Behind the cloud

What Hacker News says

1. ghiculescuJan 2025
   Say what you like about Benioff (he seems pretty annoying) or his products (happy former customer), but if you want to read a single book that will increase your chances of success in SaaS, his book Behind the Cloud is my pick.
   thread
2. lansteinMar 2023
   Advice to Founders and CEOs

   - Dear Founder (Maynard Webb) - The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - Straight Talk for Startups (Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman) - The Founders’ Dilemmas (Noam Wasserman) - The Entrepreneur’s Daily Nietzsche (Brad Feld and Dave Jilk) - Build (Tony Fadell) - Zero to IPO (Frederic Kerrest) - The Great CEO Within (Matt Mochary)

   Finance

   - Wharton's Introduction to Financial Accounting course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting](https://w... - How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers (Mihir Desai) - Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Karen Berman and Joe Knight)

   Open-Book Company (Employee Ownership, Financial Literacy, Goal-setting)

   - The Great Game of Business (Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham)

   Legal

   - Acceleration (Ryan Roberts) - The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Law and Strategy (Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchy)

   Company Strategy and Direction (post-product/market fit)

   - Crossing the Chasm (Geoff Moore) - Zone to Win (Geoff Moore) - Only the Paranoid Survive (Andy Grove) - Blitzscaling (Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh) - The Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton Christensen) - Good to Great (Jim Collins) - Playing to Win (A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin) - Tape Sucks (Frank Slootman) - Strategy vol. 1&2 (Harvard Business Review)

   Pricing

   - Monetizing Innovation (Georg Tacke and Madhavan Ramanujan) - Confessions of the Pricing Man (Hermann Simon)

   Startup Phase

   - The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) - The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Steve Blank) - Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

   Management/Leadership

   - The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker) - Managing Humans (Michael Lopp) - The Art of Leadership (Michael Lopp) - High Output Management (Andy Grove) - Managing Oneself (Peter Drucker) - Essentials: Management (First Round Capital) - The Making of a Manager (Julie Zhuo) - The Powell Principles (Oren Harari) - Radical Candor (Kim Scott) - Leading Matters (John L. Hennessy) (fantastic book list in the coda) - Turn the Ship Around (L. David Marquet) (this is THE book on delegation) - Principles (Ray Dalio)

   COO/Succession Planning

   - Riding Shotgun (Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles)

   People Performance/HR/Culture

   - Powerful (Patty McCord) - No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer) - Netflix culture deck - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) - Work Rules! (Laszlo Bock) - It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (DHH and Jason Fried) - The Culture Map (Erin Meyer) - The Talent War (Mike Sarraille and George Randle) - Great People Decisions (Claudio Fernández-Aráoz) - The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring (Ozzie Osman) - Punished by Rewards (Alfie Kohn)

   Purpose, Passion, and Self

   - Start with Why (Simon Sinek) - What You Do is Who You Are (Ben Horowitz) - Drive (Daniel Pink) - Mindset (Carol Dweck) - Grit (Angela Duckworth) - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric Jorgenson)

   Fundraising/VC

   - Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Scott Kupor) - Venture Deals (Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson) - Raising Venture Capital (Andy Sparks) - The Business of Venture Capital (Mahendra Ramsinghani) - Done Deals (Udayan Gupta) - The Power Law (Sebastian Mallaby) - VC (Tom Nicholas)

   Board

   - Boardroom Excellence (Paul Brountas) - Startups Boards (Brad Feld and Mahendra Ramsinghani)

   M&A

   - Winning (Jack Welch) - M&A chapter - Connecting the Dots (John Chambers) - M&A chapter

   Marketing

   - Data-Driven Marketing (Mark Jeffery) - Positioning (Al Ries and Jack Trout) - Scientific Advertising (Claude Hopkins) - Traction (Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares) - Behind the Cloud (Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler) - Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy) - Marketing High Technology (William Davidow)

   Psychology

   - Influence (Robert Cialdini)

   Negotiation

   First, read Influence (under Psychology), then, in order

   - Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke) - Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher and William Ury) - Never Split the Difference (Chris Voss) - The Bald Truth (David Falk)

   Self

   - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey)

   Design and UX

   - Creative Confidence (Tom Kelley and David Kelley)

   AI (Machine Learning, Deep Learning/Neural Networks)

   - Andrew Ng's AI for Everyone course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone](https://www....

   Growth (Data Science, etc.)

