My thoughts.
What happens when I read books?
I hardly think about this but this question came to my mind as I decided to write this. Kiitan has always wanted me to bring out the relevant lessons from the numerous books I read. I just love the reading. That is all. But she is right. There should be take-away lessons.
For me, the books I read form thoughts in my head. For example, I launched out for NairaBooks out of a love for books and having read the One-click by Richard L Brandt. A book that talked about the life of Jeff Bezos and the Amazon company.
Let me go on to the 4 books. I didn’t plan to read them this year. I just stumbled on them. You can call it what Samuel L. Jackson said to Ryan Reynolds in the film The hitman’s bodyguard (2017). I can imagine that I have not read the books I planned to.
The first. Alexis Ohanian’s Without Their Permission.
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| credits: www.amazon.com |
I stumbled on it when I heard he was involved with Serena Williams early this year and he had written a book! I love the books so if anything was going to come out of a founder of Reddit, I wanted to read it. And I got the book. I have never used Reddit by the way. He told the story of Reddit, the story of the campaign for the freedom of the internet and what he foresees in the future. I was challenged by his desire for an open internet. As a team, he and others with the same desire rallied for this to hold in the United States. And they got it. Alexis mentioned the Zappos guy in his book. That paved the way for book 2.
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| Credits: www.amazon.com |
Delivering Happiness. That’s the title. It tells you of the Zappos story, with a little background of the CEO, how he started his first business as a kid, how he got a job at Oracle earning about 40,000 dollars a year, how he left the job as he was not happy doing it, how he and another friend created an advertising business out of a seemingly small stuff. They called it LinkExchange. They sold the business, made big bucks and then the birth of Zappos via an encounter with a gentleman……So my thoughts for this, Money should not be your driver at anything. Your quest for fulfillment should be above money. He probably would have stayed at Oracle until today and there would have been no LinkExchange (Acquired by Microsoft for 265 Million dollars) or Zappos or the 1.2 billion dollars Amazon acquired Zappos for. Whew!
The third book was about AOL and Steve Case. My friend John Ufeoshi told me about the book. The book is titled “The Third Wave”. You can call it a
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| Credits: www.amazon.com |
re-write of Alvin Toffler's book with the same title. I have not read Alvin Toffler's book but the writer mentioned it in his book. He writes of his time at AOL, the growth of the company and more importantly, the third wave which is about the set of entrepreneurs that will emerge from today. Or have they started evolving? (I guess so.) These entrepreneurs will be people with practical knowledge of industries who will implement ideas on the internet based on their knowledge. He says you have to be an insider to be on this wave.
Book 4 is the one I am reading presently. It is called “Start up Nation. The story of Israel’s economic miracle”
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| Credits: www.amazon.com |
It tells of Israel's economic miracle. I am presently on Chapter 2. It has been an enjoyable read. Reading the words of the writer of the amazing chutzpah of the Israelis. Chapter one ends with a question where an Israeli would ask why you are his manager and why he or she is not your manager? The audacity! The ability to question things. To make research and innovations. The Intel team at Israel get the credit for where Intel chips are today. You would read of innovations and ideas that might sound foreign if you are from my country.
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