I will take advantage of Hans-Peter’s absense and introduce a few books to you that made a huge impression on me as an entrepreneur and IT – or would it be more appropriate to say “software”? – veteran.
Let me start with the book you can see here. I bought it on a flee market and then read it while going places by train.
It tells the story of Pierre Omidya and how he founded his enterprise AuctionWeb on September, 3rd, 1995 in San José (California).
In an exciting and humane way, the books describes the founding years of ebay up to the moment it went public and was sold.
The amateurishness of the enterprise, especially during the first few years, is just as fascinating as the extreme thriftiness of its founder. It also made a huge impression on me how he tended to employ persons who were already marked or even almost ostracized. And it is amazing how, based on this, the great success was “crafted”. Most of it was based on very emotional decisions, rather “remote from strategy”.
An almost pathological fear of the founder that his idea might be stolen by one of the „big ones“ is described in a brilliant way. But you also read how this fear propelled the enterprise to the front and caused them to invest all the profit of the first good years exclusively in advertising at AOL in order to avoid the imagined (?) threat. It was an extremely risky action, but in retrospective, we know that it more than paid off.
Being written in simple English, it is an easy reader. I am sure that by now a German translation is also available at low cost. What you get is a piece of business history that is absolutely worth reading – because ebay is nowhere near 20 years old (see: date of foundation mentioned earlier in this article).
If you want to be an innovative entrepreneur, the book is a must-read for you.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
The next book I will introduce will be something about Steve Jobs and Google.
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