You want to learn about the path I took that eventually led me to Zappos, and the lessons I learned along the way. You want to learn from all the mistakes we made at Zappos over the years so that your business can avoid making some of the same ones. You want to figure out the right balance of profits, passion, and purpose in business and in life. You want to build a long-term, enduring business and brand. You want to create a stronger company culture, which will make your employees and coworkers happier and create more employee engagement, leading to higher productivity. You want to deliver a better customer experience, which will make your customers happier and create more customer loyalty, leading to increased profits. You want to build something special. You want to find inspiration and happiness in work and in life. You ran out of firewood for your fireplace. This book makes an excellent fire-starter.

    The answers aren't easy -- just incredibly successful.

    Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods is one example. Richard Feynman’s “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” is another. Now comes Youngme Moon’s Different, a book for “people who don’t read business books.” Actually, it’s more like a personal conversation with a friend who has thought deeply about how the world works … and who gets you to see that world in a completely new light.  If there is one strain of conventional wisdom pervading every company in every industry, it’s the absolute importance of “competing like crazy.” Youngme Moon’s message is simply “Get off this treadmill that’s taking you nowhere. Going tit for tat and adding features, augmentations, and gimmicks to beat the competition has the perverse result of making you like everyone else.” Different provides a highly original perspective on what it means to offer something that is meaningfully different—different in a manner that is both fundamental and comprehensive.  Youngme Moon identifies the outliers, the mavericks, the iconoclasts—the players who have thoughtfully rejected orthodoxy in favor of an approach that is more adventurous. Some are even “hostile,” almost daring you to buy what they are selling. The MINI Cooper was launched with fearless abandon: “Worried that this car is too small? Look here. It’s even smaller than you think.”  These are players that strike a genuine chord with even the most jaded consumers. In fact, almost every success story of the past two decades has been an exception to the rule. Simply go to your computer and compare AOL and Yahoo! with Google. The former pile on feature upon feature to their home pages, while Google is like an austere boutique, dominating a category filled with “extras.” Different shows how to succeed in a world where conformity reigns…but exceptions rule.

    The Unwritten Laws of Business is such a book. Originally published over 60 years ago as The Unwritten Laws of Engineering, it has sold over 100,000 copies, despite the fact that it has never been available before to general readers. Fully revised for business readers today, here are but a few of the gems you’ll find in this little-known business classic: If you take care of your present job well, the future will take care of itself.The individual who says nothing is usually credited with having nothing to say.Whenever you are performing someone else’s function, you are probably neglecting your own.Martyrdom only rarely makes heroes, and in the business world, such heroes and martyrs often find themselves unemployed.Refreshingly free of the latest business fads and jargon, this is a book that is wise and insightful, capturing and distilling the timeless truths and principles that underlie management and business the world over.The little book with the big history.In the summer of 2005, Business 2.0 published a cover story on Raytheon CEO William Swanson’s self-published pamphlet, Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management. Lauded by such chief executives as Jack Welch and Warren Buffett, the booklet becamea quiet phenomenon. As it turned out, much of Swanson’s book drew from a classic of business literature that has been in print for more than sixty years. Now, in a new edition revised and updated for business readers today, we are reissuing the 1944 classic that inspired a number of Swanson’s “rules”: The Unwritten Laws of Business. Filled with sage advice and written in a spare, engaging style, The Unwritten Laws of Business offers insights on working with others, reporting to a boss, organizing a project, running a meeting, advancing your career, and more. Here’s just a sprinkling of the old-fashioned, yet surprisingly relevant, wisdom you’ll find in these pages:If you have no intention of listening to, considering, and perhaps using, someone’s opinion, don’t ask for it.Count any meeting a failure that does not end up with a definite understanding as to what’s going to be done, who’s going to do it, and when.The common belief that everyone can do anything if they just try hard enough is a formula for inefficiency at best and for complete failure at worst.It is natural enough to “look out for Number One first,” but when you do, your associates will be noticeably disinclined to look out for you.Whether you’re a corporate neophyte or seasoned manager, this charming book reveals everything you need to know about the “unwritten” laws of business.

