Archive for the 'Books' Category

Michael Crichton: Next Review

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on January 4, 2007
in Books, Technology and Venture Capital
. 0 Comments

I’m a big fan of Michael Crichton, so I was thrilled to receive his current book, Next, as a Christmas gift.

The book was pretty classic for a Crichton novel. Lots of technology, speculation on how that technology may be used (or abused) in the future, lots of characters, a few chase scenes, industry espionage, political soapboxing, legal and moral issues, the role of the venture capitalists, a hint of sex, and a story line that tries to tie it all together.

For this book, though, I didn’t think that the "novel" parts of the book were particularly interesting. I liked that there were multiple story lines happening all over the world and they (mostly) all came together at the end, but the "coming together" parts seemed pretty forced to me.

The technology side of the book is quite good, as usual. Crichton provides some great discussion on the Biotech industry, gene therapy, transgenic species, gene patenting, the use and ownership of human tissues in research and development, legal issues galore, and the commercialization of the University research programs. All great stuff. Crichton is no dummy.

Bottom line: This is way better than Airframe, but not as good as Jurassic Park. In about the same league as Disclosure. Worth a read if you are interested in the technology, but don’t buy it for the story.

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Learning: Data, Information, Knowledge, Understanding, Wisdom

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on December 28, 2006
in Books
. 2 Comments

I liked this, from Nivi, summarizing some of the points in the book Re-Creating the Corporation:

Learning is the acquisition of data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.

And what are those things?

  • Data consists of symbols that represent objects, events, and their properties. For example, the speedometer in a car presents data.
  • Information is data that has been made useful. Information answers who, what, where, when, and how many questions. Information is helpful in deciding what to do, not how to do it. For example, the information that you are driving at 120 mph will help you decide whether to speed up or slow down. But information won’t tell you how to do it.
  • Knowledge consists of instructions and know-how. Knowledge answers how questions. For example, your driving knowledge tells you how to control the car’s speed.
  • Understanding consists of explanations. Understanding answers why questions. For example, you understand why you are in the car in the first place: because you are driving your kids to get ice cream.
  • Wisdom is the ability to perceive outcomes and determine their value. It is useful for deciding what should be done. For example, the wise may decide that driving recklessly may lead their children to do the same in the future.

Enjoy!

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Surgery Is Controlled Trauma

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on December 21, 2006
in Books and Venture Capital
. 0 Comments

The title of this post is a quote from this very enjoyable and easy to read book, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside, written by Katrina Firlik. I’ve already loaned the book to my daughter, so I can’t go into too much detail in this review.

Suffice it to say that Katrina is a neurosurgeon, which is a rather exclusive profession. Furthermore, she’s a female neurosurgeon, which makes her even more rare. And, an excellent writer. Yikes. She is a talented one!

I’m not a doctor.

I don’t even play one on TV.

Closest I ever came was getting my Wilderness EMT certificate.

I’m not a writer.

I don’t even play one in the blogosphere.

Closest I ever came was, well, writing this blog!

Katrina does a nice job introducing the life of a neurosurgeon and mixing in patient stories, medical school stories, politics of the job, and tools of the trade.

OK, but this is a blog about Venture Capital, right? So why the review of a surgeon’s book?

First, I like all things medical. Second, the neurosurgeon profession appears to be a very exclusive one, much like that of a VC. And, it turns out that Katrina is married to Andrew Firlik who just so happens to be a Venture Capitalist with Foundation Medical Partners. There. I tied it all together for you.

Just go read the book.

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This Is Cool: 9/11 Commission Report as a Comic Book

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on December 20, 2006
in Books and Entertainment
. 0 Comments

Check out "The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation".

It’s the "9/11 Commission Report" repurposed into a hardbound comic book format. Courtesy of Cool Tools:

This is a comic book version of the 911 Commission Report. No joke. It takes the narrative of the official National Commission Report and transforms it into a page-turning thriller. It’s a very fast read. Their visual timeline of the four hijacked flights is scarily clarifying. The artists do a marvelous job of weaving the many threads that lead up to the event of 911. In fact before reading this I had not appreciated how interconnected the many previous encounters with the jihad network were. This graphic book also reveals in simple pictures how seriously the government bungled many early clues, how sadly it bungled its real-time response to the events and how it continues to bungle the complexity of this new world. The comic does all this while remaining faithful to the the Commission’s text, yet underscoring its clarity by telling the story in pictures. It’s a showcase for the power of the cartoon media. Highly recommended.

