Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-And Revolutionized an Industry


Marc Benioff - 2009
    Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate. In Behind the Cloud, Benioff shares the strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.

Start-Up Sutra


Rohit Prasad - 2013
    Through the true stories of two sets of people who braved the rough road, Startup Sutra presents entrepreneurship in its essence not a checklist to be crossed, but a vision to be realized; an iterative process of near-death experiences and incredible turnarounds that founders of businesses bravely navigate through a combination of chutzpah, sagacity and sheer brazen luck. In bringing to life the daily dramas, the struggles in the trenches, the battles with insatiable inner demons and impossible external odds on the journey to achievement, it enumerates, in wise words, the five qualities that entrepreneurs necessarily possess. For everyone who dares to dream big, this book will change your life.

Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story


Mihir Dalal - 2019
    Established in October 2007, Flipkart began as an online bookstore and soon came to be known for its ‘customer obsession’. As the startup’s reputation grew, so did its value, with venture capitalists in India and abroad lining up to invest heavily in the company that stood for bold ambition, unabashed consumerism and the virtues of technology.Investigative journalist Mihir Dalal recounts the astounding story of how the Bansals built Flipkart into a multi-billion-dollar powerhouse in the span of a few years and made internet entrepreneurship a desirable occupation. But it is also a story of big money, power and hubris, as both business and interpersonal complexities weakened the founders’ control over their creation and forced them to sell out to a retailer whose dominance they had once dreamt of emulating. Flipkart’s auction involved some of the corporate world’s biggest names, from Jeff Bezos, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai to Masayoshi Son and Doug McMillon, an ironic testimony to the strength of what the Bansals had forged.Based on extraordinary research, extensive interviews and deep access to key characters in the Flipkart story, Big Billion Startup is the riveting and revealing account of how Sachin and Binny Bansal built and sold India’s largest internet company.

Anna: The Life and Times of C.N. Annadurai


R. Kannan - 2010
    Marking the pinnacle of his public life; it reflected his popularity among ordinary people who revered him as Anna; or elder brother. This rich biography illuminates his many lives—as a charismatic leader of modern India; as a stalwart of the Dravidian movement; as the founder of the DMK; as spokesman for the South—besides documenting his abilities as an acclaimed orator and littérateur in Tamil and English; and as a stage actor.Born into a weaving caste family in Kanchipuram; Anna was exposed to the non-Brahmin politics of the Justice Party during his college years and this interest led him to become a protégé of the radical thinker Periyar E.V. Ramasamy in 1935. Anna promoted his mentor’s ideas of Self-Respect and Tamil identity but not his atheism. Like him; he attacked Brahminism and ‘Aryan’ values as the cause of Tamil political and cultural decadence and opposed the imposition of Hindi as the official language. In 1962 Anna took his independent Dravida Nadu demand to the Rajya Sabha; threatening the nation’s unity. Importantly; he used public speaking; journalism; theatre; cinema and agit-prop to broaden the base of the party; which drew renowned film actors into its fold; a bond that endures to this day.The book does not shy away from the controversies that surrounded the Dravidian movement and candidly examines Anna’s complex relationship with Periyar. It records Anna’s move to form the DMK in 1949; his split with Sampath in 1961 over the party’s strategy and course; and his disillusionment with the corruption and power politics he witnessed as chief minister.Kannan draws on Anna’s considerable body of writing; the memoirs of other leaders and authors in Tamil; including critics like the poet Kannadasan; Jayakanthan and P. Ramamurti; apart from secondary sources. Featuring luminaries like Rajagopalachari and Kamaraj; Kalaignar Karunanidhi and MGR; among many others; Anna offers a warm and rounded portrait of a man who showed the way for the democratic expression of regional aspirations within a united India.

Simply Fly


G.R. Gopinath - 2010
    It narrates in gritty detail Captain Gopinath's incredible journey: quitting the Indian Army in the late 1970s with a princely gratuity of Rs. 6500, going back to his farm land inundated by the river, converting of piece of barren land to set up a farm for ecologically sustainable silkworm rearing, and winning a Rolex award for it. From there he went on to launch an airline that would make $1.1 billion dollars in less than four years.

Jack Ma: A Biography of the Alibaba Billionaire


Ryan Gardner - 2017
     He is one of China's richest men, as well as one of the wealthiest people in Asia. He has become a global icon in business and entrepreneurship, one of the world's most influential businessmen, and a philanthropist known for expounding his philosophy of business. Ma is one of the world's most powerful people, and has been a global inspirer and role model to many, he also gave numerous lectures, enlightenments and advices throughout his life career.

