Review: The Startup Game

The Startup Game
Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs
by William H. Draper and Eric Schmidt
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Co-authored by one of the best known and most respected venture
capitalists, William Draper, this book is an autobiographical account of
40 years of investing in entrepreneurs and their ideas.

Draper uses stories of risky investments, cagey CEOs and rancorous board
meetings to illustrate how he evaluates innovations and their innovators.
Object lessons drawn from his involvement with Skype, OpenTable, Hotmail,
Prolacta BioScience, Baidu, Selectica and dozens of other high-tech firms
make for fascinating reading.

Draper sums up much of his message in "The Top Ten Avoidable Mistakes of
Entrepreneurs" where he elaborates on the following preventable blunders:

* Creating overly optimistic projections about market size and
customer acquisitions.
* Underestimating timelines.
* Trying to do everything yourself.
* Failing to master the elevator pitch.
* Not downsizing when necessary.
* Being inflexible.
* Not developing a clear marketing plan.
* Building a board that consists only of friends.
* Not taking action in a recession.
* Not knowing the right way to approach venture capitalists.

Anyone expecting to meet with venture capitalists now or in the future
would be well advised to read this text carefully and take its lessons to
heart.

The Startup Game
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The View from Lazy Point

A Compassionate Mind

"In the panic among the fishes and in the frenzying terns, it’s also evident that nature has neither sentiment nor mercy. What it does have is life, truth, and logic. And it strives for what it cannot have: an end to danger, an assurance of longevity, a moment’s peace, and a comfortable death. It’s like us all, because we are natural.

"What anyone needs to know about mercy, one can learn by watching nature strive, seeing people struggle, and realizing what a compassionate mind could add to the picture. So I’m also struck that we who have named ourselves “wise humans” — Homo sapiens — haven’t quite realized that nature, civilization, peace, and human dignity are all facets of the same gemstone, and that abrasion of one tarnishes the whole."

The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World by Carl Safina
Review: The View from Lazy Point

Classic Cookbooks: Selections From Betty Crocker's Dinner For Two Cookbook

Selections From Betty Crocker's Dinner For Two Cookbook
by Betty Crocker
General Mills, 1973

Every recipe in this cookbook has beenm tested and retested in the Betty Crocker Kitchens and in homes all across the country.

Cooking for two?

Here are hundreds of new dining ideas for every taste and occasion.

Every menu is complete - main courses, vegetables, breads, desserts - all especially for two.

Selections From Betty Crocker's Dinner For Two Cookbook
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Now in Review: Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares

Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares
The Love, Lore, and Mystique of Mushrooms
by Greg A. Marley
Chelsea Green, 2010

Throughout history, people have had a complex and confusing relationship with mushrooms. Are fungi food or medicine, beneficial decomposers or deadly "toadstools" ready to kill anyone foolhardy enough to eat them? In fact, there is truth in all these statements.

In Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares, author Greg Marley reveals some of the wonders and mysteries of mushrooms, and our conflicting human reactions to them.

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Now in Review: Fire in the Forest

Fire in the Forest
by Peter Thomas and Robert McApline
Cambridge University Press, 2010

How destructive or beneficial are forest fires to wildlife? Should we be trying to reduce or increase the amount of fire in forests? How are forest fires controlled, and why does this sometimes fail? What effect will climate change have?

These and many other questions are answered in this richly illustrated book, written in non-technical language.

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Classic Cookbooks: Adventures in Cooking with Health Foods

Adventures in Cooking with Health Foods
by Nancy Sutton
Pyramid, 1972

Food grown naturally and cooked with a gourmet's touch! That's the happy combination offered in this lively, luscious book.

Mrs. Sutton puts together nature's own whole grains and vegetables with the gourmet flavorings of wines, spices and herbs.

She shows in easy-to-follow recipes how to prepare unforgettable dishes - from macadamia nut cheese filling and beets in pomegranate sauce to rose petal sherbet and carob coconut Easter eggs.

If you want to start eating healthier, tastier meals, begin by reading this book - and go on to prove in your own kitchen that the natural way with food is the most delicious way.

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Bird Watching

Bird Watching
by Paula McCartney
Princeton Architectural Press, 2010

At first inspection, this handsomely bound and finely printed volume of bird portraits taken in the wild comes across as a personal birding journal, complete with hand-written observation notes on some three dozen passerine species, from the Northern Cardinal on the Oregon Coast to the Green-hooded Bandit in Minnesota.

Green-hooded Bandit? There is no such species, and the Northern Cardinal's range is nowhere near the Oregon Coast. And, looking more closely, there's something wrong with the birds in these photographs. They are too perfectly coifed, too perfectly arranged in the underbrush, and their legs are made of wires!

A sort of conceptual trompe l'oeil, this book imitates the birder's journal or the field guide in its elegant depictions of nature while slyly mocking their attempts at verisimilitude.

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