Book picks similar to
Google Speaks by Janet Lowe


business
google
non-fiction
management

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action


Simon Sinek - 2009
    It was their natural ability to start with why that enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things.In studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way—and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be lead, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.Any organization can explain what it does; some can explain how they do it; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not money or profit—those are always results. WHY does your organization exist? WHY does it do the things it does? WHY do customers really buy from one company or another? WHY are people loyal to some leaders, but not others?Starting with WHY works in big business and small business, in the nonprofit world and in politics. Those who start with WHY never manipulate, they inspire. And the people who follow them don't do so because they have to; they follow because they want to.Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire. This book is for anyone who wants to inspire others or who wants to find someone to inspire them.

How I Lost 170 Million Dollars: My Time as #30 at Facebook


Noah Kagan - 2014
    What was life like in the early days of Facebook? How did the company operate when it was just a small startup? Who were this team of misfits that built one of the most powerful tech companies in the world? In How I Lost 170 Million Dollars, Noah Kagan paints a compelling picture of the ups, downs, hard work, wild partying, and fascinating characters that populated the office during his time as Facebook's 30th employee.

Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business


Barbara Corcoran - 2001
    After failing at twenty-two jobs, Barbara Corcoran borrowed $1,000 from a boyfriend, quit her job as a diner waitress, and started a tiny real estate office in New York City. Using the unconventional lessons she learned from her homemaker mom, she gradually built it into a $6 billion dollar business. Now Barbara's even more famous for the no-nonsense wisdom she offers to entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, ABC's hit reality TV show. "Shark Tales" is down-to-earth, frank, and as heartwarming as it is smart. After reading it don't be surprised if you find yourself thinking, "If she can do it, so can I." Nothing would make Barbara happier.

Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Finding Your Message, Building a Tribe, and Changing the World


Russell Brunson - 2017
    Expert Secrets helps people find their message and then create a mass movement of people who will pay them for that advice.

Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent


Nolan Bushnell - 2013
    He also launched Steve Jobs' career, along with those of many other brilliant creatives over the course of his five decades in business. In his eagerly awaited first book, Bushnell explains how to find, hire, and nurture the people who could turn your company into the next Atari or the next Apple.The business world is changing faster than ever, and every day your company faces new complications and difficulties. The only way to resolve these issues is to have a staff of wildly creative people who live as much in the future as in the present, who thrive on being different, and whose ideas will guarantee that your company will prosper when other companies fail.

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think


Viktor Mayer-Schönberger - 2013
    “Big data” refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it. This emerging science can translate myriad phenomena—from the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of books—into searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before. A revolution on par with the Internet or perhaps even the printing press, big data will change the way we think about business, health, politics, education, and innovation in the years to come. It also poses fresh threats, from the inevitable end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior.In this brilliantly clear, often surprising work, two leading experts explain what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards. Big Data is the first big book about the next big thing.www.big-data-book.com

The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup


Noam Wasserman - 2011
    Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin. The Founder's Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team.Drawing on a decade of research, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them. He looks at whether it is a good idea to cofound with friends or relatives, how and when to split the equity within the founding team, and how to recognize when a successful founder-CEO should exit or be fired. Wasserman explains how to anticipate, avoid, or recover from disastrous mistakes that can splinter a founding team, strip founders of control, and leave founders without a financial payoff for their hard work and innovative ideas. He highlights the need at each step to strike a careful balance between controlling the startup and attracting the best resources to grow it, and demonstrates why the easy short-term choice is often the most perilous in the long term. The Founder's Dilemmas draws on the inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, while mining quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders.People problems are the leading cause of failure in startups. This book offers solutions.

Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success


Sean Ellis - 2017
    It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Airbnb was the best-kept secret of travel hackers and couch surfers, Pinterest was a niche web site frequented only by bakers and crafters, LinkedIn was an exclusive network for C-suite executives and top-level recruiters, Facebook was MySpace's sorry step-brother, and Uber was a scrappy upstart that didn't stand a chance against the Goliath that was New York City Yellow Cabs.So how did these companies grow from these humble beginnings into the powerhouses they are today? Contrary to popular belief, they didn't explode to massive worldwide popularity simply by building a great product then crossing their fingers and hoping it would catch on. There was a studied, carefully implemented methodology behind these companies' extraordinary rise. That methodology is called Growth Hacking, and it's practitioners include not just today's hottest start-ups, but also companies like IBM, Walmart, and Microsoft as well as the millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, managers and executives who make up the community of GrowthHackers.com.Think of the Growth Hacking methodology as doing for market-share growth what Lean Start-Up did for product development, and Scrum did for productivity. It involves cross-functional teams and rapid-tempo testing and iteration that focuses customers attaining them, retaining them, engaging them, and motivating them to come back and buy more. An accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share, this book walks readers through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must read for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manger looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.

