I finally got round to reading some more of "Founders at Work". In the time between first starting to read it and now, I read Fooled by Randomness (...). It's an interesting combination.
To see how, take this snippet from the website blurb for the Founders book (my emphasis added):
"... ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence. /The reason their founders become rich is that startups do what businesses do—create value—more intensively than almost any other part of the economy/. What are the secrets that make successful startups so insanely productive? Read this book, and let the founders themselves tell you."
After reading Nassims book, I'm tempted to explain away the successes of these Founders as survivor bias i.e. how many other companies that we don't hear about had similar stories and were just as productive but utterly failed?
This is too simplistic. I don't really believe all of the successes listed are explained solely by a selection bias. However, it is worth bearing in mind. To be fair, the book does admit a reasonable dollup of luck. For example, regarding flickr:
"Livingston: Where did you start working?
Fake: We had a friend who was subletting ... This was in 2002 and it was still in the great technology bust period. There were failed dot-coms all over the place, so office space was cheap. And some really awesome developers (like Eric) were available, who wouldn't otherwise have been out on the open market two years earlier. So it was actually really well timed."
"Livingston: Is there anything that you would have done differently?
Fake: We may be the most boring startup that you interview for your book because our path was fairly smooth. ..."
I've read only read a few chapters so far, so let's see how the rest of it goes. One thing I have learned from it is that there exist in this world $15,000 espresso machines.