Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "startup"

Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0 by Eliot Peper

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Once in a while you come upon a book that throws you completely unguarded off your feet. When you buy a book you usually have an idea what to expect to find between the covers and you prepare yourself for a pleasurable journey into a new world unknown. But when you get a free copy of an e-book as a runner up for the review giveaway contest, you do not know much about it, or whom you are going to deal with and spend your Kindle-time with during the next few days or weeks.

Mara Winkle is the heroine of Eliot Peper's Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0. She is a strong female character caught in the bizarre love-business triangle between her boyfriend Craig and her best friend James. Craig and James are not too much fond of each other, which makes Mara's life even more colorful and exciting, pushing her every now and then to express her strong character in both decision-and-relationship making. Beside being strong headed and ready to cut off people seemingly without a second thought or regret, Mara is passionate about mountain biking and especially rock climbing. "Climbing was the most intellectually intense sport Mara had experienced. She had heard it described as physical chess. It was a kind of dynamic athletic geometry and there was a good reason bouldering routes were called problems. Every move was an exercise in balance, a special mixture of intuition and calculation." However, she is not so enthusiastic about studying at the University of Colorado, Boulder, especially when her best friend James asks her to partner with him to start a new software company Mozaik Industries.

This is a decision that changes both James' and Mara's lives. In their new partnership, James focuses himself on "what he does best, technical development to make Mozaik as awesome as it can possibly be" while Mara becomes "the buffer between him and all the rest of the random shit that needs doing" (Peper describes them as sales, investment, legal, and marketing). In short, they split their roles in doing what they are both best at: "programming for James, juggling for Mara." How this decision affects Craig we won't mention here, so as not to reveal too much and thus spoil the thrill of reading!

This is the moment when all the fun starts in Uncommon Stock, placing this novel among the ranks of fast-paced tech startup thrillers. For new entrepreneurs and enthusiasts Uncommon Stock may serve as a greatly informative and educational reading full of useful advice, but also as the warning on the cruel facts of starting your own business. "Founding a company is a fuck-ton of work. The sausage factory reality is far from the glitzy Silicon Valley mythology. It's a grinding slog that can be enormously satisfying and rewarding, but it's also painful, frustrating, and soul-crushing. If you're going to make it you'll have to sink blood, sweat, and tears into the process. And if you're going to make that kind of a commitment, you've got to truly believe in what you're doing. You've got to be such a zealot that other people are magnetically attracted to you and what you're working on. You've got to dream."

Eliot Peper masterfully leads us through a painful startup process, showing us all the traps and hardships we face along the way. No price is too high, every mistake is paid dearly. Before we realize it, we have already accumulated basic knowledge of the craft, ending up much smarter than we were before starting reading this exciting, adventurous, wise and gripping novel of a slightly unusual title.

In between twists and turns, Eliot Peper amazes us with beautifully intelligent descriptions and ingenious eye for a detail. "They people-watched along the way, relishing the familiar oddities of Boulder's unique human condition. Cyclists were out in force. Mara wondered why it was considered cool to wear jerseys plastered with tacky Fortune 500 branding. A shirtless homeless man was loudly touting the spiritual virtues of vegetarianism and handing out handwritten flyers on the evils of meat from a street corner." "The sky was mostly clear with a thin patina of smog and the sun shone down on an endless grid of concrete, steel, asphalt, and cars. An occasional palm tree or soccer field broke up the urban mélange." "Trees occupied a different dimension than humans. Movement was never an option. They were literally rooted in place and experienced the world through a permanently local lens. Seeds blew off in the wind to sprout new trees in places the parents would never see. And entire generations lived in one area."

Or, "The snakes in her stomach had distilled into a cocktail of righteous anger and frustration."

Beautiful!

I don't shun admitting: Eliot Peper bought me with his descriptions, if not only with his page-turning plot. Uncommon Stock is a high-quality intelligent and intriguing writing of a skillful and undoubtedly talented author whose success and a true value cannot be measured only by a number of sold copies, but also by a commitment and professionalism of this indie writer invested into creating the best end-product for his readers, the only ones that matter to him.

I wouldn't be surprised if it also helps a few startup businesses in the process with his motivational and inspirational dialogues, situations and advices, because, as the author himself says in the novel, "there is something ephemeral but infinitely satisfying about starting something yourself."

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Big Data: A Startup Thriller Novel by Lucas Carlson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Big Data: A Startup Thriller Novel is a new ingenious creation by Lucas Carlson, a fiction and non-fiction author and entrepreneur, who already got my attention and won me over with his first thrilling startup novel The Term Sheet.

Big Data is a maddening ride through our near future where artificial intelligence is incorporated in our lives to the point that people rely on its services more than on their natural instincts, reasoning and decision making. It serves us, it helps us, it cures us, and then it kills us...

