightly different: Take these titles, for example: "Lawyer Up", "I Quit", and "Fuck Massages." He manages to offer all kinds of advice in an approachable and humorous manner. In the "Lawyer Up" chapter, he drops some jokes about billable hours but also remembers his first lawsuit, providing valuable insights into those going through similar experiences. "I Quit" explains how to decide when to give up but not feel entirely defeated, and how to resign properly. "Fuck Massages" starts with a warning: "Beware of too many perks" and goes on to explain the important differences between benefits and perks. Fadell’s great insight could be that you don’t have to reinvent everything from scratch to make something great. Some old-school principles of collaboration and management can set the stage for the biggest technological breakthroughs.
The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech venture capitalist told Sebastian Mallaby, the future could not be predicted, it could only be discovered. The author has had the chance to talk to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time—the key figures at Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Accel, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Chinese partnerships such as Qiming and Capital Today. Thus, we learn the truth about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous failures of technology companies. He also focuses on the very often under-sung role that venture capitalists have played in the innovation economy. To a certain extent, he seems to think that money men deserve even more credit than the creative guys. But so be it. This does not make the book much less fun to read because it is an eye-opener in many ways. One of the smaller examples: didn’t you take financial innovations of startup fundraising like funding rounds, employee stock options, founder control, and growth equity for granted as well?
The Metaverse And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
Theorist and venture capitalist Matthew Ball is a visionary because he was bullish about the Metaverse quite some time before the concept suddenly, in 2021, made thousands of headlines and before Facebook renamed the company after it. Ball had defined the technical implications and the human consequences, in a series of widely read essays years ago. In his book, he presents a deep dive into the matter, not only exploring the technologies involved but also explaining the breakthroughs that will be necessary to fully realize it, such as the governance challenges and the roles of Web3, blockchains, and NFTs. "Technology frequently produces surprises that no one predicts," Ball writes in the conclusion, "but the biggest and most fantastical developments are often anticipated decades in advance." At the same time, Ball cautions that the hype may have already gotten ahead of itself. "It will take time to figure out exactly what companies should build in the Metaverse."
