This is the gripping tale of seven exceptional men and women, pioneers of Silicon Valley in the 1970s and early 1980s. Together, they worked across generations, industries, and companies to bring technology from Pentagon offices and university laboratories to the rest of us. In doing so, they changed the world. In Troublemakers, historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor, as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, ASK, and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In the space of only seven years and thirty-five miles, five major industries—personal computing, video games, biotechnology, modern venture capital, and advanced semiconductor logic—were born.During these same years, the first ARPANET transmission came into a Stanford lab, the university began licensing faculty innovations to businesses, and the Silicon Valley tech community began mobilizing to develop the lobbying clout and influence that have become critical components of modern American politics. In other words, these were the years when one of the most powerful pillars of our modern innovation and political systems was first erected.Featured among well-known Silicon Valley innovators like Steve Jobs, Regis McKenna, Larry Ellison, and Don Valentine are Mike Markkula, the underappreciated chairman of Apple who owned one-third of the company; Bob Taylor, who kick-started the Arpanet and masterminded the personal computer; software entrepreneur Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public; Bob Swanson, the cofounder of Genentech; Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer behind the first wildly successful video game; Fawn Alvarez, who rose from an assembler on a factory line to the executive suite; and Niels Reimers, the Stanford administrator who changed how university innovations reach the public. Together, these troublemakers rewrote the rules and invented the future.

    You may still be drawing a paycheck, but the job you were hired to do no longer exists. Your company has changed, the technology has changed, the economy has changed, and the ways you can add value have changed. Have you adapted to these changes? Or are you at risk? Architect your career Economic downturn. Job cuts. Outsourcing. The ever-changing tech landscape. The threats abound. Chad Fowler is here to offer 52 ways to keep your job, despite the vagaries of the market.It's all about making the right choices. Choosing which technologies to focus on and which business domains to master have at least as much impact on your success as your technical knowledge--don't let those choices be accidental. Chad shows you all aspects of the decision-making process so you can ensure that you're investing your time and energy in the right areas.It's all about skills. You'll develop a structured plan for keeping your skills up-to-date so that you can compete with both the growing stable of developers in so-called low-cost countries as well as your higher-priced local peers. You'll learn how to shift your skillset up the value chain, from an offshore-ready commodity to one in high demand.It's all about marketing. As with any product or service, if nobody knows what you're selling, nobody will buy. Chad shows you how to create a plan for marketing yourself both inside your company and to the industry in general.Like it or not, the IT career landscape has changed. This handbook will teach you what you need to do to avoid being left behind. About the author Chad Fowler has been a software developer and manager for some of the world's largest corporations. He recently lived and worked in India, setting up and leading an offshore software development center for a large multinational company.

    He stepped down from that role in August 2011, bringing an end to one of the greatest, most transformative business careers in history. Over the years, Jobs gave countless interviews to the media, explaining what he called “the vision thing”—his unmatched ability to envision, and successfully bring to the marketplace, consumer products that people find simply irresistible.Jobs made an indelible mark in multiple industries, and played an enormous role in creating others. Consider how Jobs and Apple shaped the following fields: personal computers (laptop and desktop), apps (for multiple electronic devices), computer animation (Pixar), music (iTunes), telecommunications (iPhone), personal digital devices (iPod), books (iBook), and, most recently, tablets (iPad). Jobs was the greatest business visionary of our era.I, Steve is the perfect gift or reference item for everyone interested in this great American original.

    McCord helped create the unique and high-performing culture at Netflix, where she was chief talent officer. In her new book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, she shares what she learned there and elsewhere in Silicon Valley.McCord advocates practicing radical honesty in the workplace, saying good-bye to employees who don’t fit the company’s emerging needs, and motivating with challenging work, not promises, perks, and bonus plans. McCord argues that the old standbys of corporate HR―annual performance reviews, retention plans, employee empowerment and engagement programs―often end up being a colossal waste of time and resources. Her road-tested advice, offered with humor and irreverence, provides readers a different path for creating a culture of high performance and profitability.Powerful will change how you think about work and the way a business should be run.

