Behind this transformative progress are also the venture capitalists - who are at once the investors, coaches and allies of the entrepreneurs. William H. Draper III knows this story first-hand, because as a venture capitalist, he helped write it. For more than 40 years, Bill Draper has worked with top entrepreneurs in fabled Silicon Valley, where today's vision is made into tomorrow's reality. The Startup Game is the first up-close look at how the relationship between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs is critical to enhancing the success of any economy.From a venture capitalist who saw the potential of Skype, Apollo Computer, Hotmail, OpenTable, and many other companies, come firsthand stories of success. In these pages, Draper explores how to evaluate innovative ideas and the entrepreneurs behind those ideas, and he shares lessons from Yahoo, Zappos, Baidu, Tesla Motors, Activision, Measurex, and more. Also, in revealing his on-the-ground account of how Deng Xiaoping brought China roaring into the modern world and how Manmohan Singh unlocked the creative genius of Indian entrepreneurs, Draper stresses the essential value of farsighted political leadership in creating opportunity.The author also discusses his efforts to bring best practices of the venture capitalist/entrepreneur partnership to the social sector.Written in an engaging narrative, and incorporating many of the author's personal experiences, this book provides a much-needed look at how the world of venture capital and entrepreneurship works.

    It guides entrepreneurs through every step in an entrepreneurial venture from the legalities of raising initial capital to knowing when to change tactics.Andrew Romans is the co-founder and general partner of Rubicon Venture Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in privately held technology companies and enables its investors to co-invest along side the fund on a deal-by-deal basis via innovative sidecar funds right up to IPO or M&A exit.

    I met Veronika while exploring Old Town Tallinn. When I found out Veronika was an Airbnb host, I asked to see her listing. I saw potential, but her online listing wasn’t much. I told Veronika about how I optimize Airbnb listings. We agreed that I would stay at her listing for a small discount in exchange for a fully optimized Airbnb listing. As of November 2017, Veronika has 10 5-star reviews.I wrote Optimize YOUR Airbnb to reach more hosts like Veronika. This book contains the culmination of my five-year experience with Airbnb from being an employee and a guest, to a host, to Superhost, and to starting an Airbnb property management company. I’ve hosted everything from a living room couch to a 3-story, 5-bedroom hillside mansion. The information in this book is more complete and effective than anything on the market. Trouble deciding between which book to buy? To ensure my book is the most comprehensive, I read 13 of the top Airbnb books on the market. You can read my review of these books on Amazon. Daniel V. Rusteen - former Airbnb employee, Superhost, super guest (250+ days on Airbnb), and Airbnb property manager - reveals his strategies to rank high in Airbnb search by creating an optimal online listing and offline guest experience."Daniel Rusteen's authoritative book is as comprehensive as it is enjoyable to read. I have never seen so much valuable, actionable advice in one place for an Airbnb host. Highly recommended!" - Chip ConleyYou will learn how to: Optimize your Airbnb listing to achieve a high Airbnb search rank Leverage tools to automate 80%+ of your Airbnb Interior design without professional help Successfully navigate slow season Identify problem Airbnb guests before they book Master your Airbnb title and text Take high-quality photos with your smart phone Create additional streams of revenue based on your Airbnb “The listing you optimized appeared to be easier to read, was more approachable, and ranked higher as a result.” - Customer of OptimizeMyAirbnb.com paraphrasing what Airbnb told him as it related to one of his listings using the strategies outlined in the book“I am an Airbnb expert…then I found you…you are the top!” - Blog comment on OptimizeMyAirbnb.com“Danny – You might be a magician. I made a bunch of your suggested updates to the listing and I’ve had $660 in bookings (only 2 nights!) in the last 24 hours.” - Prior customer of OptimizeMyAirbnb.com“If you don’t read this book, there will be a lot that you don’t know that you don’t know.” - Symon He, foreword Optimize YOUR Airbnb

    Ram Charan, expert in corporate governance and best-selling author, packs this book with useful tools and techniques to take boards and their companies to a higher level of performance. Charan puts his finger on a growing problem for boards: the disconnect between directors' efforts and their results. The added time and attention boards invest is not translating into better governancea that is, governance that adds value to the business. Boards That Deliver gets beyond the rhetoric of corporate governance reform. It captures the tried-and-true practices used by high-performance boards. In contrast to experts who base prescriptions on number-crunching exercises, Charan identifies the real problems that drain directors' time and suppress their best judgmentsa and explains clearly and succinctly how boards can solve those problems. These battle-tested solutions help boards achieve what rules and regulations alone cannota to get succession right, refine a winning strategy, and design a rational CEO compensation package.Good governance requires leadership. Boards That Deliver is the no-nonsense guide for directors and CEOs who are rising to the leadership challenge to make their boards a competitive advantage.

