Tech Memoirs — Book Reviews
Book reviews of some latest tech founder memoirs, including the Amazon, Netflix, Nike and Zappos stories.
For the greater part of my 20’s, I fell victim to the digital craze and stopped reading books. My reading was limited to news, social media, Quora and Medium. Over the past year, as I entered my 30’s, I got back in the trend of the classic publications. I read to both entertain and educate myself. I’m starting to review the books I enjoyed the most.

#1 Shoedog — the Nike Story
I read this last year when it was released. I enjoyed it so much I re-read it again recently and bought 2 more copies for friends. This book is written as a memoir by Phil Knight, the founder of the Nike empire. Knight tells his story about traveling in his 20’s and his dream of designing a special kind of shoe for running. His adventure takes him into the heart of Japanese culture and an international licensing agreement.
Many of the business challenges he faced 40 years ago hold true today regarding company culture, competition and team building. One noticeable difference was the ease of accessing capital. Even though Nike was growing XXX% YoY, capital sources were limited to banks and they trusted only stable single-digit growth.
The book has countless nuggets of wisdom shared by Knight, and many by the legendary coach and co-founder Bill Bowerman. Shoedog will go down as one of the bestselling business books of our decade, perhaps of all-time.
My rating was 10/10.
Link — https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1501135929
#2 Delivering Happiness — the Zappos.com story
After my delight of Shoedog, I searched for more memoirs and personal stories. I bought Delivering Happiness, which tells the story of Zappos, the US-based shoe e-commerce store which was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for close to 1 billion dollars.
The book is written by Tony Hsieh, a serial entrepreneur and the first investor of Zappos. Tony shares his Asian upbringing, which favored academic excellence over entrepreneurial goals. He takes us through his first venture, LinkExchange, which was acquired by Microsoft after several years. Although the acquisition marked him a “winner”, he felt he failed his company as the culture was toxic and not fun anymore.
Tony moved on to open a small boutique investment firm VentureFrogs. This led Nick Swinmurn, to pitch him the idea of selling shoes online in 1999. Although Amazon was active and growing, e-commerce was not yet a big thing. Tony took the bait and made the first investment. The story takes us through how Tony got more and more involved until eventually taking up the CEO position and growing Zappos.
His struggle was extra brutal while dealing with not one, but two market crashes (Dotcom crash of 2000 and the Financial Crisis of 2008). Tony put a lot of his personal funds to weather the company during those dark times. He explains how the company's success was in-large due to a focus on culture and customer support. He details his first encounters with Jeff Bezos, their mutual admiration for the customer-centric model and the acquisition to Amazon.
The book’s spirit embodies Tony’s mindset as someone who measures experiences and not physical things. The book is written very casually and is easy to read (Tony even talks of not using a ghostwriter).
My rating was 9/10.
Link — https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220
#3 — That Will Never Work — the Netflix story
Another excellent memoir that was released just last month in the US — this time by Marc Randolph, the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix. The story sets in 1996 as Marc and his boss, Reed Hastings, do their early morning commute from Santa Monica to Silicon Valley. Marc regularly shoots new business ideas and gets them swiftly rejected by Reed.
One day, Reed tells him of getting charged $40 in late fees by Blockbuster. This results in Marc brainstorming the idea of mailing VHS’s and competing with the large store. Mailing movies would allow people to rent for longer periods and make the experience simpler. They determine that the current size of VHS and the rate of postage would deem this venture too costly.
Then came 1997, and the DVD format was introduced to the world. By its early popularity in Japan, the pair saw the potential of this new format. They re-calculated the numbers and saw they can mail a single DVD within a letter, allowing it to be shipped for the cost of a simple USPS stamp. Netflix was born.
They struggled the first few years with their two product lines — renting and selling. Although 90% of their sales came from DVD selling, they decided to drop it in fear of Amazon and other retailers competing with them. They focused just on renting, which would be their core advantage and was the original product line of what we all know as (streaming) Netflix today.
The book is named on the answer Marc received from his wife when presenting the idea: “that will never work”. The book presents the perfect way for a business to “ride the wave” of new technology, such as DVD, into financial success. It also presents other issues such as leadership skills and bringing in a “professional CEO” to lead growth.
My rating was a 9/10.
Link — https://www.amazon.com/That-Will-Never-Work-Netflix/dp/0316530204/
#4 The Everything Store — the Amazon story
Last but not least — we get to Amazon. Ahhh — where to begin?
I was always an Amazon fanboy, placing my first order in 2008. I never thought the founding story of Amazon and Jeff Bezos would more resemble a thriller than a tech company.
The book, written by a tech journalist Brad Stone, covers in great detail the “inside story”. Although it’s not written by Bezos, it does have some type of approval and inside access. It covers Jeff Bezo’s childhood, where his high technical ability was early discovered. At the age of 12, when his peers were throwing balls around, Jeff practiced statistical analysis by designing a survey so students could rate the teachers. His path led him to work at an NYC hedge fund after studying at Princeton. With the rise of the Internet with early adopters in the mid-1990’s, Jeff decided the world needed a digital supermarket — or an “Anything Store”. Amazon was founded in 1994 in Jeff’s basement in Seattle.
Amazon was built less on a business plan and more on an epiphany. Bezos accurately predicted, back in 1997, the exact economical trends that are indeed active today in the retail landscape. His famous growth flywheel has been the game plan and stayed the same until this very day. The book takes the reader on the journey of countless adventures of Amazon, into new niches (diapers, shoes, fashion) and product lines (publishing, Kindle AWS) and has redefined what it means to be a tech company. The company emulates the spirit of Bezos — brilliant and ruthless. The company uses its dominant position as a market leader to force competitors and partners to submit to its will, or face the wrath (read the story of Diapers.com to get a taste).
The book is beautifully written and like others, needs to be binged. It’s a book any entrepreneur should read and truly understand — especially any person in the retail or e-commerce business. I will be reading this many more times.
My rating: 10/10
Link — https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/B00FJFJOLC/
Until the next time — happy reading!
