Ben Horowitz is an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a technology entrepreneur and co-founder along with Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
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Focus
The coauthor of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing shares practical advice on how companies can increase profitability and competitiveness by focusing on core products and eliminating extraneous areas.
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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
The startling true history of how one extraordinary man from a remote corner of the world created an empire that led the world into the modern age.,The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege.,From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made.
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High Output Management
In this legendary business book and Silicon Valley staple, the former chairman and CEO (and employee number three) of Intel shares his perspective on how to build and run a company.,The essential skill of creating and maintaining new businesses???the art of the entrepreneur???can be summed up in a single word: managing. Born of Grove???s experiences at one of America???s leading technology companies, High Output Management is equally appropriate for sales managers, accountants, consultants, and teachers, as well as CEOs and startup founders. Grove covers techniques for creating highly productive teams, demonstrating methods of motivation that lead to peak performance???throughout, High Output Management is a practical handbook for navigating real-life business scenarios and a powerful management manifesto with the ability to revolutionize the way we work.
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Lenin
Shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography.,Victor Sebestyen’s intimate biography is the first major work in English for nearly two decades on one of the most significant figures of the twentieth century. In Russia to this day Lenin inspires adulation. Everywhere, he continues to fascinate as a man who made history, and who created a new kind of state that would later be imitated by nearly half the countries in the world.,Lenin believed that the ‘the political is the personal’, and while in no way ignoring his political life, Sebestyen focuses on Lenin the man – a man who loved nature almost as much as he loved making revolution, and whose closest ties and friendships were with women. The long-suppressed story of his , with his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and his mistress and comrade, Inessa Armand, reveals a different character to the coldly one-dimensional figure of legend.,Told through the prism of Lenin’s key relationships, Sebestyen’s lively biography casts a new light on the Russian Revolution, one of the great turning points of modern history.
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Made in Harlem
With his now-legendary store on 125th Street in Harlem, Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the 1980s, remixing classic luxury-brand logos into his own innovative, glamorous designs. But before he reinvented haute couture, he was a hungry boy with holes in his shoes, a teen who daringly gambled drug dealers out of their money, and a young man in a prison cell who found nourishment in books. In this remarkable memoir, he tells his full story for the first time.,Decade after decade, Dapper Dan discovered creative ways to flourish in a country designed to privilege certain Americans over others. He witnessed, profited from, and despised the rise of two drug epidemics. He invented stunningly bold credit card frauds that took him around the world. He paid neighborhood kids to jog with him in an effort to keep them out of the drug game. And when he turned his attention to fashion, he did so with the energy and curiosity with which he approaches all things: learning how to treat fur himself when no one would sell finished fur coats to a Black man; finding the best dressed hustler in the neighborhood and converting him into ??a customer; staying open twenty-four hours a day for nine years straight to meet demand; and, finally, emerging as a world-famous designer whose looks went on to define an era, dressing cultural icons including Eric B. and Rakim, Salt-N-Pepa, Big Daddy Kane, Mike Tyson, Alpo Martinez, LL Cool J, Jam Master Jay, Diddy, Naomi Campbell, and Jay-Z.,By turns playful, poignant, thrilling, and inspiring, , is a high-stakes coming-of-age story spanning more than seventy years and set against the backdrop of an America where, as in the life of its narrator, the only constant is change.
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My American Journey
???A great American success story . . . an endearing and well-written book.??????The New York Times Book Review,Colin Powell is the embodiment of the American dream. He was born in Harlem to immigrant parents from Jamaica. He knew the rough life of the streets. He overcame a barely average start at school. Then he joined the Army. The rest is history???Vietnam, the Pentagon, Panama, Desert Storm???but a history that until now has been known only on the surface. Here, for the first time, Colin Powell himself tells us how it happened, in a memoir distinguished by a heartfelt love of country and family, warm good humor, and a soldier’s directness.,My American Journey is the powerful story of a life well lived and well told. It is also a view from the mountaintop of the political landscape of America. At a time when Americans feel disenchanted with their leaders, General Powell’s passionate views on family, personal responsibility, and, in his own words, “the greatness of America and the opportunities it offers” inspire hope and present a blueprint for the future. An utterly absorbing account, it is history with a vision.
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My Years with General Motors
became an instant bestseller when it was first published in 1963. It has since been used as a manual for managers, offering personal glimpses into the practice of the “discipline of management” by the man who perfected it. This is the story no other businessman could tell–a distillation of half a century of intimate leadership experience with a giant industry and an inside look at dramatic events and creative business management.,Only a handful of business books have reached the status of a classic, having withstood the test of over fifty years’ time. Even today, Bill Gates praises , as the best book to read on business, and , has named it the number one choice for its “bookshelf of indispensable reading.”
