

Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups? - mh77

Any suggestions on fictional books about or related to startups? Fictional books related to the computer industry in general is also of interest.
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nanexcool
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

[http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-
Stephenson/dp/00605...](http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-
Stephenson/dp/0060512806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241940820&sr=8-1)

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

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

~~~
mnemonicsloth
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.

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greendestiny
If you want something a little different, "The Truth" and "Going Postal" by
Terry Pratchett both capture a sense of startupness.

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ciscoriordan
Options by Fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons): [http://www.amazon.com/Options-Secret-
Life-Steve-Parody/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.com/Options-Secret-Life-Steve-
Parody/dp/0306815842)

Although all the parts in it that I liked were already on the blog:
<http://fakesteve.blogspot.com>

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peter123
The First 20 Million Is Always the Hardest by Po Bronson

<http://www.pobronson.com/index_first_20_million.htm>

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rg
"hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and
rubble", by Tom Evslin (pub. 2007).

Tom is a software hacker himself and a very well known serial startup
entrepreneur, with successes in comm and graphics apps (both Mac and PC) and
then a huge IPO for his company ITXC during the internet bubble. His fictional
murder mystery is based on his insider view of startups, both the both
technical and financial sides.

Go to <http://hackoff.com> (note that the fictional domain which is the title
of the book is also a real domain to promote the book). You can read the
entire book or listen to Tom read the entire book free, or receive all the
text episodes by RSS or email, or receive all the audio episodes by RSS or
podcast. You can order the hardback book edition from Amazon, or buy a Kindle
edition.

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trekker7
Posted at ~1 AM in the Valley... would love for this to be bumped up during
the daytime here. Then again the kinds of people who would comment are
probably wide awake right now.

Nonfiction, but thought Fire in the Valley was worth mentioning. Pirates of
the Silicon Valley is the movie based on it. Antitrust is also good.

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aytekin
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...](http://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-
Improvement/dp/0884270610)

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>

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vlorch
microserfs

~~~
cjbos
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.

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

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alain94040
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).

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wallflower
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.

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philelly
<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/bubblecity1>

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thwarted
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/>

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zandorg
Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure: Jerry Kaplan (Jerry is such a nice guy
that he answered my email).

Another one, though this guy did NOT reply to my email, is about a publishing
(not coding) startup, Burn Rate.

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Tichy
The Deadline by Tom DeMarco

jPod (not sure, too long ago that I read it)

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jpd
Discworld's Going Postal and Making Money by Terry Pratchett are worth
checking out. They are sort-of about startups; the main character has to re-
organize the Post Office and the Banking system.

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mh77
Thanks for all suggestions! Looking forward to some good reading this summer.

I have read Microserfs and JPod. Really enjoyed both of them. Also, the TV
version of JPod is not that bad.

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daveambrose
Although not a book, I recommend watching "August" - a movie I discovered last
summer on HN about the startup-scene in NYC during the boom. An interesting
story and journey for sure.

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daveambrose
Although not a book, I recommend watching "August" - a movie I discovered last
summer on HN about the startup-scene in NYC during the boom. An interesting
story and journey for sure.

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daveambrose
Although not a book, I recommend watching "August" - a movie I discovered last
summer on HN about the startup-scene in NYC during the boom. A fun watch for
sure.

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paulgb
Not fiction, but I'm enjoying "What the Dormouse Said: How 60s Counterculture
Shaped the Personal Computer"

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oscardelben
Dreaming in code is a book about the startup life of the Chandler project.

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CarolynM
Microserfs - they start as employees and create a startup.

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wallflower
This just occurred to me: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

