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Shipped! The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche

by Brad Feld
This post is by Brad Feld from Feld Thoughts

My newest book, The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors, shipped today. It’s available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover. If you are so inclined, go buy a copy today!

I’m particularly proud of this book, as it is a more philosophical approach to entrepreneurship than my other books. I wrote it with Dave Jilk, the co-founder of our first company (Feld Technologies, 1987) and one of my closest friends for 38 years.

The book contains 52 individual chapters (hence the “Weekly” in the title) and is divided into five major sections (Strategy, Culture, Free Spirits, Leadership, and Tactics). Each chapter begins with a quote from one of Nietzsche’s works, using a public domain translation, followed by our own adaptation of the quote to 21st-century English. Next is a brief essay applying the quote to entrepreneurship. About two-thirds of the chapters include a narrative by or about an entrepreneur we know (or know of), telling a concrete story from their personal experience as it applies to the quote, the essay, or both.

Our goal with this book is to make you think, rather than try to tell you the answers. For example, here’s the Nietzsche quote from a chapter titled “Obsession” from the section on “Free Spirits”.

“The passion which seizes the noble man is a peculiarity, without his knowing that it is so: the use of a rare and singular measuring-rod, almost a frenzy: the feeling of heat in things that feel cold to all (Read more...)

New Book: The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche

by Brad Feld
This post is by Brad Feld from Feld Thoughts

My newest book, The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors, comes out next Tuesday, May 25th.

This has been an on-again, off-again project with Dave Jilk that began in 2013. We were spending the weekend in Keystone with our wives (Amy and Maureen), which generally involved a lot of sitting around reading. Dave was reading On Nietzsche by Eric Steinhart. He read a quote to me and asked if I thought it sounded like an entrepreneur. Dave remembers me saying, “Hmmm, it sure does.” Then we both went back to our books. 

At the time, I knew nothing about Nietzsche. Actually, I knew less than nothing since everything I knew about him was wrong.

Dave is one of my best friends. We met over 38 years ago, on my first day at MIT, right after the freshman picnic, when I ended up in a van that took me to ADP, the fraternity I ended up joining and living at for four years. Dave was a senior, and we became best friends. We started a company that year with Sameer Gandhi and Andy Sack called Martingale Software that failed pretty quickly. Several years later, we started Feld Technologies, which we ran together from 1987 to 1993 when we sold it to Sage Alerting Systems, which later renamed itself to AmeriData Technologies. We kept working together – him as an entrepreneur, me as an investor.

But “business” is only a small part of our relationship. For any close friendship that (Read more...)

Happy Birthday Dad and Dave

by Valet
This post is by Valet from Feld Thoughts

Two of my favorite men on planet Earth have birthdays today.

Happy birthday Dad.

Happy birthday Dave.

I’ve learned an incredible amount from each of you. And, given all the time the three of us have spent together, from both of you.

One of the best things I’ve learned from each of you is a love of wide-open physical spaces. Dad – I’m so glad you and Mom created Woodcreek Ranch.

Dave – thank you for all the 14ers. I hope to climb many more with you.

Even though we’ve spent a lot of time together as a threesome, one, in particular, stands out. We had a Feld Technologies board retreat in the fall of 1987. I remember the date because it was during the Bork confirmation hearing. We spent the time in New Hampshire, drove around looking at leaves, and talking about what Feld Technologies could become now that the summer of 1987, which was full of missteps, was over. We did a huge reset that weekend on what we were doing, which set Feld Technologies on a path where it was profitable every month for the rest of its life. The other path could have been the death of the company, so it remains a potent and formative moment for me.

Happy birthday to you both!

The post Happy Birthday Dad and Dave appeared first on Feld Thoughts.