This is exactly what happens when Luna Valencia's most-advanced supercomputer in history Ancien starts to refine and improve on its own code which can “solve many problems in the world of artificial intelligence without human assistance, interpretation, or intervention.” It is the holy grail in the world of computers, but it also is the weapon for mass murder in the world of humans.

Luna Valencia's own baby becomes her executor when it falls into the hands of Doug Kensington and Thor Massino, two ill-intentioned ambitious and unscrupulous people. There is no safe place for her or anyone, because suddenly “people are dying. Everybody. Everywhere. People are dying faster all over—in every region of the world—at a higher rate.”

On her quest to uncover the truth about mysterious deaths, Luna not only faces losing her company but is hunted and chased into walking the path covered with bodies and smeared with blood, both of the innocent and guilty ones. Even losing her own life is something she has to deal with in order to stop computers from killing people. The whole world is in grave danger.

In “a weird mash-up” of computers and people, “nobody was deciding who would die. Nor was anyone determining how these people would die. The computer figured out those parts on its own. But (...) it was human beings who created the intention to kill. Not the computer. The one thing nobody seemed to be able to synthesize with computers was the creative intention. The spark of why. More and more, any discrete task could be better accomplished by computers than by humans. But the intention behind the task, the creative force. That was still as mysterious and intractable as the soul.”

Lucas Carlson in this extremely exciting novel also doesn't lose a poetic expression during this fast and crazy artificial intelligence ride for life and death. He barely gives us a moment or two to catch our breath before we are thrown into another life-threatening situation in which someone is programmed to die. The thin line between our near future and actual reality becomes even thinner when we come to realize that technology already today is infused in so many aspects of our lives. We submit ourselves to it, we reap its fruits and we think we control it. Do we, indeed?

Alarm bells are ringing through all 400 pages of Big Data with the warning. We better snap out of our indifference and, as the author says in his afterword, ask ourselves, “how do we prevent bad people from getting their hands on software that could potentially destroy us? The world’s next generation of mega-weapons will be software. Code in machines. Machines that drive our cars, fly our planes, control our homes, run our hospitals, and do something new for us every day. (…) It is time that we, as a global human race, invent and adopt systems of technological checks and balances. Software is infinitely easier to infiltrate and steal than atomic bombs. And if we sit back and do nothing—if we just throw our hands up and ignore the problem—we will have to live with the consequences. (…) And what’s at stake is the very survival of the human race.”

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Big Data: A Startup Thriller NovelLucas Carlson

Cumulus by Eliot Peper

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In his near-future thriller Cumulus, Eliot Peper sets his plot in his hometown Oakland around a passionate and talented young analog photographer, the founder and CEO of a tech giant and a frustrated intelligence agent.

If that doesn’t sound intriguing enough, the fact that Eliot Peper is one of the most talented writers of techno-thrillers today, should rush you to grab this book. Haunting startup stories with political intrigues are his specialty and playground, and Cumulus is yet another confirmation of that. Just a warning before you start reading it: you might get addicted!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan



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Uncommon Stock: Power Play by Eliot Peper

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It’s hard to believe that three years, three months, and twenty-four days have passed since I’ve read the first book of The Uncommon Series. Reviewing Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0 on September 5, 2016 was like it happened yesterday the moment I started reading its sequel Power Play. Mara Winkel and her heartfelt dedication to her idea(l)s and work came to life in my memory already with the first bass beats of Burning Man.

In this instalment, the CEO of Mozaik, the fastest-growing tech startup in Boulder, leads her team in building a software that will uncover financial fraud at a large international bank.

The book one was a fast read but in the book two Uncommon Stock: Power Play Eliot Peper speeds things up even more by pushing Mara to stir the hornet’s nest and sets lose the dark forces of corrupted corporate capitalist world. His writing is again beautifully contagious, educational and informative. His story is full of action and it pulses within your bloodstreams as it quenches your thirst for the first-rate startup thriller. Thankfully, there is one more book to go!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

My review of Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0.

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Bernard Jan



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Uncommon Stock: Exit Strategy by Eliot Peper

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


First there was Version 1.0, then Power Play, and now Exit Strategy, as a brilliant ending of gripping and page-turning The Uncommon Series. Uncommon Stock: Exit Strategy is a perfect, mad, violent, loud, crescendo closure of the series I loved from the line one of the page one!

Breathing heavily under the weight of impressions, I am at a loss of words to thank Eliot Peper enough for writing this series and sharing it wish us. All I will say is buy and read Exit Strategy and other two books in the series and brace yourself for hours of pure reading pleasure.

If you need more evidence why I love this series so much, please also check my reviews of Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0 and Uncommon Stock: Power Play.

Thanks, Eliot!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan




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