    Yet, managing human beings and navigating complex product roadmaps is no easy task, and it's rare to find a product leader who can steward a digital product from concept to launch without a couple of major hiccups. Why do some product leaders succeed while others don't?This insightful book presents interviews with nearly 100 leading product managers from all over the world. Authors Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, and Nate Walkingshaw draw on decades of experience in product design and development to capture the approaches, styles, insights, and techniques of successful product managers. If you want to understand what drives good product leaders, this book is an irreplaceable resource.In three parts, Product Leadership helps you explore:Themes and patterns of successful teams and their leaders, and ways to attain those characteristicsThe best approaches for guiding your product team through the startup, emerging, and enterprise stages of a company's evolutionStrategies and tactics for working with customers, agencies, partners, and external stakeholders

    In the early days you can use equity to get the things you need to start your company including help, equipment, supplies, rent and even credit. Slicing Pie explains how to calculate the fair amount of equity to the right people. Learn the tricks of the trade including: - Calculating a theoretical value of your company- Assigning value to the various inputs to your business- What to do when a founder leaves your company- How to handle equity when you have to fire someone This unique guide answers the tough questions for budding entrepreneurs and helps make sure they get started on the right foot.

    Thus, when the time comes to sell, buyers aren't confident that the company-even if it's profitable-can stand on its own. To illustrate this, Warrillow introduces us to a fictional small business owner named Alex who is struggling to sell his advertising agency. Alex turns to Ted, an entrepreneur and old family friend, who encourages Alex to pursue three criteria to make his business sellable: * Teachable: focus on products and services that you can teach employees to deliver. * Valuable: avoid price wars by specialising in doing one thing better than anyone else. * Repeatable: generate recurring revenue by engineering products that customers have to repurchase often.

    Writing in their trademark witty, fast-paced style, advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to:Make and position an industry leader so that its name and message wheedles its way into the collective subconscious of your market-and stays therePosition a follower so that it can occupy a niche not claimed by the leaderAvoid letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one.Positioning also shows you how to:Use leading ad agency techniques to capture the biggest market share and become a household nameBuild your strategy around your competition's weaknessesReposition a strong competitor and create a weak spotUse your present position to its best advantageChoose the best name for your productDetermine when-and why-less is moreAnalyze recent trends that affect your positioning.Ries and Trout provide many valuable case histories and penetrating analyses of some of the most phenomenal successes and failures in advertising history. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning is required reading for anyone in business today.

    Not as a freelancer who only gets paid on a per piece basis, and not as an entrepreneurial start-up that wants to scale as soon as possible, but as a small business that is deliberately committed to staying that way. By staying small, one can have freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and avoid the headaches that result from dealing with employees, long meetings, or worrying about expansion. Company of One introduces this unique business strategy and explains how to make it work for you, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis. Paul Jarvis left the corporate world when he realized that working in a high-pressure, high profile world was not his idea of success. Instead, he now works for himself out of his home on a small, lush island off of Vancouver, and lives a much more rewarding and productive life. He no longer has to contend with an environment that constantly demands more productivity, more output, and more growth.   In Company of One, Jarvis explains how you can find the right pathway to do the same, including planning how to set up your shop, determining your desired revenues, dealing with unexpected crises, keeping your key clients happy, and of course, doing all of this on your own.

    How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters—the Googleplex—to show how Google works.While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google’s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow, Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.The key to Google’s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers—free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses—and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.But has Google lost its innovative edge? With its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.

    A Problem2. Peter Pigeonhole Prepared A Petition3. What's Your Problem?Part 2: What is The Problem?4. Billy Brighteyes Bests The Bidders5. Billy Bites His Tongue6. Billy Back To The BiddersPart 3: What is The Problem Really?7. The Endless Chain8. Missing The Misfit9. Landing On The Level10. Mind Your MeaningPart 4: Whose Problem Is It?11. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes12. The Campus That Was All Spaced Out13. The Lights At The End Of The TunnelPart 5: Where Does It Come From?14. Janet Jaworski Joggles A Jerk15. Mister Matczyszyn Mends The Matter16. Make-Works And Take-Credits17. Examinations And Other PuzzlesPart 6: Do We Really Want To Solve It?18. Tom Tireless Tinkers With Toys19. Patience Plays Politics20. A Priority Assignment