Not too late for that one last gift for someone special… They’ve been good… right?

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Are You The Pack Leader?

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on December 14, 2006
in Books, Personal and Venture Capital
. 1 Comment

If you have a dog in your house, or if you have friends or family members that have dogs, or if you come across dogs in your work, then you should know about Cesar Millan.

Cesar is a true entrepreneur.

He was born and raised in Mexico, came to America and bootstrapped his own business for training and rehabilitating dogs in Los Angeles at his Dog Psychology Center. His clientele grew to include celebrities with troubled canines (or was it really troubled celebrities?), and he eventually caught the attention of the folks in TV (we are talking about Hollywood, after all, very near the place that I grew up!).

The National Geographic Channel picked him up in 2004 and ran a series of Cesar doing what he does best. Cesar rehabilitates dogs and trains people. He is The Dog Whisperer.

I only learned about the show a couple months ago. And… The show is great!

I’ve had dogs in my home for most of my life. I learned a ton of what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong by watching the show. You should watch it too! Here’s the blog.

Malcolm Gladwell, of Tipping Point and Blink fame, wrote a great piece for New Yorker magazine on Cesar titled What the Dog Saw. Then followed up with this blog article, which got a lot of great discussion.

The New York Times follows up with an Op-Ed piece written by Mark Derr. Apparently, Mr. Derr is not a fan of Cesar’s approach of being the Pack Leader (being "calm and assertive" with your pet; treating it as a dog expects to be treated and not like it is a human baby) and closes with the following point:

Veterinary behaviorists, having found that many aggressive dogs suffer from low levels of serotonin, have had success in treating such dogs with fluoxetine (the drug better known as Prozac).

Yeah. Drugs will solve the problem! Give me a break. I don’t think Mr. Derr has actually watched the show. I’m amazed that the New York Times even ran this. Well, if you read the bio for Mr. Derr, you see that he is pushing a book and chooses to do it by creating conflict-generated buzz. Thanks, but I’ll pass on the book, Mr. Derr.

However, if you want to check out Cesar’s stuff on Amazon, try:

       

Being the Pack Leader of your startup is a whole different matter. Do not try these techniques on your software developers.

Happy Holidays!

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The Road To Success…

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on October 4, 2006
in Books, Startups and Venture Capital
. 3 Comments

Danny Meyer is a true entrepreneur. He has recently published a must-read book: Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. From Publishers Weekly:

Meyer opened Union Square Cafe in 1985 when he was 27 years old. It hit its stride three years later when he hired chef Michael Romano, and Meyer charts its evolution from a neighborhood to international institution. Initially cautious about expansion, he opened Gramercy Tavern with chef Tom Colicchio three years later, eventually broadening his New York City restaurant empire to 11 establishments including Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Blue Smoke, Shake Shack and the Modern.

Can you say successful? Danny has had to satisfy a lot of customers to drive such success.

The quote that brought me to this book was:

The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.

The quote is credited to legendary retailer Stanley Marcus (yes, of Neiman Marcus fame, who took over the family business in 1926 at the age of 21 after getting a Harvard business degree), and oh does it ring true. Startups will make lots of mistakes along the way. The best ones survive in large part due to their "response reaction" to those mistakes. We are entering a period of greater transparency in business. I think it’s great, and the companies that can become more transparent and more honest with every aspect of their business will be the ones that thrive.

The food industry is certainly a service business (aren’t they all?). What I like about Danny is that he doesn’t think of it that way. It’s a hospitality business (aren’t they all?). While foodies will enjoy this book for the memoir-style, I think other business owners will get just as much out of it. If more startups could follow Danny’s lead here and not think about customer service but hospitality delivery, I have no doubt that their customers will respond (and rejoice!).

Meyer makes a distinction between service ("the technical delivery of a product") and the "Enlightened Hospitality" at the core of his business strategy—both necessary for restaurant success. He notes that hospitality "is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel" and shares tips like hiring "51 percenters," or staff with "skills divided 51-49 between emotional hospitality and technical excellence," and the "Five As" for addressing mistakes: awareness, acknowledge, apologize, act, additional generosity.

