Number of teams that applied to Y Combinator’s summer 2011 batch: 2,089Teams interviewed: 170Minutes per interview: 10Teams accepted and funded: 64Months to build a viable startup: 3Possibilities: BOUNDLESSInvestment firm Y Combinator is the most sought-after home for startups in Silicon Valley. Twice a year, it funds dozens of just-founded s...

Based on unprecedented access he received to the highly secretive "Googleplex," acclaimed New York Times columnist Randall Stross takes readers deep inside Google, the most important, most innovative, and most ambitious company of the Internet Age. His revelations demystify the strategy behind the company's recent flurry of bold moves, all driven by the pursuit of a business plan unlike any other: to become the indispensable gatekeeper of all the world's informati...

The liberal arts major is often lampooned: lacking in "skills," unqualified for a professional career, underemployed. But studying for the joy of learning turns out to be surprisingly practical. Unlike career-focused education, liberal education prepares graduates for anything and everything—and nervous "fuzzy major" students, their even more nervous parents, college career center professionals, and prospective employers would do well to embrace liberal arts majors. Just look to Silicon Va...

After one of the most successful IPOs in history, Google set forth on an incredible, audacious new strategy for its future—a vision so bold, large-scale, and controversial, that the company has worked very hard to keep it totally under wraps. Neither The Search nor The Google Story, both successful books about the company, included any information about this new vision the business has for itself. The business world and the large community of those interested in web issue...

Twice a year in the heart of Silicon Valley, a small investment firm called Y Combinator selects an elite group of young entrepreneurs from around the world for three months of intense work and instruction. Their brand-new two- or three-person start-ups are given a seemingly impossible challenge: to turn a raw idea into a viable business, fast.Each YC session culminates in a demo day, when investors and venture capitalists flock to hear pitches from the new graduates. Any one of th...

The first inside account of life within a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, eBoys is the fascinating true story of the six tall men who backed eBay, Webvan, and other billion-dollar start-ups that are transforming the Internet and setting a new pace for the economy.Randall Stross, author of acclaimed books on Microsoft and Steve Jobs, blends a business historian's perspective with a journalist's flair for suspenseful storytelling to look at wealth creation up cl...

The gap between rich nations and emerging economies is closing. As a result, the global dynamics of innovation are changing. No longer will innovations traverse the globe in only one direction, from developed nations to developing ones. They will also flow in reverse.Authors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth explain where, when, and why reverse innovation is on the rise, and why the implications are so profound-for nations, for compani...

A revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsize influence Google has had on the changing media Landscape.There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. As only he can, bestselling author Ken Auletta takes readers for a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses—from newspapers to books, to television, to movies, to telephones, to advertising, to Microsoft. With...

The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondentThe San Francisco-based technology company Twitter has become a powerful force in less than ten years. Today it’s everything from a tool for fighting political oppression in the Middle East to a marketing must-have to the world’s living room during live TV events to President Trump’s preferred method of communicati...

You know the feeling. You meet someone new—at a party or at work—and you just hit it off. There is an instant sense of camaraderie.In a word, you “click.”From the bestselling authors of Sway, Click is a fascinating psychological investigation of the forces behind what makes us click with certain people, or become fully immersed in whatever activity or situation we’re involved in.From two co-workers who fall head ov...

The classic warts-and-all portrait of the 1980s financial sceneThe 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of '29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade.

START-UP NATION addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel-- a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK?With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens ...