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bfeld

bfeld

Amazon.com Author

has 229 followers and is following 125 people

Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture... more »
  • Boulder, Co, USA
  • member since December 6, 2006

Reviews

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Displaying 21-30 of 187 reviews
  • Boomerang
    • Rated 5 stars

    “I've generally ignored the mainstream media during the original US financial crisis and the more recent European financial crisis. My lack of interest in mainstream media (TV, newspaper, and magazines) - especially about non-tech related stuff - is well known. The last domino to fall was when I finally stopped listening to NPR a few years ago. I view the signal to noise ratio as terrible, I don't believe most of the information, I often think the people talking have no clue what they are talking about, and as many things unfold in real time, the people involved have no idea what's actually going on. Oh - and it's part of the macro that - while it certainly impacts me, doesn't directly affect me, nor is there anything I can do about it. So I ignore it and instead focus on things I can make an impact on.

    But I like to read and learn from history. There are a number of writers who I think do a magnificent job of writing in different areas - for example Walter Issacson on Biography and Michael Lewis on Financial History. So I was excited when Lewis' new book, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, came out about the European financial crisis. I read it last night after we had dinner with some good friends who we hadn't seen in a while.

    It was awesome and kept me up well past my normal bedtime. Lewis writes like a novelist so his story completely sucks you in. In the case of Boomerang, he added in a travelogue component and went to each of the countries he wrote about. The book starts in Dallas, takes us to Iceland, to Greece, to Ireland, to Germany, and finally back to the California. Lewis covers both what happened, what's happening, what could happen, and why in a book that gave me more history, context, facts, and personalities than watching hundreds of hours of CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg or reading the Wall Street Journal and New York TImes daily could have. And I trust his synthesis - it feels very agenda-less and is written clearly from his point of view.

    If you want to understand what is going on in Europe, especially Greece, Ireland, and Germany, how it happened, why it matters, and where it might go, read this book. And if you just are curious and want a good "real life is better than fiction" kind of read, you can get that also from Boomerang.”

    bfeld wrote this review Friday, December 30, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • Hostage: London
    • Rated 2 stars

    “Saturday's book was Hostage: London by Geoffrey Household. Actually, it was Thursday, Friday, and Saturday's.

    Normally I'd knock off a 240 page Crime Thriller in an evening. But this one was different. It was written in 1978, set in London, and written by a British writer. The writing style was very 1970's British, the geography was unknown to me, the politics were bizarre and confusing, and the character development took about 80 pages before I actually understood who was doing what to whom. It was also entirely written in diary format which I generally dislike in fiction, although I realize the irony of that since blogs are essentially diaries.

    I stopped twice. Once at about 60 pages and one around 120 pages. The first time I stopped I thought about bailing - I have no trouble putting down a book if I'm not interested in it. But in this case I was intrigued at a meta-level - I wanted to understand why this book was so hard for me. Someone I met with on one of my random days recently recommended it and actually gave it to me along with another Geoffrey Household book. I wrote the books down, gave them back, and then bought them on Amazon. So I was determined to figure out why my random day friend liked these books and thought I'd like them.

    The second half of the book was great. Once I figured out what was going on, it moved quickly, like a Crime Thriller should. I finished it Saturday afternoon after my run, lying on the couch, with the sound of football and Amy screaming at the television downstairs telling the coaches and the quarterbacks what they should do instead of whatever they were doing.

    I've got one more Geoffrey Household book in my pile of physical books that I'm reading while I'm here in Keystone for the holidays. Hopefully I get through the next one in a single night and everything will be back to normal in my world.”

    bfeld wrote this review Sunday, December 25, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • Everything Is Obvious
    • Rated 4 stars

    “Tonight’s book was Everything Is Obvious* which was cleverly subtitled *Once You Know The Answer with a special bonus subtitle How Common Sense Fails Us by Duncan Watts. And yes – for those of you keeping track at home, I didn’t read a book last night; I was working on mine instead.