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No Rules Rules
Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings reveals for the first time the unorthodox culture behind one of the world’s most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.,There’s never before been a company like Netflix. Not only because it has led a revolution in the entertainment industries; or because it generates billions of dollars in annual revenue; or even because it is watched by hundreds of millions of people in nearly 200 countries. When Reed Hastings co-founded Netflix, he developed a set of counterintuitive and radical management principles, defying all tradition and expectation, which would allow the company to reinvent itself over and over on the way to becoming one of the most loved brands in the world.,Rejecting the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate, Reed set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance and hard work is irrelevant. At Netflix, you don’t try to please your boss, you practice radical candor instead. At Netflix, employees never need approval, and the company always pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these principles, the implications were unknown and untested, but over just a short period of time they have led to unprecedented flexibility, speed, and boldness. The culture of freedom and responsibility has allowed the company to constantly grow and change as the world, and its members’ needs, have also transformed.,Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of , and one of the world’s most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial philosophies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from his own career, , is the full, fascinating, and untold story of a unique company making its mark on the world.
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Only the Paranoid Survive
Andy Grove, founder and former CEO of Intel shares his strategy for success as he takes the reader deep inside the workings of a major company in Only the Paranoid Survive.,Under Andy Grove’s leadership, Intel became the world’s largest chip maker and one of the most admired companies in the world. In Only the Paranoid Survive, Grove reveals his strategy for measuring the nightmare moment every leader dreads–when massive change occurs and a company must, virtually overnight, adapt or fall by the wayside–in a new way.,Grove calls such a moment a Strategic Inflection Point, which can be set off by almost anything: mega-competition, a change in regulations, or a seemingly modest change in technology. When a Strategic Inflection Point hits, the ordinary rules of business go out the window. Yet, managed right, a Strategic Inflection Point can be an opportunity to win in the marketplace and emerge stronger than ever.,Grove underscores his message by examining his own record of success and failure, including how he navigated the events of the Pentium flaw, which threatened Intel’s reputation in 1994, and how he has dealt with the explosions in growth of the Internet. The work of a lifetime, Only the Paranoid Survive is a classic of managerial and leadership skills.
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Skin in the Game
From the , bestselling author of , a bold new work that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility.,In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one???s own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life.
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Swimming Across
Set in the cruel years of Hungary’s Nazi occupation and subsequent communist regime, the bestselling “Swimming Across” is the stunning childhood memoir of one of the leading thinkers of our time, legendary Intel chairman, Andrew Grove.
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The Black Jacobins
A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World.,This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley’s most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup???practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn???t cover, based on his popular ben???s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he???s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies.,A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in. Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.
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The Innovator’s Dilemma
Named one of 100 Leadership & Success Books to Read in a Lifetime by Amazon Editors. A Wall Street Journal and Businessweek bestseller. Named by Fast Company as one of the most influential leadership books in its Leadership Hall of Fame. An innovation classic. From Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, Clay Christensen???s work continues to underpin today???s most innovative leaders and organizations.,The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen. His work is cited by the world???s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller???one of the most influential business books of all time???innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right???yet still lose market leadership. Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. ,Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator???s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Sharp, cogent, and provocative???and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time???The Innovator???s Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.
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The Lean Startup
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. ,is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.,Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business., approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on ???validated learning,??? rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.,Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, , offers entrepreneurs???in companies of all sizes???a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it???s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
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Writing My Wrongs
Now in paperback, the harrowing,* inspiring**, and unforgettable??? memoir of redemption and second chances amidst America’s mass incarceration epidemic.,Shaka Senghor was raised in a middle class neighborhood on Detroit???s east side during the height of the 1980s crack epidemic. An honor roll student and a natural leader, he dreamed of becoming a doctor???but at age 11, his parents’ marriage began to unravel, and the beatings from his mother worsened, sending him on a downward spiral that saw him run away from home, turn to drug dealing to survive, and end up in prison for murder at the age of 19, fuming with anger and despair.,???, is the story of what came next. During his nineteen-year incarceration, seven of which were spent in solitary confinement, Senghor discovered literature, meditation, self-examination, and the kindness of others???tools he used to confront the demons of his past, forgive the people who hurt him, and begin atoning for the wrongs he had committed. Upon his release at age thirty-eight, Senghor became an activist and mentor to young men and women facing circumstances like his. His work in the community and the courage to share his story led him to fellowships at the MIT Media Lab and the Kellogg Foundation, membership in Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul 100,and invitations to speak at events like TED and the Aspen Ideas Festival.,In equal turns, , is a page-turning portrait of life in the shadow of poverty, violence, and fear; an unforgettable story of redemption, reminding us that our worst deeds don???t define us; and a compelling witness to our country???s need for rethinking its approach to crime, prison, and the men and women sent there.
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Zero to One
1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER,If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.,The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.,Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.,Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.,Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.
