Nobody going to mention Bad Blood - Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup?
YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
61–70 of 101 posts
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#62Perhaps I'm the only person who finds this list disappointing. So much SciFi. So many works a hop and a skip from get-rich-quick stuff. Of course, when I was younger, I-ate-that-shit-up. Truly. And a second helping, please.
IDK, the world is under great stress on so many levels. The people at YC are wonderfully bright and well educated. Is this really the best they could come up with?
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#63The Years of Lyndon Johnson is a terrific study of power, and I'm glad to see it on this list.
It's also really, really, really long. I highly recommend the audiobook if you drive a lot.
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#64Perhaps I'm the only person who finds this list disappointing. So much SciFi. So many works a hop and a skip from get-rich-quick stuff. Of course, when I was younger, I-ate-that-shit-up. Truly. And a second helping, please. IDK, the world is under great stress on so many levels. The people at YC are wonderfully bright and well educated. Is this really the best they could come up with?
You're not wrong, but- those two are prototypical hacker/hustler startup fodder genres
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#65Under a book on Napoleon, Sam Altman says: > An incredible primary-source portrait on a brilliant (but obviously deeply flawed) individual. What is the obviously deeply flawed characteristic about him that Altman is referring to? I read Napoleon: A Life a few years ago and found him fascinating with character flaws like every other human being, but nothing that particularly struck me as "deeply flawed."
Maybe that whole lets conquer Russia thing that ended in the deaths of 400,000 of his countrymen (IIRC)? Have you seen the Minard plot? https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/229-vital-statistics-of-a-...
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#66Pretty cool of YC to link to the books on Amazon and not include affiliate links for monetization. Creates more trust in the "realness" of the creation of the list.
What percent of YC's revenue comes from affiliate links?
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#67Nobody going to mention Bad Blood - Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup?
I had it on my list. But wanted to include optimistic recommendations
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#68Ready Player One seems to be the weakest thing on the list, read it recently and I was very disappointed.
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#69I have slightly ambivalent feelings about an institution like Y-Combinator getting into the business of promoting those sorts of books. -- Making a reading list on books teaching you programming or statistics or business skills like accounting is one thing.
But when you're talking about reading materials that promote a certain world view, certain values, a certain political position, or instill in an individual a certain kind of "cognitive programming" (for lack of a better word), like psychological self-help books and the like, that's a whole different story.
This is one thing that I distinctly remember as a negative about the young entrepreneurs' scene back at university, that so much of it bordered on brainwashing.
Re: YC’s 2018 Summer Reading List
#70Man's search for meaning is good. The first part describing life in the camps that would lead to this philosophy really does an amazing job of framing the rest of the book.