Woz is a primary figure in one of YC’s essential texts. He has always been revered here as a founder and as a human.

https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...

While we're on the topic, she's also the author of this wonderful book of founder interviews, which is illuminating even 15ish years after publication.

I highly recommend it if you haven't come across it yet: https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...

https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...

I don't have a good failure story. I'm a semi-regular reader of https://www.failory.com/interview-failure though so I think there might be a market. At least if you can identify a couple of patterns (e.g. filters in the left pane of https://www.failory.com/cemetery). In the interviews I often see entrepreneurs pointing to (marketing?) their new projects which might get outdated fast.

I did enjoy Founders At Work (https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...) 5 years after it got published. Not sure if a list of company names on the cover would work for failures.

This is discussed at length in the first chapter of Founders at Work. The chapter is written by Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal) and discusses his bitter feud with Elon Musk over Musk's desire to convert systems over to Windows. Interestingly Musk is never mentioned by name.

https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...

"Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days" is a good collection of stories: https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...

I know you didn't ask for books but here are some interesting ones. The first two cover individuals and the last two cover the works of others.

Coders At Work (https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Program...)

Founders At Work (https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...)

Architecture of Open Source Systems (https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Open-Source-Applications...)

Architecture of Open Source Systems - Vol 2 (https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Open-Source-Applications...)

http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/d...

As you wished.

Slightly meta here - but I think everyone here (including myself) is just being pedantic about the article. If you want to know what makes successful businesses reading 1 or 2 articles about one on globally distributed publications is not going to give you the whole picture.

Founders at Work is a good example of painting a better picture -> http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/d...

Sadly I don't really read quite as much as I used to; but following are the books I read this year (though none of them were released this year).

- Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem...

Excellent book covering interviews with founders of companies that became really big. I thought this book was really insightful and inspirational.

- Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming

http://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Programm...

I just started this book, but already like it - the format is the same as the Founders at Work book but on the developer side of things.

- World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It

http://www.amazon.com/World-Changers-Entrepreneurs-Changed-B...

It was a good book, but not as inspirational as the Founders at Work book. Some of the stories are good, but since the majority of the people are not in my sector, the book just wasn't as interesting to me.

- Ready Player One

http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/03078...

An excellent story that really made me nostalgic to my younger years - definitely recommend this one.

- The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death: A Novel

http://www.amazon.com/Mystic-Arts-Erasing-Signs-Death/dp/034...

I have a weak spot for Charlie Huston books - he's not the best author (sorry Charlie), but his books are really easy to approach. This is one of his best ones and is about crime scene cleaners - a nice departure from all the Joe Pitt vampire novels.

- World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Oral-History-Zombie/dp/03073...

It's OK... I read it half way through and then once I got busy I just couldn't get myself to pick it up again. I will finish it eventually.. just not yet.

- Hyperion

http://www.amazon.com/Hyperion-Dan-Simmons/dp/0553283685

A friend recommended this book to me - I could not get past the first chapter.

"Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that crunch time is a failed development methodology, as I’ve mentioned in past posts on this blog; developers get tired and start making stupid mistakes."

Totally. Strangely enough, Founders at Work (http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem...) is chock full of startup founders extolling the virtues of overwork. Is this some survivorship bias or does overwork in startups really lead to shipping sooner and achieving product/market fit faster?

It's never been my experience that sustained overwork of software developers leads to actual, measurable productivity increases due to the "two steps forward, one step back" phenomenon. Yeah, you can ship a feature "sooner" but it'll be buggy and disappointing to the end users (probably causing them to hesitate to pay - are you really achieving product/market fit with a buggy product?)

We encourage every developer to find a sustainable pace (it's different for everyone) with the guidance that it's almost always less than 50 hours a week. Why is it that software companies think that overworking software developers is a net positive?

Hence also why most people don't realize that Paypal was the side effect of a company that originally was created to handle fraud. Source: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430210788/

To take this to the next step, this is also why I believe Paypal is one of the very few companies that has been able to scale online payments. I'd love to see anyone challenge their ability to balance customer service with fraud prevention at scale.

http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem...

http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp...

http://ycombinator.com/lib.html

While I'm at it. I'll tell you about some other's I have read.

- Getting Real by 37 Signals http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ - Rework by 37 Signals http://37signals.com/rework/

These are great and really get your mind thinking about alternatives to what most people believe.

- Sarah Lacy's Once your lucky, twice you're good. http://www.amazon.com/Once-Youre-Lucky-Twice-Good/dp/1592403...

This isn't a technical book, but can really get you motivated to succeed reading the stories of previous successes! It also gives a bit of an insight into the internal workings of a start up in the early stages. It highlights networking as an important factor!

- Start up success guide - http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Success-Guide-Books-Profession...

This book was quite good, but felt a bit dated in comparison to Rob Walling's 'Start up book'.

Finally 'Founders at work' is definitely worth a read. http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem...

I think Coders at Work and Founders at Work did a pretty good job with this.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430219483/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430210788/

My inspiration is Steve Wozniak. To this day, I try to write software with the same thinking he used when he built the Apple II. Get a clear picture of what you want, keep it as simple as possible, stand on the shoulders of giants but build your own tools when you have to, and keep all the details in your head. (This last one has made a huge difference in my work.)

You have no excuse not to read about this because Chapter 3 of Jessica Livingston's "Founders at Work" is one of the best treatments of Woz and is on line here:

http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html

Then check out

"IWoz"

http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co-Fou...

"Founders at Work"

http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem...