Startup
Kaplan, a well-known figure in the computer industry, founded GO Corporation in 1987, and for several years it was one of the hottest new ventures in the Valley. Startup tells the story of Kaplan's wild ride: how he assembled a brilliant but fractious team of engineers, software designers, and investors; pioneered the emerging market for hand-held computers operated with a pen instead of a keyboard; and careened from crisis to crisis without ever losing his passion for a revolutionary idea. Along the way, Kaplan vividly recreates his encounters with eccentric employees, risk-addicted venture capitalists, and industry giants such as Bill Gates, John Sculley, and Mitchell Kapor. And no one - including Kaplan himself - is spared his sharp wit and observant eye.
Stats for nerds
16recommend
38mentions
28people
2007–2026years
53% recommend42% neutral5% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For more on this, the book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.ThinkPad
is highly recommended.
Also, Jerry Kaplan's wonderful:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup
touches a bit on the early history of it as a pen computer project.
Still have my ThinkPad 755c, and still a bit bummed that I was never able to get OpenSTEP to run on it. (It's worth noting that when David Pogue complained of Steve Jobs using a ThinkPad after the purchase of NeXT by Apple that it was running NeXTstep and not Windows 95 as he claimed.)
Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was a ThinkPad model (so that it would have a Trackpoint) and that it used Wacom EMR stylus technology --- wouldn't've been able to resist that.
- Two other books which also touch on hardware development which I (also) greatly enjoyed (having read _The Soul of a New Machine_ when it was published, borrowing it from a library) are:
_Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure_ by Jerry Kaplan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup
_Thinkpad: A Different Shade of Blue_ by Deborah A. Dell, J. Gerry Purdy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.Thinkpad
- Definitely agree on that last point, and recommended folks read Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp_ which tells the story of how MS wiped out Go Corp. and eliminated PenPoint from the marketplace:
- Even without that, Bill Gates would have created something --- Microsoft did a _lot_ of custom development, e.g., the Tandy-Radio Shack Model 100 (which was the last bit of coding which B.G. did for production) and developed and licensed a lot of other products.
He also made his share of deals which took a lot of value away from other companies on his own:
https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html
(buying MacBasic from Apple for $1 so as to kill it contine the MS-Basic license for the Apple II)
An interesting insight into this timeframe is Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp: A Silicon Valley Adventure_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup
the whole "embrace, extend, extinguish" thing shows up as documented by folks feeling its effects.
- Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp_ is a classic which shows the dark underbelly of deal-making and press-release creation, and why we can't have nice things if they aren't being made so as to ensure the profit of a dominant player: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup
Contrast it with: https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html
and the early history of VisualBASIC (and wonder how things might have played out had the Mac had a nice development environment out the gate)
and for management interactions see: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
- Startup[0]: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan
Story of how and why Go Corporation failed. This startup was one of the early tablet computer maker.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kapla...
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