    I enjoyed this book. As I was reading it, I kept coming up with alternate titles like Everything is Bullshit, The Macro is Irrelevant, Humans Don’t Reason Well, Common Sense Fucks Us Up, Predictions are Useless, and Attributing Things To Abstract Collections of Stuff Like Crowds, Markets, Companies, etc. is Stupid.

    Watts is a professor of sociology at Columbia University and a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research. For those of you who think social science is garbage, he’s also a real scientist with a PhD in theoretical and applied mechanics. Basically, he’s a smart, well educated dude who has strong reasoning skills and is an excellent writer.

    This book reinforced several deeply held beliefs that I have:

    The macro doesn’t matter in the long run.
    Predictions are irrelevant.
    Most people don’t understand what they are doing or why they are doing it.
    Anything can be explained in hindsight, and the explanation is often wrong.
    The media introduces massive bias into most phenomenon so ignore the media if you really want to understand something.
    Trying things, measuring everything, and iterating aggressively is the best way to figure out what works.
    There are probably others. Watts beautifully takes apart a bunch of stories that are viewed as either “common sense”, “conventional wisdom”, or “counter-intuitive truths.” It’s a beautiful thing to read him dissect the popularity of the Mona Lisa and Shakespeare in the same book that he explains why some of the nonsensical assertions of Malcolm Gladwell that are repeated as gospel (including the hilariously stupid Paul Revere / William Dawes analysis), followed by an explanation of the faulty reasoning around the spread of SARS.

    The second half of the book is where the good stuff is. Part 1 is “Common Sense” and sets the stage by explaining how as humans we regularly misinterpret what’s going on for a variety of reasons, including our belief about what common sense is and how it works. Part 2 is “Uncommon Sense” and for those of you searching for tools on how to deal with the world more effectively, there is plenty of chocolately goodness here.

    I have no idea how much of Watts analysis is actually correct, but his assertions about what blinds us, causes us to make crummy decisions, and results in us believing things we can’t possibly understand sang to me.”

    bfeld wrote this review Monday, December 19, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • I Was Blind But Now I See
    • Rated 5 stars

    “James Altucher is brilliant. Everyone on the planet should buy a copy of his new book I Was Blind But Now I See right now. You’ll likely hate some of it. Other parts will annoy you. Still others will seem simplistic, counterproductive, or just plain odd. But every page will make you think.

    I met James for the first time at Defrag this year. Eric Norlin invited him. A few of my friends told me I had to see his talk. It was awesome. Now – a bunch of the Defrag talks were superb but James was early in the first day and he set the tone. I can’t remember whether he was before or after Tim Bray but they were back to back and all I remember after they were both done was exhaling a deep breath and saying to myself “fuck – that was great!”

    James’ book was in my Defrag swag bag (legendary – one of the best anywhere) and I finally emptied it out the other day. I’m reading a book a day over the next two weeks and this was my book today.

    It was perfect timing. On my 90 minute run today alone (no humans at all) in the mountains behind my house in Keystone, I kept thinking about SOPA. I’ve been incredibly agitated the last few days by SOPA after watching three hours of the House Judicial Committee hearing on Friday. SOPA is such an evil thing at so many levels and the people in the House that want it to happen appear to refuse to listen to facts or logic, and – when they talk about what they are confronted with – claim the facts and logic aren’t actually factual or logical. The noise in my brain about this kept drifting away as I thought to myself “how strange that there is snow only on the left side of the trail” or “I wonder if there will be any good movies next weekend since all the ones this weekend are shit” or “how awesome is it that there are no other humans out here” but then would be interrupted by angry thoughts about the chairman of the house judiciary committee who is the sponsor of this bill, the people on the house judiciary committee that are clearly “the henchman”, the absurd process that is unfolding – and then I’d start thinking about my breathing again and the fact that my heart rate was above 160 and that felt good.

    James takes us through his chaotic mind, his successes and failures, his struggles and depressions, as he gets to the point where he very clearly tells us that only one thing really matters – one’s own happiness. He proceeds to describe a series of completely fucked up things that get in the way of it. He prescribes a very simple way to be happy, which includes a number of things I do and often suggest such as don’t watch TV, don’t read newspapers, exercise daily, get plenty of sleep, stretch your mind every day, ignore all the crappy people in the world, don’t worry about things you can’t impact, recognize that many parts of the macro (government, banks, education) are irrelevant to your well being, and don’t roll around in the mud with a pig.

