6/6 AI Startup Environments: The Minimal Library

I had to deal with this subject when the aspiring business manager decides to throw himself into this ocean full of predators, it must have a minimum of knowledge, outside of his ecosystem. I chose from the very dense library: “Bad blood — John Carreyrou”, “Steve Jobs — Walter Williamson”, “lean startup by Eric Ries”. “Cryptonomicon” and “snow crash” by Neal Stephenson and “accelerando” by Charles Stross are most really basics for the entrepreneur and some are anti examples. But you have to read them.

Steve Jobs- Walter Williamson

The book to read first and reread. This book has the advantage of being a history book on consumer computing and a book on business management.Whatever one thinks of Apple and Steve Jobs. This company mattered. NeXT was a major company, it allowed object programming to gain a foothold, outside of academia.

Bad blood — John Carreyrou

Elisabeth Holmes, ex-CEO of Theranos had a good idea: create a machine that should have done blood tests from simple droplets collected at the fingertip, if she had done things correctly, the Edisons, the 4S. It was the early 2000s and Holmes, coming from a line of patricians worthy of the Gates family. But where the latter (I’m talking about Bill Gates) was a computer enthusiast and even if he left Harvard, he mastered his subject. Holmes left Stanford, temple of Sun Microsystems, Google, among other things armed with his idea… without any biological and even less medical expertise.Theranos did not master his subject at all, nor did these technologies, of course, there were efforts, but between the pitch that Elizabeth Holmes used to sell her startup and the simple reality of the facts. There is a world. I wouldn’t talk about the silly choice between flash and JavaScript… whereas C++ or python are better suited for robotics and real-time.Theranos is above all an anti example of human management, it is a caricature of the Anglo-Saxon system, it is true with a management of internal security, which goes beyond understanding, with such high paranoia, that it is counterproductive .Elisabeth Holmes was obsessed with Steve Jobs , again , Theranos could do in the medical field , what Silicon Graphics with OpenGL for real — time 3D display , Sun Microsystems with Java and the Apple Macintosh which made technologies mainstream . from the Xerox Park. And then Jobs still created (via these teams) the Macintosh and concerning me the NeXT cube.

Holmes had managed to have on his board Avie Tevanian, one of the key men of NeXT and later Apple, of the former designers of the Cupertino company. All have left. The same goes for Chiat\Day, a communications agency that took care of the first company of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak for a very long time, had a contract with Theranos and asked itself the right questions at the right time to take to their heels.

Holmes pushed the imitation so far, bordering on bad taste, that she applied the Jobs method of management, again, Jobs did Apple via the Apple 1 & 2, concrete products, Theranos did nothing of that, deceived these partners, these end customers by putting them in danger, the biological, it is a headache for the start ups.

Lean start-up — Eric Ries

Undoubtedly the most famous work of this collection. Lean startup has taken creators through years. This work, more “from zero to one” gives good theoretical bases.Lean startup also works in the real world, thanks to free tools. Yes the languages, the frameworks are free, the deployment: low, but not the trainings. Machine learning, the metaverse are based on “free” technologies, anyone can download Blender 3D and install it on their machine, but if you don’t know how modeling, rigging, exporting, using B3D will be very painful without training.

Lean startup pushes the test. Lean startup = test, both technologically with the concept of “minimum viable product”, and commercially. Admittedly in my branch, it is somewhat delicate (understatement), not to mention the GDPR and other AI ethics, which are necessary for both companies and customers, whom we must pamper

Cryptonomicon | Snowcrash — Neal Stephenson

How do you approach these two landmarks of geek culture? Two works, which allowed the shaping of ideas that were in the air. These works lay the intellectual foundations of the metaverse (to date only for professionals and companies) and the basis of bitcoin and these forks.

Cryptonomicon, which I consider to be “in search of lost time” for geeks, also gives the neophyte an interesting portrait of business angels (one must have antagonists). Cryptonomicon is as rich as Lord of the Rings.

Snow crash offers a pessimistic vision of the USA in fifteen to twenty years, the novel dates from the early 1990s. But become most relevant after our two years of COVID 19.

Accelerando — Charles Stross

Accelerando is my last “surprise” choice, certainly upon reading it, it is obvious for the person, the team working in deep tech, given the theories put forward by the author, but will appear, for the uninitiated in cyberpunk and to the hard science genre, such as cryptic.

So, I very strongly recommend this book to anyone who has not read, at least “neuromancer” or seen the complete “Mr Robot” or have devoured the manga “the ghost in the shell”; Accelerando is intellectually demanding, but also abundant and inspiring. I prefer not to reveal, if only the starting plot, it is an example of a lack of knowing how to live