Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24248

by bootload • 19 years ago

5 31 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

bootload6• 19 years ago

Reading Founders at Work and going through the stories I was struck by who was not in the list. Another edition is in the planning by JL. What founders would you suggest for the second edition? Mine would be ...

- Donna Dubinsky, Jeff Hawkins (Ed Colligan) ~ Palm Computing

- CmdrTaco ~ Slashdot

- Larry Ellison ~ Oracle

- Hasso Platner ~ SAP

- David Kelly ~ IDEO

- John Carmack ~ Id Software

- Peter Molyneux ~ Bullfrog, Lionshead

zach3• 19 years ago

Good suggestions. Haven't we all had enough of Molyneux, though? Plus, who out there is starting a game company? Nobody. Maybe Nolan Bushnell would be interesting, though.

I have a few suggestions of my own:

- Jeremy Wertheimer (ITA)

- Justin Frankel (Nullsoft)

- Lars Rasmussen (Where2)

- Jawed Karim (YouTube)

- Wil Shipley (Delicious Monster)

Longshots: Bill Joy, Larry or Sergey, Marc Andreessen, Pierre Omidyar

corentin2• 19 years ago

"Plus, who out there is starting a game company?"

The target audience for "Founders at work" is not just news.YC ;)

bootload6• 19 years ago

'... Haven't we all had enough of Molyneux ...'

I think Carmack, Broussard, Molyneux represent the leading edge of software in the PC era (and beyond for Carmack). Molyneux is a good study. Created 2 startups in a difficult industry, shipped product.

Nolan Bushnell is definitely a good one. He's still at it with 'uWink'. There's a pattern here. These guys are serial entrepreneurs of technology.

euccastro• 19 years ago

As said elsewhere, you can read all about Carmack in Masters of Doom. Besides, I think he'd have technical rather than entrepreneurial advice to give. Still, if he made the cut I'd read his interview voraciously anyway.

I'm not looking forward to Molyneux, though.

npk• 19 years ago

I'm mostly interested in hearing from hardware and finance guys. However, the first obvious interview would be:

- Larry & Sergey

- Astro Teller @ Body Media

- Matt Flannery @ Kiva

- Ross Freeman, Bernie Vonderschmitt, and Jim Barnett @ Xilinx

SwellJoe• 19 years ago

I'm clearly out of the loop. I've never heard of any of those except Larry and Sergey. They definitely aren't the "first obvious" choices for me. ;-)

staunch• 19 years ago

++++ Brad Fitzpatrick / LiveJournal

++++ Joe Kraus / JotSpot (not Excite)

+++ Chad Hurley or Steve Chen / YouTube

+++ Reid Hoffman / LinkedIn

+++ Jason Calacanis / Weblogsinc

++ Markus Frind / PlentyOfFish

++ Kevin Rose / Digg

++ Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook

+ Michael Arrington / TechCrunch

bootload6• 19 years ago

Kraus is in the current edition. I'd have to agree with Fitzpatrick. I know your thoughts on his brilliance. Didn't think of Hurley/Chen. For Calacanis I'd also add Dave Winer. Rose, Zuckerberg are still playing out. What did Arrington do thats so interesting with TechCrunch?

zach3• 19 years ago

I agree with Kraus even though he's in the current edition. More!

davidw• 19 years ago

This has been around before, there were some listed here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16901

Personally, I find the "big, but not huge" ones the most inspirational for some reason. Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like have been covered a lot in various ways, and have also had time to let their legends grow in their own minds.

bootload6• 19 years ago

'... This has been around before ...'

I missed this and would have searched for it if I could have :( The ones I want are the side players as well There's lots of interesting going on in the pre PC, PC era, Web 1 & Web 2 era that have yet to be told.

- PC ~ Phil Kahn, borland

- Web 1 ~ realmedia

- Web 2 ~ moo, last.fm, zoomer, photobucket

benn• 19 years ago

Ben Nolan ~ Groupswiki.com

sgoraya• 19 years ago

Richard Barton of Zillow Jack Dangermond of ESRI

Also would like to see a gaming founder - Carmack is a fine candidate & -Jason Rubin & Andy Gavin formerly of Naughty Dog & currently with/founded Flektor

corentin2• 19 years ago

Yep, Carmack would be great; on the other hand, you can learn pretty much everything you need to know about how he started id Software with his friends by reading the great book "Masters of Doom" (I strongly recommend it).