The Barefoot Executive: The Ultimate Guide for Being Your Own Boss and Achieving Financial Freedom


Carrie Wilkerson - 2011
    Want to start your workday with e-mail and coffee on the back patio? Want the flexibility of joining your fourth grader on an all-day field trip? Are you ready to take that vacation you've been planning for years? Then you have a choice to make, and "The Barefoot Executive" will help jump-start your transition. You'll learn: Your "why." The most important question. Why do you want to work for yourself? What type of business best suits your experience and talents. How to stay focused on your goal and avoid distractions. Where to find the support that will accelerate your success. How to link your business to the right market. Whether it's a service, a product, or your insight or expertise, you already have the raw materials necessary to transform your life. Carrie will walk you through the process of building the business you need to achieve the life you want. Her guidance is practical. No philosophical silliness, no theoretical abstractions- just concrete action steps alongside insights from fellow entrepreneurs, interactive exercises, and links to Carrie's online video coaching segments. It's the next best thing to working one-on-one with her. "The Barefoot Executive" will have you energized by the possibilities and embracing the extraordinary life that is well within your reach. DISCOVER what you already have to offer, how to use it to your advantage, and where to find the people who are eager to buy it. "The Barefoot Executive" will pull you over the hurdle of uncertainty and get you moving, planning, "doing."What Others Are Saying:"Carrie Wilkerson has done a great job with this book, and she's personally helped me make tons of money with my business. I highly recommend this book!" - Chris Brogan, president, Human Business Works, and publisher of chrisbrogan.com"There has never been a better time to turn your passions into income. But just having an idea doesn't mean you're ready to order business cards just yet. Carrie Wilkerson's "The Barefoot Executive" walks you through the process of developing your idea, finding your audience, and setting yourself up for a lifetime of success doing the work you love for the hardest boss you'll ever have... yourself!" - Dave Ramsey, host of The Dave Ramsey Show and best-selling author of "The Total Money Makeover""""One of the best ways to achieve success is to learn from someone who has already done it. If you are looking to build a viable, sustainable, and lucrative business from home- or anywhere else- Carrie Wilkerson is your example, and her new book will show you the way." - Tim Sanders, author of "Today We Are Rich" and former CSO at Yahoo!"A lot of books can fire up an entrepreneur. But a lot of those books leave readers high and dry when it comes to practical application. Enthusiasm isn't enough. You need a plan and the tools to build with. Carrie Wilkerson's guidance provides just that. Combine that with her enthusiasm, warmth, and core values, and you have someone very real to learn from. As my dad says, 'a great book needs to cover the Why and the How.' This is a great book. I know that when Carrie advises Ziglar, Inc. on marketing ideas, we get results." - Tom Ziglar, CEO and proud son of Zig Ziglar"If you're dreaming of building a business on your terms, then you'll absolutely love Carrie Wilkerson." - Tory Johnson, CEO, Women For Hire and "New York Times" best-selling author

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future


Andrew McAfee - 2017
    Now they’ve written a guide to help readers make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant


W. Chan Kim - 1994
    They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation. Yet, as this influential and immensely popular book shows, these hallmarks of competitive strategy are not the way to create profitable growth in the future.In the international bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne argue that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors, but from creating "blue oceans"—untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Such strategic moves, which the authors call “value innovation,” create powerful leaps in value that often render rivals obsolete for more than a decade.Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any company can use to create and capture their own blue oceans. A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this bestselling business book charts a bold new path to winning the future.

Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Web Application


37 Signals - 2006
    At under 200 pages it's quick reading too. Makes a great airplane book.

The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company


Steve Blank - 2012
    It:Incorporates the "Business Model Canvas" as the organizing principle for startup hypothesesProvides separate paths and advice for web/mobile products versus physical productsOffers a wealth of detailed instruction on how to get, keep, and grow customers recognizing the different techniques for web and physical channelsAnd teaches a "new math" for startups: "metrics that matter for fueling growth"The Startup Owner's Manual is a step-by-step, near-encyclopedic reference manual or "how to" for building a successful, scalable startup. Want to know what to do the first, week, month or year?What's the right distribution channel for your product?How to get traffic to your web site? …and how to activate customers or users on arrival?Who are the right "first customers," and why? …plus many more great tips in nearly 500 pages, complete with index, glossary, and Customer Development ChecklistsIt's the indispensible reference guide for any startup founder, entrepreneur, investor or educator.

How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age


Dale Carnegie - 2011
    The only diploma that hangs in Warren Buffett’s office is his certificate from Dale Carnegie Training. Lee Iacocca credits Carnegie for giving him the courage to speak in public. Dilbert creator Scott Adams called Carnegie’s teachings “life-changing.” In today’s world, where more and more of our communication takes place across wires and screens, Carnegie’s lessons have not only lasted but become all the more critical. Though he never could have predicted technology’s trajectory, Carnegie proves a wise and helpful teacher in this digital landscape. To demonstrate the many ways his lessons remain relevant, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., has reimagined his prescriptions and his advice for this difficult digital age. We may communicate today with different tools and with greater speed, but Carnegie’s advice on how to communicate, lead, and work efficiently remains priceless across the ages.

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley


Emily Chang - 2018
    It's a "Brotopia," where men hold all the cards and make all the rules. Vastly outnumbered, women face toxic workplaces rife with discrimination and sexual harassment, where investors take meetings in hot tubs and network at sex parties.In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don't Be Evil! Connect the World!)--and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back.Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Interviews with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer--who got their start at Google, where just one in five engineers is a woman--reveal just how hard it is to crack the Silicon Ceiling. And Chang shows how women such as former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, entrepreneur Niniane Wang, and game developer Brianna Wu, have risked their careers and sometimes their lives to pave a way for other women.Silicon Valley's aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. It's time to break up the boys' club. Emily Chang shows us how to fix this toxic culture--to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.