Valley of Genius
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Narrated by:
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Pete Larkin
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By:
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Adam Fisher
About this listen
A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley - from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way.
Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly - and as aggressively - as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation.
So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius...
Drawing on over 200 in-depth interviews, Valley of Genius takes listeners from the dawn of the personal computer and the Internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. The audiobook interweaves stories of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. These are the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 Adam Fisher (P)2018 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." (Po Bronson, The New York Times best-selling author of Top Dog and NurtureShock)
"Valley of Genius is a blast - it's like eavesdropping on a huge party of all the hackers, thinkers and creators that built our digital world. Every page has some crazy detail I never knew before; I couldn't put it down." (Clive Thompson, author of Smarter Than You Think)
"A fantastic read! Adam Fisher's history of Silicon Valley is compelling and thorough, full of fascinating and inspiring stories carefully curated by someone who truly knows his stuff. Should be on every entrepreneur's desk!" (Ben Mezrich, The New York Times best-selling author of The Accidental Billionaires)
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The definitive inside account of the file-sharing revolution that overthrew the music industry, All the Rave reveals the family betrayal, greed, and mismanagement that hijacked one the most fundamental innovations of the Internet era. Named one of the three best books of 2003 by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., All the Rave has been out of print until now and unavailable in most formats. Author and veteran technology journalist Joseph Menn also wrote 2010's Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet.
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The Far-reaching Karma of Napster
- By Susie on 04-29-13
By: Joseph Menn
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The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs
- By: Carmine Gallo
- Narrated by: Sean Mangan
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, best-selling author Carmine Gallo reveals the qualities that make the Apple co-founder the most innovative leader in business today. Each principle is backed with research, quotes, and first-person interviews with experts and business leaders, as well as specific ideas for applying those principles to every business, large or small.
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awful
- By Thomas on 10-15-11
By: Carmine Gallo
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The Art of Innovation
- Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
- By: Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman - contributor, Tom Peters - foreword
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.
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This is an old book!
- By EPR review on 01-05-17
By: Tom Kelley, and others
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Eat People
- An Unapologetic Plan for Entrepreneurial Success
- By: Andy Kessler
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Here's how entrepreneurs find the next big thing-and make it huge. The era of easy money and easy jobs is officially over. Today, we're all entrepreneurs, and the tides of change threaten to capsize anyone who plays it safe. Taking risks is the name of the game - but how can you tell a smart bet from a stupid gamble? Andy Kessler offers 12 surprising and controversial rules for these radical entrepreneurs.
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One of the best business books!
- By Wayne on 11-24-15
By: Andy Kessler
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The New New Thing
- A Silicon Valley Story
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Bruce Reizen
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, who is about to create his third, separate, billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then Netscape - which launched the Information Age - and now Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare industry on its head.
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A fun book about Jim Clark
- By Horace on 07-07-10
By: Michael Lewis
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The Starfish and the Spider
- The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
- By: Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy, and "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.
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Centralized and decentralized models
- By Chan Meng on 12-07-07
By: Ori Brafman, and others
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Who Was Steve Jobs?
- By: Pam Pollack, Meg Belviso
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 1 hr and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Steve Jobs, adopted in infancy by a family in San Francisco, packed a lot of life into 56 short years. In this Who Was...? biography, children will learn how his obsession with computers and technology at an early age led him to cofound and run Apple in addition to turning Pixar into a groundbreaking animation studio. A college dropout, Jobs took unconventional steps in his path to success and inspired the best and the brightest to come with him and "change the world".
By: Pam Pollack, and others
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Googled
- The End of the World as We Know It
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jim Bond
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Googled, esteemed media writer and critic Ken Auletta uses the story of Google's rise to explore the inner workings of the company and the future of the media at large. Although Google has often been secretive, this book is based on the most extensive cooperation ever granted a journalist, including access to closed-door meetings and interviews with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt, and some 150 present and former employees.
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Audio production could have been better
- By David on 11-12-09
By: Ken Auletta
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Free Prize Inside!
- The Next Big Marketing Idea
- By: Seth Godin
- Narrated by: Seth Godin
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Purple Cow taught marketers the value of standing out from the herd, which is how companies like Krispy Kreme and JetBlue made it big. But it left readers hungry for more: How do you actually think up new Purple Cows? And how do you get them adopted by risk-averse Brown Cow companies? Free Prize Inside delivers those answers and much more.
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Another gem from Seth
- By Daryl on 12-29-09
By: Seth Godin
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Dave Barry in Cyberspace
- By: Dave Barry
- Narrated by: Shadoe Stevens
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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When Dave Barry goes mano a mano with the Information Superhighway, it's guaranteed to be a rip-roaring adventure. This self-proclaimed computer geek and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist starts with the motto, "Never read the instructions," and slides from there into the world of hardware, software, Windows 95, and the critical issue of RAM ("the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM").
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Disappointing and Dated
- By Alan Rither on 09-13-04
By: Dave Barry
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The World Is Flat
- Further Updated and Expanded
- By: Thomas L. Friedman
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development in the first few years of the twenty-first century? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations?
