Thursday, March 25, 2004

Book Review: You Need to Be a Little Crazy

25 Mar 2004

I recently read a good book entitled You Need to Be a Little Crazy by Barry Moltz. 

The subtitle is "The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Business".  It's a book about entrepreneurship, with lots of good stories.  It's not specific to software, but the book does contain a fair amount of high-tech cluefulness.

Moltz speaks with experience.  Although the book includes case studies of several other people, the author tells many of his own tales.  In fact, I think these personal glimpses are the best aspect of the book.  Somewhat by definition, entrepreneurs are surrounded by people who do not truly understand them.  Running a small company is therefore one of the loneliest jobs in the world, especially because hiding this feeling is one of the success criteria.  Entrepreneurs need to know they are neither alone nor unique.  After reading this book, I found myself believing that Barry Moltz and I have a lot in common.

I particularly enjoyed his various postmortem remarks about the dotcom bubble, liberally sprinkled throughout the book.  Granted, hindsight is 20/20, so it doesn't take a genius to say that a lot of boneheaded things happened in the 1990s.  Still, Moltz says it well.

Best of all, the book is just plain fun to read.  I devoured the whole thing on a plane ride.