    But most of all he reminds us to just be honest all the time about everything. In my experience, this is the most liberating thing of all on the quest for happiness. Anyone who spends time with me knows I try to always do this regardless of the implications.

    Be honest. Be happy. We all die eventually.”

    bfeld wrote this review Saturday, December 17, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • My Stroke of Insight
    • Rated 0 stars

    “My grandfather had a stroke when he was 80. He lived another three years, trapped in his mind. Whenever I saw him, I think he recognized me, but he couldn’t really speak and had trouble reacting to anything I said to him. He was clearly very frustrated, and often angry – not at me, but at his inability to communicate. I’ve always imagined that inside his mind he knew everything that was going on, but he just couldn’t get the words out.

    A few months ago I watched Jill Bolte Taylor’s incredible TED talk about her stroke and wrote about it in my post I’ve Found Nirvana. I thought it was stunningly awesome and bought Taylor’s book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey.

    I read Taylor’s book tonight. I wish I had read this book when my grandfather had his stroke. Taylor is a brain scientist so she combines her intensely personal experience with a deep understanding of how the brain works. She presents this in a way that is easily understandable and directly ties it to her experience. While she acknowledges that there is much to learn, I found her description of what happened and her subsequent analysis to be extremely accessible.

    She covers her eight year healing process with a focus on the first year. The puzzle pieces fit together brilliantly. While they are very Jill Bolte Taylor specific, she provides a superb roadmap for helping anyone who has had a stroke to heal.

    On top of all of this, Taylor spends a lot of time talking about what she’s learned from this experience, how she’s changed how she thinking about life, and how she’s modified her own life view to have a much more positive experience on this planet.

    If someone close to you has had a stroke, this book is a must read right now. Given the prevalence of stroke in our society, I’d encourage everyone to read it, for at some point it’s highly likely that someone close to you (including yourself) may have a stroke of some sort. I know that if it every happens again in my world, I’ll have an substantially better understanding of – and capacity for – being helpful.”

    bfeld wrote this review Friday, December 16, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • A Sense of Where You Are
    • Rated 4 stars

    “Good classic early bio of Bill Bradley during his Princeton basketball years. ”

    bfeld wrote this review Sunday, December 4, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull
    • Rated 5 stars

    “One of my favorite books of all time. Every entrepreneur should read this book.”

    bfeld wrote this review Sunday, December 4, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Detachment
    • Rated 4 stars

    “Not Eisler's best but still solid mental floss.”

    bfeld wrote this review Tuesday, October 25, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • Ebooks and Self-Publishing - A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath
    • Rated 5 stars

    “Excellent treatise / discussion about self-publishing and the publishing business.”

    bfeld wrote this review Monday, September 5, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
  • Letters from Camp: One Family's Prison Story
    • Rated 5 stars

    “Lee Stagni has written an incredibly powerful book describing his and his family's story of dealing with his incarceration for a white collar crime. He starts at the beginning giving a clear overview of what happened that led to his imprisonment and then takes us through - week by week - his, and his wife Kathy's experience of the next five years. The tempo of the book is excellent - I read it in one sitting and was completely fascinated. Throughout the narrative, Lee mixes stories, descriptions, experiences, and emotions but never lets the read lose sight of what's going on. Kathy's letters and diary entries help bring everything, especially the emotional impact on a spouse, together.

    I worked with Lee in the 1990's and was shocked to hear that he was in prison. I visited him near the end of his incarceration and found him to be extremely thoughtful and reflective on the experience. This comes through in the book as while there is plenty of anger and emotion around the situation, Lee brings out the real story and lessons, without letting the injustice of the situation get in the way.”

    bfeld wrote this review Monday, September 5, 2011. ( reply | permalink )
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Displaying 21-30 of 187 reviews

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