Business Books & Co.

Founders at Work is a 2009 compilation of interviews with startup founders by Y Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston. Interview subjects include the founders of famous brands like Apple, PayPal, and Adobe, as well as lesser known founders with equally remarkable stories. In this episode we discuss recurring themes of the interviews, founders that offered particular insight, and broad takeaways from the entire volume.

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Setting the Table is a 2006 autobiographical book on management in the hospitality industry by noted restaurateur Danny Meyer. It tells the story of Meyer building his restaurant empire, and recounts many of the lessons he learned along the way. We discuss key takeaways from the book, the book's applicability to management more generally, and our own experiences at Meyer's restaurants.

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Ogilvy on Advertising is a 1983 book of advertising advice from award winning industry veteran David Ogilvy, the namesake of the advertising agency Ogilvy. It includes advice about working in the advertising industry, developing ads, and appealing to consumers. We discuss key insights from the book and our own experiences in advertising.

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Hackers & Painters is a collection of essays by noted entrepreneur, programmer, and founder of startup incubator Y Combinator, Paul Graham. Graham touches on social, business, and cultural issues related to technology and entrepreneurship. We discuss our key takeaways from the book, pose questions to each other that it ponders, and learn about Molson's experience testifying before congress.

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Akio Morita was the co-founder of Sony and one of the most influential Japanese business people of the 20th century. We analyze his 1986 autobiography, Made in Japan. Made in Japan explains what made Sony so successful and also spends a good deal of time contrasting Japanese and American business practices. We have a wide ranging discussion on the contents of Made in Japan, and how Morita’s thoughts apply in a modern context.

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We analyze the 2019 book Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell. Trillion Dollar Coach is the story of a former football coach turned fortune 500 CEO, who became the mentor to some of the most notable business leaders of our time. The book, written by some of his mentees, including the former CEO of Google, Erich Schmidt, covers a brief outline of his life and his executive coaching strategies.

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This 1996 pseudo-autobiography was written by Ross Perot during his second presidential campaign, but you won't find any politics within it. Although it's clearly written through a "please the public" lens, the focus of this book is Perot's business career. The first half tells Perot's life story through the founding of his company EDS. The second half outlines general principles for success in business.

In this episode we discuss the book's highlights, its most important takeaways for a business career, and areas where it fell short. We dedicate this episode to the memory of Ross Perot, who sadly passed away last month (July, 2019). Next month, we'll be reading Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell.

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On our premiere episode, we discuss the management classic High Output Management by the late, great, former Intel CEO Andy Grove. We provide some of Andy's key takeaways regarding industrial organization, key management skills, handling employee issues, and managing meetings. We also debate how applicable some of this classic's insights are in the modern world.

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