    That's where you'll find the biggest names in venture capital, including famed VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, where lawyer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-VC Scott Kupor serves as managing partner.Whether you're trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing business to the next level, you need to understand how VCs think. In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Kupor explains exactly how VCs decide where and how much to invest, and how entrepreneurs can get the best possible deal and make the most of their relationships with VCs. Kupor explains, for instance:- Why most VCs typically invest in only one startup in a given business category.- Why the skill you need most when raising venture capital is the ability to tell a compelling story.- How to handle a "down round," when startups have to raise funds at a lower valuation than in the previous round.- What to do when VCs get too entangled in the day-to-day operations of the business.- Why you need to build relationships with potential acquirers long before you decide to sell.Filled with Kupor's firsthand experiences, insider advice, and practical takeaways, Secrets of Sand Hill Road is the guide every entrepreneur needs to turn their startup into the next unicorn.

    If you're a desktop, mobile or web developer, this book is your blueprint to getting your startup off the ground with no outside investment.This book intentionally avoids topics restricted to venture-backed startups such as: honing your investment pitch, securing funding, and figuring out how to use the piles of cash investors keep placing in your lap.This book assumes:* You don't have $6M of investor funds sitting in your bank account* You're not going to relocate to the handful of startup hubs in the world* You're not going to work 70 hour weeks for low pay with the hope of someday making millions from stock optionsThere's nothing wrong with pursuing venture funding and attempting to grow fast like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It just so happened that most people are not in a place to do this.

    It is written in a conversational tone, doesn't take itself too seriously, and avoids extraneous fluff."- Eric Ries, Author & Creator of the Lean Startup methodology"Get the CustDev book to dive deep into customer interviews and understand how your product can be developed to meet your customers' needs."- Dan Martell, Founder of Flowtown, angel investorCustomer Development is a four-step framework for helping startups discover and validate their customers, product, and go-to-market strategy, developed by Steve Blank and an integral part of Eric Ries' Lean Startup methodology. Focused on the Customer Discovery step, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development is an easy to follow guide for finding early adopters, building a Minimum Viable Product, finding Product-Market fit, and establishing a sales and marketing roadmap.Deemed a "must-read" by Steve Blank and Eric Ries, inside you will find detailed customer development and lean startup concept definitions, a step-by-step approach to best practices, a business model analysis guide, case studies, rich graphics, as well as worksheets and exercises. No matter the stage of your business, you will return often to this guide to learn how to build a product people want;"get out of the building;" foster strong customer relationships; test business model risk; reach out to early adopters; conduct startup marketing; create a customer funnel based on buyers' process; and prepare your startup to scale up.The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A Cheat Sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany, affectionately known as the "CustDev book," serves as course text for classes at Stanford University, University of Chicago, Boston University, DePaul University, University of Minnesota and University of Norway."Our UCL (University College London) students love The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development. Thanks to Brant & Patrick for writing this helpful book. "- Dave Chapman, Deputy Head of the Department of Management Science and Innovation at UCL (University College London)"Love it! Required reading for all NYU entrepreneurs."- Frank Rimalovski, Managing Director of NYU Innovation Venture FundThis book is both an introduction for those unfamiliar with lean concepts and highly actionable for lean practitioners. It is a user friendly guide, written to be accessible to marketing professionals, Engineers startup founders and entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, and anyone else involved in building scalable startups.Existing companies will benefit to from applying Customer Development principles described in detail herein: for example, startups struggling to achieve market traction, or well established companies seeking to spark new innovation.This is a business book for startups like no other. No fluff, but rather sound principles and concrete steps to take to build your business. Get up to speed on Customer Development now.

    Along the way, we encounter black holes, turtles, snakes, dragons, axe-sharpening, and yak-shaving—and take a guided tour through the theories and methods, both brilliant and misguided, that litter the history of software development, from the famous ‘mythical man-month’ to Extreme Programming. Not just for technophiles but for anyone captivated by the drama of invention, Dreaming in Code offers a window into both the information age and the workings of the human mind.