Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#11

Post by pietro » Sun, May 10, 2009, 9:41 AM UTC

vlorch wrote: post #2

microserfs

That's a great book. I think it's the only startup fiction I've ever read, and it inspired me quite a deal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#12

Post by thwarted » Sun, May 10, 2009, 10:24 AM UTC

Hyperion Bay was an early WB program about a tech start up staring Mark-Paul Gosselaar. It wasn't very good though, only 17 episodes. I think I had watched only one episode all the way through. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166044/

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#13

Post by wheels » Sun, May 10, 2009, 11:21 AM UTC

There are thousands of them. They're usually called, "the business plan."

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#14

Post by CarolynM » Sun, May 10, 2009, 12:07 PM UTC

Microserfs - they start as employees and create a startup.

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#15

Post by cjbos » Sun, May 10, 2009, 1:14 PM UTC

vlorch wrote: post #2

microserfs

He also wrote a more recent one called JPod http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jpod which is more about a cubicle farm environment than startup.

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#16

Post by wallflower » Sun, May 10, 2009, 1:26 PM UTC

Non-fiction but I love "Showstopper" about Dave Cutler and Windows NT 1.0.

There's a great little story in there about a developer's months-long struggle to draw a Window onscreen for the first time from scratch. I loved the descriptions of how they coded up everything from bare metal. As you'll see, Dave Cutler is one of those rare firebrands.

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#17

Post by aytekin » Sun, May 10, 2009, 2:04 PM UTC

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is pretty good. It is a business fiction book, so although it is not about startups, it applies well to start ups. http://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/08...

The book explains Theory of Constraints(TOC) in a novel. TOC is basically similar to profiling software, but instead of software, you profile a business. Find the bottlenecks in the system and work on them. Improving other things has very low return, and usually just waste of time. Improving bottlenecks improves the throughput of the whole system.

Here are my other recommended business fiction books: http://atank.interlogy.com/blog/?p=15

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#18

Post by nopassrecover » Sun, May 10, 2009, 3:26 PM UTC

cjbos wrote: post #15

vlorch wrote: post #2

microserfs

He also wrote a more recent one called JPod http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jpod which is more about a cubicle farm environment than startup.

There was a T.V. show based on that.

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#19

Post by alain94040 » Sun, May 10, 2009, 4:03 PM UTC

Startup book turning into thriller with light dose of sci-fi and compelling characters: "Press Send" by John McLaren (http://www.amazon.com/Press-Send-John-McLaren/dp/0671015702)

To me, "Press Send" run circles around "Microserfs".

Good luck finding it in the US (It's a UK book for some reason).

Re: Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups?

#20

Post by mnemonicsloth » Sun, May 10, 2009, 4:10 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #5

Non-fiction, but the best tech startup story I know of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

Seconded. Besides telling a familiar story in a very compelling way, Kidder has a genius for quotability:

One engineer, Josh Rosen, who burned out fighting nanosecond-level timing bugs was seduced by the attraction of commune living and left to live in the country. His resignation note declared, I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.

Gems like this one appear about once every two pages, give or take.