Danny’s other insights:

  • Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts — for and to — express it all.
  • Context, context, context, trumps the outdated location, location, location.
  • Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it’s theirs. That sense of affiliation builds trust and invariably leads to repeat business.
  • Err on the side of generosity: You get more by first giving more.
  • Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, believe in it. When you cede your core values to someone else, it’s time to quit.

In a related story, take a peek at Dan Meyer’s Response to Restaurants Are A Service Business. Gothamist covers it in Battle of the Book Readings. The Wall Street Journal talks about it in Hospitality for Everyone. 800-CEO-READ covers it in Setting the Table. New York Magazine covers it in Danny Meyer Walks Into A Pub.

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The Long Tail of Book Reviews

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on September 19, 2006
in Books, Startups and Venture Capital
. 0 Comments

I read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail book so long ago and it is only now showing up on the blog. When it comes to reviewing the books that I read, for some reason I flash back to junior high school and the task gets put on the back-burner. I’ll try to be better. :-)

Anyway, this book was both classic and good. Chris is an excellent writer and captures the material very well. The book had just about the right mix of depth and breadth and I didn’t once feel that Chris was just putting words down to fill up the pages — creating "throw weight", if you will, like many authors tend to do (myself included). Read it. I really enjoyed it.

The book showed up on the New York Times Non-Fiction Top Ten Best Sellers list. Would that make it a hit? As I learned from the book, hits are very rare in the book publishing industry. This one is well deserved. Congratulations!

Enabling commerce to happen in the Long Tail can make the difference between a nice business and a Big Business. The Venture Capital community cares about building Big Businesses. This matters. Some random thoughts on this book and the VC industry:

  • "Seen broadly, it’s clear that the story of the Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance — what happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone." And: "Bottom line: A Long Tail is just culture unfiltered by economic scarcity."

    To me, this is what’s most interesting. This is the first time in history that we have started to remove significant friction around some fundamental supply-and-demand economics. Fascinating stuff. And, the stats certainly show that the hits are still where the big money is made. However, the revenue from the Long Tail is certainly surprising everyone. It is not insignificant.

  • "Google, for instance, makes most of its money not from huge corporate advertisers, but from small ones (the Long Tail of advertising)." And: "Google aggregates the Long Tail of advertising (small- and medium-sized advertisers and publishers that make their money from advertising)."

    Google is not a search company. They are an advertising placement company. They’ve built a pretty good engine for matching advertisers to Long Tail (user-generated) content and share the profits with those users that are driving hits. I love it. Google does not have an architectural lock on the Long Tail constituency, though. That’s their weakest link. More later when I review The Search.
  • "But even stars make flops, so the studios, labels, and networks employ a portfolio approach to spread their risk. Like venture capitalists, they spread their bets over a number of projects, investing in each one enough money to give it a fighting chance at becoming a hit."

    Certainly gets you thinking about The Long Tail of Venture Capital, doesn’t it? I’ve been spending a fair amount of time thinking about this myself. And, in some ways, I think it is starting to happen, and there are some parallels between what we see in the movie studios and what is happening in the startup/VC community. In the studios, we see (previous) mega-stars like Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise, who have personally amassed sufficient capital that they can fund their own projects and bring them to the masses (now, don’t get me started on those two fellows here — we’re keeping this about the changing business models). It’s getting cheaper to create a movie product (almost the democratization of the tools) and the big names can attract the required distribution and marketing to pull it off now. The established studios probably don’t like that. Oh, well.

    In the VC world, we see something parallel happening. Folks like Perry Wu, formerly of ComVentures, have amassed sufficient capital that they can fund their own projects and bring them to the masses. It’s getting much cheaper to incubate a startup, and Perry is wise to bring the ones that interest him to market (definitely a democratization of the talent and tools). The established VC firms may not like that. Oh, well.

  • "In an age of abundance in the form of everything from Moore’s law (the observation that computer price/performance doubles every eighteen months) to its equivalent in storage and bandwidth, this is a problem."

    Sorry, Chris. Stick to marketing. That’s not what Moore’s Law say, and appears to be a pretty common mis-conception. I’m surprised the editors missed that one.
  • "Although there may be near infinite selection of all media, there is still a scarcity of human attention and hours in the day. Our disposable income is limited." And: "Infinite choice equals ultimate fragmentation."

