Saturday, November 26, 2011

*Book Review* The Monk and The Riddle by Randy Comisar





A very interesting book, The Monk and The Riddle was recommended to us by our New Business Ventures professor Rupert Merson.

Through the story of Lenny, a young internet entrepreneur wannabe and his struggle to find funding for his 'great idea' to 'put fun back in funerals', Randy explores what investors look for in a new venture and their team. The message broils down to passion and vision. The book also touches upon the difference between leadership and management and how VCs look for leaders rather than managers.

At a second level, Randy talks of his own career from working several jobs as an undergrad to being a corporate lawyer to his time at Apple to being the CEO of a gaming software company. His stories of different valley start-ups are interesting. He also shares what he learnt along the way, but I feel he oversimplifies the learnings.

The main message of the book is to work at what your passion is, and not delay it to after you are successful. In fact your likelihood of success goes up if you are passionate about what you are doing.

But for me the most interesting parts of the book were where he looked at how VCs think, what is the Silicon Valley mentality, and how people looked upon the internet a decade or so ago. For example he uses the term 'network effects', one of the most common buzzwords in tech business today, only once.

Overall a very interested read, although I found the message about how to live your life somewhat trivial and trite, I doubt if Randy would make a great philosopher, but the insights into how the Valley works were interesting.

What would have made it even more interesting (although a heavier read) would have been more of a focus on the industry and the Silicon Valley ecosystem of entrepreneurs and financiers, rather than on telling people how to live their lives.

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