Burn Zones: Playing Life's Bad Hands


Jorge P. Newbery - 2015
    A high school dropout and serial entrepreneur, he had built a real estate empire of over 4,000 apartments across the USA. Taking risks and working tirelessly were the ingredients to his rise. But, he took one risk too many. An ice storm on Christmas Eve 2004 triggered his collapse. He was maligned, publicly shamed, and financially gutted – even arrested. He lost everything and ended up $26 million in debt. As he struggled to regain his footing, he spent what he could to get others to lift him up. But no one did. He discovered that there was only one person who could build him back up. To move forward, he crafted a new life’s purpose: to help others crushed by unaffordable debts rebuild themselves Burn Zones is a story of playing life’s bad hands and overcoming adversity against the greatest of challenges. It’s an inspirational story of a man who was pushed to his mental and physical limits, and came out the other side even stronger. And, most of all, it’s a lesson that you can do the same.

Coco Chanel: A Life from Beginning to End


Hourly History - 2020
    She changed the way women thought about fashion and themselves; her dresses were meant to free women of the corset and allow them to move freely and elegantly. At the dawn of a new century, Chanel stood for a new type of woman.Chanel worked her way up from living in an orphanage to dining with royalty. She personified her own designs. Always independent, she never married, took on lovers as she pleased, and never apologized. A century after Coco Chanel opened her first small shop in Paris, her designs still define luxury.Discover a plethora of topics such asAn Orphaned GirlCoco Takes on ParisChanel No. 5The Crash of 1929Chanel during World War II: The Nazi SpyExile and ReturnAnd much more!

One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization


Dee Hock - 2000
    "One From Many takes the never-before-told story of how that structure came into being, and updates it for today. The book also highlights Dee Hock's evolution from humble beginnings to an iconoclast who challenged the nature of traditional organizations and management. It is the story of an entrepreneur who created a new concept of organization, brought it into being, and led it to amazing success in less than a decade. Hock is a corporate statesman who continues to carry these ideas around the world. Lyrical, humorous, powerfully thoughtful, "One From Many tells how one man blended chaos and order in the unexpected realm of business.

Twiggy: The High-Stakes Life of Andrew Forrest


Andrew Burrell - 2013
    He worked for the Australian Financial Review in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth before being posted as a correspondent to Jakarta and Shanghai. Andrew is currently a senior business journalist for the Australian in Perth, where he has covered the WA mining boom since 2006. He won the business prize at the West Australian media awards in 2006 and 2009.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber


Mike Isaac - 2019
    Uber had catapulted to the top of the tech world, yet for many came to symbolize everything wrong with Silicon Valley.Award-winning New York Times technology correspondent Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against an era of rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley. Backed by billions in venture capital dollars and led by a brash and ambitious founder, Uber promised to revolutionize the way we move people and goods through the world. A near instant “unicorn,” Uber seemed poised to take its place next to Amazon, Apple, and Google as a technology giant.What followed would become a corporate cautionary tale about the perils of startup culture and a vivid example of how blind worship of startup founders can go wildly wrong. Isaac recounts Uber’s pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company’s toxic internal culture, and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. With billions of dollars at stake, Isaac shows how venture capitalists asserted their power and seized control of the startup as it fought its way toward its fateful IPO.Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a page-turning story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history.

Carolyn 101: Business Lessons from The Apprentice's Straight Shooter


Carolyn Kepcher - 2004
    One of Donald Trump's advisers shares her wisdom and business advice for professional women, explaining how to get ahead in business, how to deal with a difficult boss, and how to maintain a healthy professional and personal balance.

Loose Balls: Easy Money, Hard Fouls, Cheap Laughs, & True Love in the NBA


Jayson Williams - 2000
    From revelations about the meanest, softest, and smelliest players in the league, to Williams’s early days as a “young man with a lot of money and not a lot of sense,” to his strong and powerful views on race, privilege, and giving back, Loose Balls is a basketball book unlike any other.No inspirational pieties or chest-thumping boasting here—instead, Jayson Williams gives us the real insider tales of refs, groupies, coaches, entourages, and all the superstars, bench warmers, journeymen, clowns, and other performers in the rarefied circus that is professional basketball.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story


Michael Lewis - 1999
    He found this in Jim Clark, a man whose achievements include the founding of three separate billion-dollar companies. Lewis also found much more, and the result—the best-selling book The New New Thing—is an ingeniously conceived history of the Internet revolution.

Behind The White Ball


Jimmy White - 1998
    Aged 16, White was the youngest player to win the English Amateur Championship. At 18, he won the World Amateur title. By 1984, he's a professional success, married but not at all settled. He's the kind of man who goes out for a packet of cigarettes and comes home two weeks later. Gambling, women, marathon binges with showbiz friends like Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, have threatened the stability of his marriage. But somehow White has survived, to tell in candid detail, a most unusual, often outrageous story of a very sporting life.