Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston

These are my notes from Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. Each one contains a core idea from the book that stood out. The goal of writing my notes this way is that each could be it's own independent idea with the need for the specific context within the book.

The Skill of Reverse Engineering

A permanent skill is the ability to reverse-engineer works and outcomes. Steve Wozniak's best work came out of things he never did before. His skill was understanding the desired end result and getting it done. Steve wasn’t skilled in how to design a floppy disk printer interface, or how to get a computer to read certain types of data. When the time came for it to be done, he reasoned from first principles—designing his own from scratch without knowing the “right” way others did it. Burrell Smith, an early member of the Macintosh team, was the same way. He didn’t go to college but he was one of the best with circuits. His success was the result of reverse-engineering what others had done to be able to build new things on his own.

Appear Big, Act Big

Tim Brady had been working his ass off at Yahoo. He was wearing multiple hats, one of which was their PR guy. When Jeff Mallett joined Yahoo's board, he took a look at the professionally bound PR kits Brady put together. “This is C+ work,” he said, passing Brady off. Mallett said, “If we're going to appear big, we'd better act big... I know you're working hard, but it's not an excuse for putting out something that looks like a startup.” They started doing two red-eye cross-coast trips before each meeting. Same team, same day. This went on for 3-4 months straight. Finding the energy to double the work they were previously doing was a step up in effort and professionalism. Being everywhere all the time made Yahoo look bigger than it was.

The Bus Comes Back Around

Any screw-ups Yahoo made in their first year of operation, they recognized them. There were so many mistakes they got good at correcting them. Jerry Yang and Tim Brady had dinner with Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, the founders of Hotmail. Yet they let the opportunity pass. They didn’t believe it would get big. People got their emails through work. The possibility of personal emails never occurred to them. They saw no real demand. Clearly, this idea was wrong. When they realized it, they went out and found the #2, Rocketmail, and bought them. It took work, but eventually Yahoo became bigger than Hotmail.

Breakthroughs Come From Benders

The Apple 2 was the first computer that came with a keyboard and video display. Apple II was the third. Today it seems hard to believe, given how normal laptops have become, but during the early days of computers, the Apple II shocked the world because of one thing: its hard color. It also required half the chips of the Apple I. Something that seemed impossible to do. The breakthrough idea that lead to the creation of this came to Steve Wozniak late one night. He recalled that moment saying: “I had been up four nights all night long. Steve [Jobs] and I got manic... because your mind gets in this new creative state and it thinks of ideas that you normally just throw out.” Hands down, working on one problem for 4 days, he came up with the idea to use a little cheap (>$1) part to take the data and produce color that looked like a TV. It was their bender to come up with a solution that lead to the creative breakthrough.

Simpler Is Better

When you're building something, you have very few resources in the beginning. Everything you put time or money into has more cost than just the financials. The simpler you make it, with less parts, the cleaner and more orderly it becomes. An entrepreneur’s job is to optimize things. Every time you save on parts, you save on complexity and reliability. It’s much easier to understand. The secret to Apple’s success was to make products not as good, but with less. This was a mentality that came from Steve Wozniak’s desire to simplify a computer (which cost as much as a horse) so that he could own one. Every decision you make on how to build your business you must live and sleep with. The simpler the decision, the easier you can rest at night.