    Richard Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” He debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.” A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for overcoming—the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect in challenges as varied as putting a man on the moon, fighting a war, launching a new product, responding to changing market dynamics, starting a charter school, or setting up a government program. Rumelt’snine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can be put to work on Monday morning.Surprisingly, a good strategy is often unexpected because most organizations don’t have one. Instead, they have “visions,” mistake financial goals for strategy,and pursue a “dog’s dinner” of conflicting policies and actions.Rumelt argues that the heart of a good strategy is insight—into the true nature of the situation, into the hidden power in a situation, and into an appropriate response. He shows you how insight can be cultivated with a wide variety of tools for guiding yourown thinking.Good Strategy/Bad Strategy uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis.Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.From the Hardcover edition.

    This is NOT just another book about how to cold call or close deals. This is an entirely new kind of sales system for CEOs, entrepreneurs and sales VPs to help you build a sales machine. What does it take for your sales team to generate as many highly-qualified new leads as you want, create predictable revenue, and meet your financial goals without your constant focus and attention? Predictable Revenue has the answers!

    This innovation advantage will translate into a premium in your company’s stock price—an innovation premium—which is possible only by building the code for innovation right into your organization’s people, processes, and guiding philosophies.Practical and provocative, The Innovator’s DNA is an essential resource for individuals and teams who want to strengthen their innovative prowess.

    His company, Moz, makers of marketing software, is now a $45 million/year business, and he's one of the world's leading experts on SEO. But his business and reputation took fifteen years to grow, and his startup began not in a Harvard dorm room but as a mother-and-son family business that fell deeply into debt.Now Fishkin pulls back the curtain on tech startup mythology, exposing the ups and downs of startup life that most CEOs would rather keep secret. For instance: A minimally viable product can be destructive if you launch at the wrong moment. Growth hacking may be the buzzword du jour, but initiatives can fizzle quickly. Revenue and growth won't protect you from layoffs. And venture capital always comes with strings attached.Fishkin's hard-won lessons are applicable to any kind of business environment. Up or down the chain of command, at both early stage startups and mature companies, whether your trajectory is riding high or down in the dumps: this book can help solve your problems, and make you feel less alone for having them.

    Using new a way of marketing, called growth hacking, these startups have grown to millions of users and created billions of dollars in value, all without using the traditional marketing playbook. So how have companies like Uber, Square, Snapchat, Evernote, Hubspot, Github and Yelp grown? See for yourself in this ebook packed with the most in-depth case studies on exactly what strategies these companies used to unlock massive growth. Case studies included are: Uber Snapchat Square Upworthy Yelp GitHub Hubspot Evernote LinkedIn Belly Each case study shows you the specific strategies (we call them "growth engines") that these companies used to grow, both in the early stages and later in their development. From the growth hacks they used, to the unique growth playbooks they employed, you won't find a more detailed look at how startups achieve growth than through these case studies.

    It's for everyone with a stake in the outcome of a development project--and especially for those without formal software project management training. That includes top managers, executives, clients, investors, end-user representatives, project managers, and technical leads. Here you'll find guidance from the acclaimed author of the classics CODE COMPLETE and RAPID DEVELOPMENT. Steve McConnell draws on solid research and a career's worth of hard-won experience to map the surest path to your goal--what he calls "one specific approach to software development that works pretty well most of the time for most projects." Nineteen chapters in four sections cover the concepts and strategies you need for mastering the development process, including planning, design, management, quality assurance, testing, and archiving. For newcomers and seasoned project managers alike, SOFTWARE PROJECT SURVIVAL GUIDE draws on a vast store of techniques to create an elegantly simplified and reliable framework for project management success. So don't worry about wandering among complex sets of project management techniques that require years to sort out and master. SOFTWARE PROJECT SURVIVAL GUIDE goes straight to the heart of the matter to help your projects succeed. And that makes it a required addition to every professional's bookshelf.