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If you like cliches...
- By Jonathan Shultz on 09-08-07
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Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There, she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government - and always had been - and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was.
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Mostly good, but also irrating
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Today, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven 21st-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they’re as controversial as they are admired.
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Over the past five decades, the tech industry has grown into one of the most important sectors of the global economy, and Silicon Valley - replete with sprawling office parks, sky-high rents, and countless self-made millionaires - is home to many of its key players. But the origins of Silicon Valley and the tech sector are much humbler. At a time when tech companies’ influence continues to grow, The Big Score chronicles how they began.
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Worthwhile and engaging.
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Audio quality is bad, story is awe inducing
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Behind every great revolution is a vision, and behind perhaps the greatest revolution of our time, personal computing, is the vision of J.C.R. Licklider. In a simultaneously compelling personal narrative and comprehensive historical exposition, Waldrop tells the story of the man who not only instigated the work that led to the internet, but also shifted our understanding of what computers were and could be.
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Secrets of Sand Hill Road
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Whether you're trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing business to the next level, you need to understand how VCs think. In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Kupor explains exactly how VCs decide where and how much to invest, and how entrepreneurs can get the best possible deal and make the most of their relationships with VCs. Filled with Kupor's firsthand experiences, insider advice, and practical takeaways, Secrets of Sand Hill Road is the guide every entrepreneur needs to turn their startup into the next unicorn.
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As a founder I can highly recommend it
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Mostly good, but also irrating
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Today, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven 21st-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they’re as controversial as they are admired.
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What listeners say about Valley of Genius
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Brandon
- 08-17-18
What a journey... Amazong
It's interesting to hear the stories from those that were actually there and made it happen.
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- Dylan
- 08-06-18
Interesting Format
Laid out as a series of quotes, Valley of Genius tells the history of silicon valley through the words of it's people. I assume the book works well in physical form, but it definitely took a moment of getting used to hearing someone's name called out before each quote -- though this system did well to reinforce the content matter.
If you're interested in the valley, start ups, unicorns, or the history of the modern tech era, this is probably a good place to start. I've heard a decent portion of the information in this book, but never in direct quotes from the participant's themselves, or framed as well in (mostly) chronological order.
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- kcmtnbiker
- 08-03-18
First person account of how we got to here
I found out about this book listening to the TWIT Podcast network. How the author assembled this book, both through interviews and the actual physical process was very interesting. So, I had to read the book and I was not disappointed. From a first person account, based mostly on personal interviews, the author paints a very clear picture of the birth of most of the giant internet companies. Pete Larkin is a great reader and gave the book a wonderful voice. After reading about what went on in the early stages of these companies, it's amazing that any of them survived.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-20-18
Rivetting content, terrible production
The book's greatest strength is it's content. it's an interesting view of the history of Silicon Valley. Hearing from the likes of Alan Kay, Jobs etc. added to the "inside out" perspective.
The production quality however was poor, jarring and painful. Getting through the early chapters was an absolute torture. Poor audio editing plagues the book, with abrupt and badly done audio corrections often ruining the experience.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Christopher J. Stevenson
- 01-14-19
A great, thought provoking work
There are some bits of dialog the had to be fixed/updated, and the sound is just a bit off. since this book is primary a book of qoutes, I think it would have been better if an entire quote was updated.
that being said, there's a lot of great content. I'd highly recommend this book.
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- Kevin Thurman
- 01-20-23
Not suitable for audiobook
The format of this book doesn’t lend itself to the audiobook format. It seems like a great book, but i would buy a printed edition.
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Overall
- Avery Dague
- 07-21-18
Annoying to listen to
The way the book was put together does not make it easy to listen to. Each chapter is just a bunch of people, each with their own quote, put together in a way to try to tell a fluid story.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-22-18
It listens almost like a screenplay
There’s a ‘(who is speaking):’ every paragraph with very little yarn from the author himself. Really, Adam Fisher (aside from an interesting intro) should be considered an editor.
And an excellent one he is. The vignettes are masterfully selected and stitched together with the relevant interesting voices.
The format -constant POV switching read by a lone voice- is not ideal for audible and the vocal patch in’s on correction seem to have not been mastered in competently.
The content however is a must for any technologists or forward thinking would be mover out there. We’ve all got to learn our History first and this brings all the right Palo Alto tales- 18hrs worth for just one credit!
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- JI.
- 04-20-19
great story, would have been better as an intervie
this is the story of silicon valley in San Francisco from the 70s to modern times. I've listened to the source of many of the interviews that led to this book. book would have been better if instead of one reader it took the form of this series of interviews.
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- Drew Roberts
- 07-22-18
Fun Perspective
After you get comfortable to the style of constant quotes, it's a personable way to hear about the start of the internet and these companies. Even if you know a lot about them, it's a fun perspective and a lot of interesting details are mentioned. The author does a good job with the flow of the quotes and I blitzed through it in a day.
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3 people found this helpful