I was wrong and they were right

Four years ago…

I was briefly working at a company that invested in startups. Super early stage startups. Back then they invested when the business was basically just a team with piece of paper. Ok, it was more than that. But still, it was very early.

And the first investment they made was in a company that was creating a mobile app for book summaries. Back then I wondered who would be reading book summaries. Who reads books these days anyway?

That was back in 2012 right after I shut down my first company. And had to move back from China to Germany. Because I needed a job to refill my bank account. Back then I had no clue about anything. And I still don’t. Back then I read a total of 10 books in my entire life. I was 28 at that time. And now these guys have more than 500,000 registered users.

I guess I was wrong and they were right.

And just a few weeks ago I sit in a restaurant in Bangkok and have breakfast. A nice little soup. And rice with chicken. Folks down here eat the same stuff. All day long. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. It’s always the same stuff. But I like it. So that’s good.

So I look up from my plate and I see a familiar face on TV in the local Thai news. And I was like, wait a minute. I know this guy. I wasn’t 100% sure. But when they started showing an app I was sure about it.

It was Holger. The CEO of that mobile book summary app. So I sent him a message on Facebook the other day and told him I saw him on TV in Thailand.

Apparently their model seems to be working out. Quite well. Apparently people enjoy reading book summaries on their phones. And ever since they’ve started four years ago they’ve raised millions in funding and have hundreds of thousands of customers. Worldwide.

So I wanted to see what it was all about. I went to their website, signed up and went through a few of their summaries. And then a few more. And then I realized what these summaries were really good for. At least for me.

Their summaries help me to make better decisions when I’m buying books.

I don’t know why, but over the past few years so many people started recommending books. And it seems like there are always hundreds of more books to read. It never seems to stops.

And many times in the past when I ended up buying one of these books, I didn’t finish them. I have wasted so much time and money on books that people recommended and I ended up not liking them at all. I’ve wasted hundreds of dollars and hours on useless books.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I have a strange taste. I don’t know.

Now every time someone recommends a book, or when I listen to a podcast and the people on the show recommend a book or whenever I stumble across one of these book reading lists and some books sound interesting, first thing I do is that I head over to their platform and read their summary.

And if I like the summary and the concepts in it after I’ve read the book’s summary that was written by an independent person who’s not trying to sell me that book, I head over to Amazon and buy the full book.

So ever since I started reading their summaries I saved tons of time and probably hundreds of dollars. By reading their summaries first and then if I like that summary, I’ll buy the full book on Amazon.

After all, you can’t summarize an entire book. And that’s not what these summaries are all about. At least not for me. For me they are just a first impression to better understand the book’s basic concepts and what it’s really about. What’s left after all the hype.

Oh yeah, I think I forgot to mention. You can check them out here.

So I guess I was wrong four years ago. And I’m glad I was.

People would end up reading book summaries on their phones. Even I became one of their customers. I use their web app and read their summaries in my browser. Maybe I should switch to reading them on my Kindle. They offer that as well…

P.S. I talked to Holger (their CEO) and their team and you can now test their service and read all of their 1000+ non-fiction summaries totally free of charge for the next 3 days. Just sign up here today!