George Broussard and the Duke Nukem team would be great, too (the brilliant guy who wrote the then-ubercool 3D game engine was still a kid at the time!)

By the way: web startups are great but they aren't the only ones. "Founders at work" is a great, great resource but it would have been even greater if it focused a little less on web stuff.

A very brilliant guy is Matt Dillon. Not the actor... well, he certainly is brilliant too ;) The software developer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Dillon_(computer_scientist)

He started a few startups but he is mostly known as a BSD kernel developer wizard. He started the very innovative DragonflyBSD project (a fork of FreeBSD with impressive goals).

Chuck Moore (inventor of Forth and computer visionary) started/was part of a few startups, too. Lately, he has been with IntellaSys creating an impressive, radically-different microprocessor ("SEAforth").

The story of Bill Joy (BSD, TCP/IP hacker and co-founder of Sun Microsystems) would be cool, too.

The Lisp Machine guys would be great as well (though there already is some info available of the net).

And why not founders in fields not related at all with computers? The founders of Bose, Hobie Cat, etc.

EDIT: yes, there is a lot of superlatives :)

bootload6• 19 years ago

'... George Broussard ...'

and the making of Duke Nukem Forever ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever

startupper• 19 years ago

Please include some people from the infrastructure world. Founders of companies like Cisco, Juniper, Qualcomm, etc. Even smaller chip companies. How did these people get started?

Here's an example of someone interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bechtolsheim

And another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Communications

herdrick2• 19 years ago

I suggest my partner and me. Just give us a little while...

herdrick2• 19 years ago

The Reddits, of course.

danw• 19 years ago

Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank would be great. He started a microfinance bank and recently won a Nobel Peace prize for his work! That's not something many startups can claim. Possibly Iqbal Quadir of Grameen Phone too.

Also some European startups such as skype, last.fm, moo etc

byrneseyeview• 19 years ago

You really think an interview with Yunus would be helpful? He's just a loan shark with good PR.

bradyforrest• 19 years ago

Greg Stein - compare.net (sold to MS, originally founded with Pierre O. -- he left to found eBay); Greg worked on SVN and ended up at Google. Fascinating guy. Bill Gross BradFitz Justin Frankel Mark fraunfelder -- boingboing John Hanke - keyhole

puneetht• 19 years ago

please include Markus Frind from PlentyOfFish. His story is both fascinating, inspiring and so not the norm. Also.. it may be better if you dont include YC companies, since most of their stories are already so well publicized.

comatose_kid• 19 years ago

Sean Adams - founder of Slim Devices. He seems like a great example of bootstrapping and initiative. Web startups are one thing, but starting a company that builds neat consumer electronics hardware, builds a great community, and then gets acquired by Logitech - that would be an excellent case study.

nextplayground• 19 years ago

maybe the topics should be categorize into a few subtopics like web, gaming, OS, gadgets (the creators of PS, Nintendo, Xbox) and so forth...

bmazurek• 19 years ago

There will obviously be companies that appeal to certain people and companies that don't. Why not have different themed editions of the book....one that is hardware focused, one infrastructure, one software platforms (OSes, languages, frameworks), etc.

As well, add some from notable companies that grew up large enough to be recognizable but failed. Perhaps we could learn something from the seeds of their destruction...

wasted_rhino• 19 years ago

Jellyfish.com - Brian Wiegand and Mark McGuire FeedDemon - Nick Bradbury

bootload6• 19 years ago

'... Nick Bradbury ...'

I'd read about Nick Bradbury. Been doing desktop based web stuff since '97. He's also the startup anti-pattern as a one man business (to my knowledge) & multi skilled.

brutus• 19 years ago

Heidi Messer, LinkShare (sold to Rakuten for $425 Million in 2005)

It would be nice to see some women up there, the company took ten years to build, started in 1996 (the really early days and in NYC) was funded by ICG (remember the public internet fund that was worth more then GE in 2 years then almost bankrupt) they filed to go public, then the market went bust, then it was sold for a ton of money. She started the business with her brother.....sounds like an interesting read to me.

pdicristina• 19 years ago

JJ Allaire

Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

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