    Focusing on the business implications of Internet of Things (IoT), this book describes the sheer impact, spread, and opportunities arising every day, and how business leaders can implement IoT today to realize tangible business advantages. The discussion delves into IoT from a business, strategy and organizational standpoint, and includes use-cases that illustrate the ripple effect that this latest disruption brings; you'll learn how to fashion a viable IoT plan that works with your organization's strategy and direction, and how to implement that strategy successfully by integrating IoT into your organization tomorrow. For business managers, the biggest question surrounding the Internet of Things is what to do with it. This book examines the way IoT is being used today—and will be used in the future—to help you craft a robust plan for your organization. Grasp the depth and breadth of the Internet of Things Create a secure IoT recipe that aligns with your company's strategy Capitalize on advances while avoiding disruption from others Leverage the technical, organizational, and social impact of IoT In the past five years, the Internet of Things has become the new frontier of technology that has everyone talking. It seems that almost every week a major vendor announces a new IoT strategy or division; is your company missing the boat? Learn where IoT fits into your organization, and how to turn disruption into profit with the expert guidance in Building the Internet of Things.

    Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia. Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.

    Across all of these break-out companies, a set of common patterns has evolved into a repeatable playbook that Gil has codified in High Growth Handbook. Covering key topics including the role of the CEO, managing your board, recruiting and managing an executive team, M&A, IPOs and late stage funding rounds, and interspersed with over a dozen interviews with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz), and Aaron Levie (Box), High Growth Handbook presents crystal clear guidance for navigating the most complex challenges that confront leaders and operators in high-growth startups. In what Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn and co-author of the #1 NYT bestsellers The Alliance and The Startup of You calls "a trenchant guide," High Growth Handbook is the playbook for turning a startup into a unicorn. "Elad Gil is one of Silicon Valley's seriously knowledgeable and battle-tested players. If you want the chance to turn your startup into the next Google or Twitter, then read this trenchant guide from someone who played key roles in the growth of these companies." - Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, co-author of the #1 NYT bestsellers "The Alliance" and "The Startup of You," and host of the podcast Masters of Scale "Elad eschews trite management aphorisms in favor of pragmatic and straight-shooting insights on complex topics like managing a board of directors, executing functional re-organizations with as little trauma as possible, and everything in-between." - Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter and serial entrepreneur "Elad first invested in Airbnb when we were less than 10 people and provided early advice on scaling the company. This book shares these learnings for the next generation of entrepreneurs." - Nathan Blecharczyk, cofounder of Airbnb, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chairman of Airbnb China "Elad jam-packs every useful lesson about building and scaling companies into a single, digestible book. My only gripe is that he didn't write this when we were in the early days of Box as it would have saved my ass countless times." -Aaron Levie, cofounder and CEO of Box "Armed with observations gathered scaling some of the most successful and important companies of Silicon Valley, Elad has no-nonsense, highly applicable advice to any operator transitioning a company from the proverbial garage to the next stage and beyond." - Max Levchin, cofounder and CEO of Affirm, cofounder and CTO of PayPal "Elad is one of the most experienced operators in Silicon Valley having seen numerous companies hit their inflection point. His advice has been key for Coinbase as we go through hypergrowth, from hiring executives to improving M&A." - Brian Armstrong, cofounder and CEO of Coinbase"Elad is one of the best connected and respected early stage investors in the Valley - he invested in Minted when we had fewer than 50 employees and his advice was critical to us in growing our business to where we are now, in the low hundreds of millions in sales. In his book, he crystallizes all of these learnings for the next generation of companies."-Mariam Naficy, cofounder and CEO of Minted

    But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many analysts either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future.But in Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.When AI is framed as cheap prediction, its extraordinary potential becomes clear: Prediction is at the heart of making decisions under uncertainty. Our businesses and personal lives are riddled with such decisions. Prediction tools increase productivity--operating machines, handling documents, communicating with customers. Uncertainty constrains strategy. Better prediction creates opportunities for new business structures and strategies to compete. Penetrating, fun, and always insightful and practical, Prediction Machines follows its inescapable logic to explain how to navigate the changes on the horizon. The impact of AI will be profound, but the economic framework for understanding it is surprisingly simple.

    Their brand-new two- or three-person start-ups are given a seemingly impossible challenge: to turn a raw idea into a viable business, fast.   Each YC session culminates in a demo day, when investors and venture capitalists flock to hear pitches from the new graduates. Any one of them might turn out to be the next Dropbox (class of 2007, now valued at $5 billion) or Airbnb (2009, $1.3 billion).   Randall Stross is the first journalist to have fly-on-the-wall access to Y Combinator. He tells the full story of how Paul Graham started this ultra exclusive institution, how it chooses among hundreds of aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs, and how it teaches them to go from concept to profitability in record time.