    Then it hit him: This doesn't have to be my life. Now twenty-eight, DiPiazza has launched multiple successful businesses with zero startup capital--simply by identifying and monetizing his skills into a career and life he loves. And with this book, so can you. Rich20Something is not some boring spiel on -paying your dues-; it's about hustle. Instead of inching your way up the traditional career ladder, DiPiazza teaches you how to hack it, sharing hard-earned advice, anecdotes from other entrepreneurial badasses, and step-by-step techniques for turning your best skills into a business you're passionate about that pays well to boot, including success secrets like: - The three questions that will help fail proof your business idea - How to ruthlessly prioritize, focus, and -ride the Motivation Wave- to get your gig going- Promotion strategies that literally make you money while you sleep - Owning the online game on every platform, from ten followers to 500,000 It's time to toss out your parents' career guides (sorry, mom and dad). Rich20Something is the only book you need to blaze your own path to an epic career and start getting the most out of your life now.

    It is time to emerge from your coma, embrace renewed vitality, and approach life By Design! In this dynamic hands-on guide, world-class success coach and motivational leader Tom Ferry reveals the secrets to achievement at work and at home, and how to create a greater balance between the two. This book will help you conquer the four addictions that are holding you back from living up to your greatest potential: addiction to the opinions of others, addiction to drama, addiction to the past, and addiction to worry. By becoming aware of these addictions, you will be better equipped to respond to uncertain times and to the challenges that crop up in your daily life. Tom Ferry's unique six-step approach to living By Design will help you emerge from complacency into action and accomplishment. Step 1: Explore the Core Seven life assessments--your career, your intimate relationships, your finances, your physical body, your spirituality, your attitude about the world, and your intellectual self--and pinpoint the areas in which you want to improve. Step 2: Make the conscious, deliberate choice to change your life and find fulfillment, no matter the obstacles. Step 3: Create your Life! By Design by declaring what you want for yourself, defining your goals, and devising a concrete plan to make it happen. Step 4: Identify the actions you can take to ensure that you thrive in all areas of your life. Step 5: Visualize your life as you want it to be. This simple but profound exercise is a proven technique that will lock in your vision and will lead you toward achieving your goals. Step 6: Create accountability and structure to break old habits and gain the discipline required to live life to your fullest potential. It's time to draw the line between the past and the present as you face your fears, and go for everything you really want. This is Life! By Design."" And the results will astound you!

    In order to survive-let alone thrive-companies must be able to anticipate and adapt to change, or face rapid, brutal extinction. In Clockspeed, Charles Fine draws on a decade’s worth of research at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management to introduce a new vocabulary for understanding the forces of competition and making strategic decisions that will determine the destiny of your company, as well as your industry.Taking inspiration from the world of biology, Fine argues that each industry has its own evolutionary life cycle (or “clockspeed”), measured by the rate at which it introduces new products, processes, and organizational structures. Just as geneticists study the fruit fly to gain insight into the evolutionary paths of all animals, managers in any industry can learn from the industrial fruit flies-such as Internet services, personal computers, and multimedia entertainment-which evolve through new generations at breakneck speed. Applying the lessons of the fruit flies to industries as diverse as bicycles, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors, Fine illustrates how competitive advantage is lost or gained by how well a company manages dynamic web of relationships that run throughout its chain of suppliers, distributors, and alliance partners.Packed with revolutionary concepts and tools to help managers make key strategic decisions that affect current and future performance, Clockspeed shows, as no other book before it, how the ultimate core competency is mastering the art of supply chain design, carefully choosing which components and capabilities to keep in-house and which to purchase from outside.The consequences of faulty of visionary decisions can be enormous and dramatic. Witness the case of IBM in the early 1980s, when it outsourced key PC components to Microsoft and Intel, unleashing the “Intel Inside” phenomenon and a complete restructuring of the computer industry. Going further, Fine sees the personal computer as merely a component in the vast information-entertainment industry, which evolves at speeds unimagined a few years ago. He uses this “fruit fly” as well to peer into the future of industrial evolution and find practical advice for players in all industries, from automobiles to health care information systems.Clockspeed not only serves up some new “laws” of value chain dynamics, but it also offers recommendations for achieving industry leadership through simultaneous product, process, and supply chain design. In challenging managers to think like corporate geneticists Clockspeed contributes the next creative leap in business strategy.

    Encore describes the competing visions for work that are already lining up to capture the hearts and minds, and the time, of waves of baby boomers who are not content, or affluent enough, to spend their next twenty or thirty years on the golf course. Baby boomers are searching for a calling in the second half of life; they are moving beyond midlife yet refusing to phase out or fade away. If the old dream of the Golden Years was the Freedom from Work, the dream of this new wave is the Freedom to Work--in new ways, on new terms, to new ends. As their numbers begin to swell, these individuals hold the potential not only to transform work in America, but to create a society that balances the joys and responsibilities of contribution across the generations--in other words, one that works better for everyone.

