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reviewed The Upstarts by Brad Stone

Brad Stone: The Upstarts (AudiobookFormat, 2017, Little, Brown & Company) 4 stars

Ten years ago, the idea of getting into a stranger’s car, or walking into a …

Interesting book that made me angry

4 stars

I have recently finished this book, and it made me angry somehow. Everything is connected in Silicon Valley, and nobody knows what to do when shit happens. It's like a machine that keeps going and going without anyone knowing how to stop it. All the young blood turns into old blood and the cycle starts again.

This book is about a bunch of young people who move to Silicon Valley and start their own companies. Some fail and some succeed, but all of them are changing the world in one way or another.

A lot of help and struggles come from right connections, be it a status quo challenges or old farts that do not want "the progress". All of them are protecting their pals, and it's really frustrating because we lose more and more freedoms, and we are protected from the wrong influences.

The book talks about three main types of people in the Valley: startup founders, venture capitalists, and government bureaucrats. Each of them has their own motivations and ways of contributing to the overall machine.

For me, the most important part of this book was learning about how the Valley works. I know that's not really what the book is about, but knowing this helped me put a lot of things into perspective (especially those related to politics). Overall, I think this book is a great way to get introduced to the Silicon Valley machine.