“… We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.”

So, on Aaron’s suggestion, I am now almost done reading Masters of Doom by David Kushner: the gripping and very inspiring tale about the guys that founded id software and their journey. This is an absolute must read for any startup founder. Told through through the eyes of John Carmack, John Romero, et al. (although in 3rd person), this book uncovers the many peaks and valleys that a startup will encounter in its early days and even in its most successful times. Although I don’t have the time to write a full post right now (working on an fb app), here’s the basic summary of what it takes, in the words of John Carmack himself:

The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

For more, read the book… you will not regret it!

“Startups are Like Medieval Monasteries”

While reading the blog of Scott Heiferman (co-founder of Meetup.com), I noticed a trackback to Marc Andreessen’s blog. Marc, in turn passed this quote on from Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, who wrote on the blog of Guy Kawasaki. Anyway, now that all the introductions and credits are out of the way, I would like to finally share this quote with our readers:

In the early days, start-ups focus on how great it’s going to be when they succeed; but the moment they do, they start talking about how great it was before they did. Whenever I get this way, I remember the Venerable Bede’s complaint that his eighth century contemporaries had lost the fervor of seventh century monks. Even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, people were nostalgic for…the Dark Ages. Start-ups are like medieval monasteries: always convinced that paradise is just ahead or that things only recently got worse. If you can begin to enjoy the process of building a start-up rather than the outcome, you’ll be a better leader.

This is a very refreshing quote. Whenever you find yourself dreaming of buying a 10 million home in Barbados, or wondering how it could possibly be that your users rejected your latest and greatest as pure garbage, think of what Glenn said. And then, think why it was that Scott Heiferman, Marc Andreessen, and Guy Kawasaki agree with him. Oh, and if you tell me that all three of the above are now super successful and that they don’t count, well then I have no more words for you, except this humble plea: “re-read that quote again.”