   - Hacking Growth (Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown)

   Graph Theory

   Product

   - Inspired (Marty Cagan) - Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)

   Customer Loyalty/Customer Success

   - Delivering Happiness (Tony Hsieh) - Setting the Table (Danny Meyer)

   Finding a Startup Job

   - Entering StartupLand (Jeffrey Bussgang)

   CIO as ICP

   - The CIO Paradox (Martha Heller) - Be the Business (Martha Heller)

   Stories

   - Made in America (Sam Walton) - Shoe Dog (Phil Knight) - The Everything Store (Brad Stone) - Built from Scratch (Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank) - Hard Drive (James Wallace) - Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson) - Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) - Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull) - The Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger) - Valley of Genius (Adam Fisher) - The Idea Factory (Jon Gertner) - Dealers of Lightning (Michael Hertzik) - Idea Man (Paul Allen) - Pour Your Heart Into It (Howard Schultz)

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3. jonheartyAug 2018
   If you're building SaaS, I recommend the following for largely non-technical content:

   1. SaaStr.com (blog) 2. Behind the Cloud (book) 3. Rework (book)

   thread
4. fargoFeb 2018
   I found the three books recommended by Aaron Levie in his Enterprise Startup[1] lecture to be spot on:

   - Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

   - The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

   - Behind the Cloud by Marc Benioff

   [1] http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec12/

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5. PeOeDec 2017
   I´ve read the book "Behind the Cloud" by Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler. It tells the story of how salesforce.com was founded and how it has developed into the strong brand it is today. The book is full of valuable insights into many different fields of business and development.
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6. chrisherdDec 2016
   Originals - Adam Grant: Concise and clear, originals change the world but they aren’t the people we think they are.

   When breath becomes air - Paul Kalanithi: Haunting, beautiful, moving and perfect. Life is surprising and we can’t legislate for the things that are thrust upon us.

   Shoe dog - Phil Knight: How a gang of misfits can changed the world. Favourite entreprenurial journey I've ever consumed.

   Sapiens - Yuval Harari: Wow, nothing else to say.

   The Future of the Proffesions - Richard & Daniel Susskind: This is a tough read, it was a slog, but it was worth it. The world is changing before our eyes. Professions will die, not just entry level labour intensive jobs.

   Contagious - Jonah Berger: If you own a business you want things to go viral, Jonah enlightens you to the possibilities of how.

   Platform Scale - Sangeet Paul Choudary: Excellent and rigorously supported. An infusion of practicality and academia. A look behind the curtain of the collaborative economy.

   The Third Wave - Steve Case: The low hanging fruits have been picked, now what? The internet of things is coming, but what does that mean.

   The Sharing Economy - Arun Sundararajan: I’m a believer in the sharing/collaborative economy but i’m worried, the way people are being treated is deplorable. A projection of whats to come.

   Grit - Angela Duckworth: Why do some people succeed and others don’t? Why did the child prodigy fail? Why do some people drop out of school and others thrive? Favourite book of the year.

   Black Box Thinking - Matthew Syed: Cognitive dissonance, why do we think the way we do. Why can’t we change our minds even when we are wrong?

   Clay Water Brick - Jessica Jackley: Want to learn what it takes to change the world?

   Behind the Cloud - Marc Benioff: Marc Benioff is a genius.

   Postcapitalism - Paul Mason: Does capitalism work? This seems even more pertinent following recent political upheaval. First Brexit now Trump, this gravitas of what this book conveyed wasn’t really certain until those moments occurred. The world is changing, brought forth by massive economic migration and the erosion of borders. Can we stay the same or must we evolve to survive?

   Zero to One - Peter Thiel: Classic.

   Presence - Amy Cuddy: I was going to omit this from the list on account of the fact some of the science of the book being flawed. I couldn’t, I loved it. It spoke to me about my own issues facing impostor syndrome.

   Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh: Tony is my mentor, he just doesn’t know it, yet.

   Peers Inc. - Robin Chase: Could zipcar have been uber if the technology existed? It doesn’t matter, but reading this I felt like I was learning about a secret nobody knew about. Chase was ahead of her time, probably too far, but the book is gold.

   Things a Little Bird Told me - Biz Stone: Sometimes billion dollar ideas are about luck arising from failure.

   Business For Punks - James Watt: Do things your way or fail trying to please other people. Business for punks is brash, unapologetic and sure of itself. It doesn’t make any excuses, instead it forces it down your throat. In the same way Brewdog is a business like no other so is this book. It’s irreverent and certain. It’s the best business book i read this year, without queston.

   OrphanX - Gregg Hurwitz: out Bourning Bourne, out Bonding Bond and out Reachering Reacher.

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