    Sundar Pichai’s appointment was hardly an unexpected one. Pichai is a man known as much for his veritable Midas touch with every product he has developed or led for Google – Chrome, Chrome OS and Android, to name just a few – as for his superlative people skills and open-minded approach to innovation. Yet, the company’s decision to restructure its product lines and appoint Pichai as the head of a leaner, more focused Google, has raised inevitable questions: • What does Pichai’s role augur for the future of the tech giant? • Will Google consolidate its position for existing products or will they focus on creating new ones? • And will Pichai transform the organization that Schmidt, Page and Brin created and led, or confirm the belief of a minority of naysayers that he is not yet ready for this daunting role? Pichai: The Future of Google provides answers to these questions while throwing light on Sundar Pichai’s childhood and education; his entry into the tech world and quick rise up the ranks in Google; and his key contributions as a leader and tech-guru to Google’s most successful properties. Timely and insightful, this book offers a rare glimpse into the fascinating ecosystem of a path-breaking company and shows us what it takes to be a dynamic leader in the 21st century.

    Inspirational

    Any entrepreneur will love and appreciate this

    Today's massively scaling startups - which rapidly grow to millions of users and billions in valuation - do not sell a product or service. Instead, they build a platform on which others can create and exchange value.The many manifestations of the platform business model - social media, the peer economy, cryptocurrencies, APIs and developer ecosystems, the Internet of things, crowdsourcing models, and many others - are becoming increasingly relevant.Yet, most new platform ideas fail because the business design and growth strategies involved in building platforms are not well understood.Platform Scale lays out a structured approach to designing and growing a platform business model and addresses the key factors leading to the success and failure of these businesses.Six core concepts for successful platform business model design1. Re-imagine your business for platform scaleThe mechanism by which these new business models scale so rapidly. Understand the shift in thinking needed to manage businesses with platform scale and the impact of network effects, virality, behavior design and data."We are not in the business of building software. We are in the business of enabling interactions."2. Leverage interaction-first designHow detailed consideration around designing the producer-consumer core interaction is critical for building business models that leverage platform scale."The design of the platform business model involves the design of a core interaction followed by the design of an open infrastructure that will enable and govern this interaction."3. Build cumulative value and minimize interaction failureKnow the key managerial decisions to focus on while managing platform scale businesses, all geared towards maximizing the ability of these businesses to enable interactions by scaling producer participation and minimizing interaction failure."Platform scale is achieved by maximizing the repeatability and efficiency of the platform's core interaction."4. Solve chicken and egg problemsPlatform business models face an all too familiar catch-22 chicken and egg problem on the way to scaling. This can be overcome by designing the conditions for sparking interactions."The solution to the chicken-and-egg problem requires a bait that can break the vicious cycle of no activity."5. Design viral enginesUnderstand the drivers of viral growth in a world of networks and apply the viral canvas design-first approach to viral growth."Virality is a business design problem, not a marketing or engineering effort. It requires design before optimization."6. Account for reverse network effectsConsider the counter view on platform scale and be on the lookout for conditions where scale can be detrimental to platform businesses."The goal of platform scale is to ensure the simultaneous scaling of quantity and quality, of interactions."Platform Scale is a maker's guide for entrepreneurs, innovators and educators looking to understand and implement the inner workings of highly scalable platform business models.

    500 CEO and #1 national best-selling author, Ryan Levesque--featured for his work in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Entrepreneur--has guided thousands of entrepreneurs through the journey of answering this question.One of the biggest reasons why so many new businesses fail is because in the quest to decide what business to start, most of the conventional wisdom is wrong.Instead of obsessing over what--as in what should you sell or what should you build--you should first be asking who. As in who should you serve?The what is a logical question that will come soon enough. But choosing your who is the foundation from which all other things are built.That is what this book is all about.If you've ever had the dream to start your own business, become your own boss, or do your own thing--but have been afraid to take the leap and screw up your already good life--this book is for you.You will find the meticulously tested, step-by-step process outlined in the book is easy to follow, despite being the result of a decade of research and experience. This process, designed to minimize your risk of failure and losing money up front, coupled with the inspiring stories of everyday people who have used this process to launch successful businesses, will not only give you clarity on what type of business to start, but also the confidence to finally take that leap and get started.

    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.

    In The Hustle Economy, we give you 25 essays from founders, writers, producers, game makers, artists, and creative types from every path who share one common trait -- they are all self-made hustlers who have managed to turn their creativity into careers. In this collection you will find essays from: Producer and performer Mike Rugnetta on why "Do what you love" is both the best and worst piece of advice you'll ever receive. Author, television writer, and humorist Emma Koenig on staying focused and productive no matter what life throws at you. Web comic Zach Weinersmith on the equation for success and using your creativity to do what the rest of us won't. Trendspotter Jess Kimball Leslie on identifying your skills and turning it into a successful career. This book exists to inspire and inform. Your creative career is attainable, and we'll show you how to do it and why it's worth it. Complete list of essayists: Nick Douglas, Ben Grelle (aka The Frogman), Adrian Sanders, Farah Khalid, Mike Rugnetta, Emma Koenig, Asha Dornfest, Kelsey Hanson, Móa Guzmá Thomas Leveritt, Casey Bowers, Josephine Decker, Donna Salgado, Alex Pearlman, Dante Shepherd, Brad O'Farrell, Jess Kimball Leslie, Meredith Haggerty, Alex Larsen, Nancy Zastudil, Lee LeFever, Jeff Wysaski, Zach Weinersmith