
Pattern Breakers
Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future
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Narrated by:
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Mike Maples Jr
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Peter Ziebelman
About this listen
Based on extensive research and real-world examples, this book upends accepted wisdom about how to achieve success when launching a startup or creating a new product.
The breakthrough concepts of Pattern Breakers come from the observations of Mike Maples Jr., a seasoned venture capitalist, who noticed something strange. Start-ups like Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft had achieved extraordinary success despite their disregard for “best practices.” In contrast, other startups deemed highly promising often failed, even when they seemed to do everything right.
Seeking answers, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success. Pattern-breaking success, they reveal, demands a different mindset and actions to harness developments others miss or that may, at first, seem crazy.
Pattern Breakers is filled with firsthand storytelling about initial interactions with some of the most transformative start-ups of recent times. Maples and Ziebelman challenge us to rethink how to transcend the ordinary and achieve the extraordinary.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Mike Maples, Jr and Peter Ziebelman (P)2024 PublicAffairsListeners also enjoyed...
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The most impactful new thinking of the year
- By Chris Guest on 12-21-16
By: Play Bigger LLC, and others
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How to F--k Up Your Startup
- The Science Behind Why 90% of Companies Fail - and How You Can Avoid It
- By: Kim Hvidkjaer
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Kim Hvidkjaer was twenty-nine years old when he became a millionaire. Two years later, after a cluster of disasters, he found himself basically broke. Now, having rebuilt his fortune as the founder of several successful enterprises and studied thousands of failed startups, Hvidkjaer has become an expert in failure: what it means, what it looks like, and the strategies that business owners can use to prevent it. In How to F--k Up Your Startup, he takes us on an entertaining and enlightening journey through the complex patterns of failure in the life cycle of a business.
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Great clear and straightforward advice.
- By keith Kirkland on 03-11-25
By: Kim Hvidkjaer
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Jobs to Be Done
- Theory to Practice
- By: Anthony W. Ulwick
- Narrated by: Tom Askin
- Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Why do so many innovation projects fail? What are the root causes of failure? How can they be avoided? Since 1991, Tony Ulwick has pioneered an innovation process that answers these questions. In 1999, Tony introduced Clayton Christensen to the idea that "people have underlying needs or processes in their lives, that they are addressing in some way right now" - an insight that was to become the Jobs-to-Be-Done theory.
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Practical and effective
- By Joshua D. on 01-10-21
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Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution (Updated Edition)
- A Handbook for Entrepreneurs
- By: Uri Levine
- Narrated by: Perry Daniels
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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As the cofounder of Waze—the world's leading commuting and navigation app with more than 700 million users to date—Levine is committed to spreading entrepreneurial thinking so that other founders, managers, and employees in the tech space can build their own highly valued companies. Levine offers an inside look at the creation and sale of Waze and his second unicorn, Moovit, revealing the formula that drove those companies to compete with industry veterans and giants alike.
By: Uri Levine
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Crossing the Chasm
- Marketing and Selling Technology Projects to Mainstream Customers
- By: Geoffrey A. Moore
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the best-selling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It's essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.
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Outdated
- By Rebecca Savage on 01-05-15
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Play Nice but Win
- A CEO's Journey from Founder to Leader
- By: Michael Dell, James Kaplan
- Narrated by: Michael Dell
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1984, soon-to-be college dropout Michael Dell hid signs of his fledgling PC business in the bathroom of his University of Texas dorm room. Almost 30 years later, at the pinnacle of his success as founder and leader of Dell Technologies, he found himself embroiled in a battle for his company’s survival. What he’d do next could ensure its legacy — or destroy it completely.
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Not perfect, but worth a listen
- By James S. on 11-09-21
By: Michael Dell, and others
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AI Valley
- Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence
- By: Gary Rivlin
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Artificial Intelligence has been “just around the corner” for decades, continually disappointing those who long believed in its potential. But now, with the emergence and growing use of ChatGPT, Gemini, and a rapidly multiplying number of other AI tools, many are wondering: Has AI’s moment finally arrived? In AI Valley, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Rivlin brings us deep into the world of AI development in Silicon Valley. Over the course of more than a year, Rivlin closely follows founders and venture capitalists trying to capitalize on this AI moment.
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A dizzying account of the development of AI
- By ER on 03-31-25
By: Gary Rivlin
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The WEIRDest People in the World
- How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
- By: Joseph Henrich
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church.
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Lots of mispronounced words
- By Phil F on 10-24-20
By: Joseph Henrich
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The Innovator's Dilemma, with a New Foreword
- When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
- By: Clayton M. Christensen, Marc Benioff - foreword
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganse, Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator's Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Sharp, cogent, and provocative—and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time—The Innovator's Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.
By: Clayton M. Christensen, and others
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The Corporation That Changed the World
- How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational
- By: Nick Robins
- Narrated by: Simon Barber
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.
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Not what I expect from a history book
- By Bobby on 10-09-18
By: Nick Robins
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Click
- How to Make What People Want
- By: Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky - contributor
- Narrated by: Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky
- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Every big project—whether it’s creating new technology, developing a fresh line of sneakers, or opening a neighborhood café—requires a major investment to get off the ground. Unfortunately, most big projects flop with customers. Too many teams waste time, money, and opportunity because they follow the wrong strategy and lose sight of what really matters: Do people want what you’re making? Does your solution click with customers?
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Best business book I read this year
- By Anonymous User on 06-05-25
By: Jake Knapp, and others
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The Power Law
- Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
- By: Sebastian Mallaby
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives the VC business, all of Silicon Valley, the wider tech sector, and, by extension, the world.
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An Excellent Modern History Book
- By BikerDave on 05-06-24
Totally Awesome Content!
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From the opening lines, this awesome book takes start-up founder newbies and seasoned explorers through what folklorists call a series of "wonder-tales". It's filled with adventure and discovery of breakthroughs past, present, future and timeless, and is a fabulous journey into formerly uncharted futures, mapping how the outliers got there, exploring the powerful forces that can, and do, change our lives, and drawing out the legends.
“Breakthroughs require pattern breaking. Pattern-breaking founders create something that breaks the mold. Their pattern-breaking ideas boldly challenge us to depart from current habits. Many of us consider these pattern-breaking ideas impossible or unthinkable–at first. Ironically, the experts we respect most are often the least able to see the potential for a break from the past. Often it is the outsider, unburdened by the past, who becomes the pattern-breaking person behind a pattern-breaking idea.
Consider the breakthrough of human flight. …” Take off with Pattern Breakers, Why Some Start-ups Change the Future, by Mike Maples, Jr and Peter Ziebelman. A wonder-tale for the listener, read by both Mike & Peter in this excellent Audible version.
And find Mike on multiple podcasts, every one a great listen with more insights for outliers and future explorations. And join the conversations,
“What’s luck got to do with it?”
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One thing which I like is that in contrast with some startup books which tend to put these great founders on a pedestal and wax poetic about their great intrinsic qualities, most of the principles in this book are things that most people can apply if they are willing to put in the blood, sweat and tears.
I would recommend this book to anyone embarking on an entrepreneurial journey or who just wants to better understand how great innovations are made.
Distilled experience and actionable frameworks
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Anyone in venture or building a high growth startup should read this
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It is funny, humble and full of deep insights.
Utterly fabulous - an easy recommendation
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Equal parts practical and insightful
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My profound appreciation to the authors for this amazing book.
Astonishing Insights
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Aportan diferentes puntos de vista, permitiendo que los lectores tomen dimensión de lo complejo que es emprender y correrse de la media.
Puede ser muy si querés emprender
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Living in the Future
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EXCELLENT!
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