    Aha! At last we find that there really is Economics 101 at work — it has just moved to a different place. The game that is now afoot is battling for our attention in a somewhat friction-less world. Whoever gets our attention, and the ecosystems they build around that, is the one that makes the money in our new economy.
  • "More than 724,000 Americans report that eBay is their primary or secondary source of income, according to an ACNielsen study in 2005. [...] On average, each eBay-based business employs nine staffers, and almost half of those businesses earn more than three-quarters of their income through the site. It’s the ultimate small-business aggregator."

    THAT is a Long Tail business. One in which the constituents can make enough money to survive, or to feed their ProAm passions.
  • KitchenAid section: About the only part of the book that I hated. There’s no (business-model) long-tail there, only selection beyond what we’re used to. Delete it.

Enough from me. Go read the book and make your own conclusions. It will get you to think.

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Guy Kawasaki chats with Seth Godin

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on August 8, 2006
in Books
. 0 Comments

While discussing Seth Godin’s latest book, Small is the New Big, I particularly enjoyed Seth’s answer to Guy’s question:

Question: What are the five things that enabled you to be successful? Answer: If we define success as the ability to make a living doing what I do, I’d say the following:

  1. No ulterior motive. I rarely do A as a calculated tactic to get B. I do A because I believe in A, or it excites me or it’s the right thing to do. That’s it. No secret agendas.
  2. I don’t think my audience owes me anything. It’s always their turn.
  3. I’m in a hurry to make mistakes and get feedback and get that next idea out there. I’m not in a hurry, at all, to finish the “bigger” project, to get to the finish line.
  4. I do things where I actually think I’m right, as opposed to where I think succeeding will make me successful. When you think you’re right, it’s more fun and your passion shows through.
  5. I’ve tried to pare down my day so that the stuff I actually do is pretty well leveraged. That, and I show up. Showing up is underrated.

Well said. "I’m in a hurry to make mistakes and get feedback and get that next idea out there." This thought runs through everything I was trying to say in my early Blog Transparency post.

Let me add Seth’s latest book to my reading list now.

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CVS and FOSS

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on July 31, 2006
in Books, CVS, Open Source and Software
. 0 Comments

This weekend, I was lucky enough to spend many hours at the local bookstore. Browsing. Reading. Browsing. Reading. I have too many hobbies and too many interests. Just touching on a few of them keeps me pretty busy at the bookstore. Browsing online is great and all, but it’s really not as enriching as browsing the shelves. Perhaps I’m old school (I’m 42 years old), but I grew up in a time when you had to physically go to the library to research anything and everything. I spent a lot of time at the library. A few lucky families had an encyclopedia, but they were usually way out-of-date. And, as such, my fascination for real books was formed.

Anyway, while browsing the geek book section, I flipped through Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software by Michael Cusumano, Clay Shirky, Joseph Feller (Editor), Brian Fitzgerald (Editor), Scott A. Hissam (Editor), Karim R. Lakhani (Editor). They had some very nice words to say about CVS:

Adoption of CVS among Open Source projects is near total, and the concepts embodied in CVS have clearly influenced the open source methodology. CVS can easily provide universal access to users of many platforms and many native languages at locations around the globe. The practice of volunteer staffing takes advantage of CVS’s straightforward interface for basic functions, support for anonymous and read-only access, patch creation for later submission, and avoidance of file locking. CVS has been demonstrated to scale up to large communities, despite some shortcomings in that regard. The protocol used between client and server is not a standard; however, CVS clients have followed the user interface standards of each platform. In fact, the command-line syntax of CVS follows conventions established by the earlier RCS system. A separation of policy from capability allows a range of branching and release strategies that fit the needs of diverse projects. Frequent releases and hierarchies of release quality expectations are facilitated by CVS’s ability to maintain multiple branches of development. Peer review is enabled by easy access to the repository, and is encouraged by email notification of changes.

As a contributor to the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement, I chose never to monetize CVS. That was my choice. As such, it is references like this and recognition like receiving the 2003 USENIX STUG Award that make me proud of my contribution and its 17 years of service that it brought to Free and Open Source Software development.

Many thanks to the authors of Perspectives on Free and Open Source. Keep up the good work, and keep spreading the word.

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